August 13, 2025 • 44 mins
Picking up from last weeks podcast, "Ask Mom and Dad," hosts Greg and Tonya dive into the evolving landscape of marriage, focusing on the decline in overall divorce rates juxtaposed with the rise of "gray divorces" among couples married over 25 years. They explore contributing factors like economic challenges, shifting cultural norms, and the impact of empty nest syndrome, drawing from personal anecdotes and a session discussing rising divorce rates in longer marriages. With references to an Atlantic article and Ephesians 5, they highlight how faith, shared values, and intentional effort—such as finding common interests—can strengthen relationships. The conversation also touches on parenting, homeschooling trends, and the church’s role in fostering stable families, urging listeners to prioritize commitment and spiritual grounding.
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Episode Transcript
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Wish record first. It's important.
(00:03):
Hey, this is Greg and it's time for another episode of Ask and Dad. We're getting better
and better at this part of Atanya UNI. Both aren't you proud of us? I am. I think it's cool.
We even get better at pushing buttons in order or I'm excuse me, of waving at the crowd
(00:24):
so no one is okay to clap because I wouldn't want anyone to think that it was. Yeah, what
I'm gonna say. So how are you doing today? It's been a crazy week.
I'm doing okay. Busy. What do you mean?
I don't know. It's the question you're supposed to ask everybody.
No, it's not. Not when you live together and operate together. That's when you haven't
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seen each other for a while. We live together. Oh yeah, we do live together. It does feel
that way sometimes like we're running around crazy. This has been a, but it's been a busy
week so far. Yeah, it's been a busy few weeks. You're right. Not just this week.
But it's still started although it doesn't affect us. It kind of affects our community.
Yeah, it does. It's been, it's been good. The Lord's been good. There's been a lot of good
things happening in our church and our community of faiths. But as usual, we're trying to,
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you know, always deal with the questions of life and that's what we want to talk about
about today. Last, last time UNI chatted, we were talking about the force rates and how
an Atlantic article had come out that week on the decline of the force rates in America.
And you asked some good questions. I didn't have any answers to because I was not prepared.
And I got to tell you right now, I am still not greatly prepared, but I'm better prepared
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than I was before. But I think that the, like, I think it's funny that you're saying that's
what we talked about. And yet we had just come from a session where a man had talked about
the divorce rates going up in our category of marriage, like past 25 years. Yeah.
So I didn't know about the Atlantic article. So I still have not read that. I've seen a few
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clips from it. Yeah. Well, I mean, the big picture from the article, and I haven't read the
little article. I read clips from it. Funny that that's the story of our lives. Here's the
positive sign. And I'm the, here's the negative sign. That's really sad. Anyway, no, it was more
like, here's the thing I did on my own. And here's the thing we did together. Isn't that
kind of how it be? As you said, we went to a thing together, but I told you about the
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Atlantic article that I just didn't know the information. I just think it's funny that
you had the positive information. I had the negative from the right. Well, but some
of the questions that came up in that podcast were interesting. You talked about, you were
interested in no more about the divorce rates amongst older people. And so we looked into
that a little bit. And I think we also talked about the, no, I think it's the other way around.
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Sorry. I have to counter you. Correct me all day. When you said that the divorce rates
had gone down over in general, I think one of my main questions was, but has marriage
itself gone down? Like literally people just getting married. Because I feel like we've
seen that true for this generation too. A lot of more people not actually signing a marriage
certificate. That's what I'm talking about. So I was thinking that's what we kind of, we
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did talk about that. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I posed when I was looking
at that was that question. And you, one of the things that came back in that search was
marriage rates are falling, particularly amongst non-college educated Americans due
to economic instability and challenging dating norms. Like we said, creating a marriage
kids living in their parents' basement. Oh, wait a minute, not kids up to 30 somethings
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living in their parents' basement. So see, it plays out like we thought. Yeah, I think
that's true. The call to manhood is it where I like the fault the rest of that sentence
is creating a marriage material shortage. So it's actually literally nobody. If I
we've heard that from a few people, there's no one out there. Who can I marry? Well, I hear
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that a lot. And unfortunately, a lot of the women, especially younger women that have
been married. There's a couple of ladies that I know of. One of whom never was married,
but she has a child. But the other one who has a three-year-old girl who just got divorced
was the thing that she was saying was the husband wasn't there. He wasn't, he was concerned
only with his own things. He wasn't concerned about providing for her. He made everything
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her fault. Just the list that she was doing, she said it was just becoming more and more
difficult for her. She couldn't even go to church without it being a problem. And so
that's funny because somebody I met in our local watering hole here. I know that our son
has said the same thing from the guy's perspective that he doesn't so far find a lot of the type
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of women he'd like to marry. So that's interesting because either there and he's not living in
our basement, thank the Lord. No, it was a shed for a while, but we're doing
for you. He's an apartment now. Well, he's been an apartment on his own for at least
a while and trying to be independent, which I'm proud of him. But I'm saying he's looking
for a specific, maybe character and would like to find someone at least somewhat relatable
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to the way he grew up. And anyway, that's difficult. And I agree with him. Because we don't
find even, especially in our ministry right now, we don't find a lot of people who've grown
up in stable, functional homes. Most people are product of divorce. I mean, because literally
the statistics were so bad for a little while there, it affected the church as well a lot.
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So a lot of people that we would normally think would be the stable, go, you know, go find
some of these people, they're hard to find. There are some. And now I think it's going
to build back up again because there's a lot more homeschoolers and families that are having
more children. So there's a larger kind of pool of people growing up in some of these homes
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that are trying to focus on their home and trying to be, you know, raising children that
are capable of more than just going out to find a career. Because for a while, that's what
it seemed like. The families were so focused on, they have to find a career, not even a
great job or not even a great skill, but some kind of career. So everybody has to go to
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college, everybody has to get a degree, everybody has to do this or that. That's kind of
lessening now, I think. I think there's more people now concentrating on some skills and
some practical living things like pulling away from a lecture, you know, so focused on,
like we've even sent a trend recently, we heard people wanting flip phones again. What
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I'm saying is kind of withdrawing from some of these things for a less, a more simpler
time kind of thing. I think that those, to some degree, a lot, every generation has, I wish
it was a simpler time. But is that is going back to a more simpler time actually, the resolve
to the question of creating good marriage material or something like that? Well, what I'm
saying is it's a concentration on, like in our country right now, we have the maha movement,
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going back to some healthier options and our food supply. That's what I'm trying to
say, these families have noticed some of these trends, the lack of actual good education
in a public setting or the deficits of the things that have been concentrated on in school
settings have been not what's helpful to someone trying to go out in the real world. So
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I think people have withdrawn a little because we saw through COVID a lot of deficits in
our kids and what we're actually being taught in the schoolroom, in the classrooms. Parents
kind of woke up, I think, to wait a minute. They're not learning what I thought they were
learning. And so I feel like, socialization has been as good for the kids as they thought
they had been. Yeah, exactly. And the reactions then, I think, have been a little more family
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centered, a little more, wow, my kids need to know what I believe. Maybe from our perspective,
what the Bible says, you know, so I don't know exactly how that interprets into the majority
of the population, but you see a little bit more of that little less fear of having more
children. For a while there, I'm not bringing kids into this horrible place or whatever,
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but we've seen some that really know we have to rise up. We have to train up some kids
who can lead. Well, one of the things you just brought up was the tendency of many people
not to have an active role in shaping their children. They treat it like kids are somehow
going to naturally shape without guidance. And the truth of the matter is, is that's
like saying, okay, I'll tell you what we're not going to, well, let me put it this way, if you
dam a dam a river, you can get power from it, hydroelectric power, but if you leave it
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dam, the river is not that useful. So the water resources and stuff, it's not that it isn't
as useful as it can be. Well, I mean, we can control it and make it move in a direction
that's more beneficial to us or it can be less beneficial to the community society in general.
Maybe my analogy breaks down, but I'm trying. Well, I'm just thinking that we noticed
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so much that so many, right there in the, the last couple of decades, we have gone, the
trend has been to put kids in school, kind of ignore it, think that trust that the, trust
the school institution, yeah, and the educational system is going to raise them up and put them
out in the world correctly. And we're noticing it's not doing that, I guess I'm trying to say.
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So, so even the trend to homeschool, I know some people are kind of against that, think
that that's kind of withdrawing kids from society and do remember, but I, I have seen less
that, more, almost these agricultural communities where they do get some education, but they,
they have also the concentrations on more practical living and stuff. So anyway, maybe that's
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a trend. That's what I'm hoping. On the other hand, that does lend to maybe more harder to
find those same families that connect to that. You know, so if they happen to be in the
same community, that's wonderful. It's not that they have to go out and find them. It's kind
of interesting. I don't know that there is as much a lack of marriage, marrying material
as I, as I think there is a lack of people willing to put themselves in the right environments
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to find the marrying material. I mean, granted, and it's like we're, we're serving a small
turnaround church. And one of the things we're doing here is trying to bring young people
back into the church. So bringing our son here and saying, Hey, you're going to meet
someone new. Well, the newest youngest lady in this church might be in her 80s. So available,
lady, I don't know. The youngest ones are married. So, but so the material scam in a small
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place, but in larger environments or places where not necessarily it doesn't have to be
a church, but a church does kind of narrow down the playing field to say, Hey, at least
the people that are coming here are committed to something larger than themselves. They may
have committed to Jesus. And therefore, there may be that's a common thread at that point
in time. People who are meeting folks in bars or concert venues or things like that
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that are just out in the public sphere online or online, yeah, online dating apps, even
though dating apps supposedly filter some of those things, that's usually not the first
criteria. What's your core moral values? Yeah. Or you can pretend them a lot easier. Yes.
And I think that so the question is, most of these things are looking for a neurotic or
a filet, more of a mixture of, of I'm using that term in the sense of the different kinds
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of love, arrows, filet, filet, yeah, that's right. And understanding is not less agape, unless
you settle the agape, the unconditional issue, the unconditional love thing, these other
loves are going to be somewhat perverted or diminished in their, in their ability to
be fully fruitful. A man and a woman can have an attraction to one another, get married
and that can have some fruit and they may even have some grounding and some things that
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may let make it last, but as far as giving you a sense of great significance, it's going
to take something deeper than that. Sure. But we're talking about even meeting people,
but that's we're not there yet. Yeah, I started with me. I know I ran off the rail. Sorry.
Because I think, don't settle for anything less is what I'm trying to say. What I like,
I like to understand what this, where even are those kind who would have a good conversation
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or would have some of the values that he has and then also maybe a few interests that
he has. So it just seems like there's harder, it's harder to find those pockets of people
to even start a conversation much less, actually want to marry and especially into families
where they aren't quite as the same. Yeah. Some of our other kids haven't weighed that
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as heavily, but are kind of coming into realizing that was very a little more important. But I
think we always end up in those situations where you're not quite sure about your in-laws
or whether or not it's, you know, the exact fitting of the virtues that you share. But
a lot of times you can at least narrow that down like you were saying in a church environment,
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maybe in a environment that's community based and has a moral foundation, we're hoping
that it would be church-related group, people groups that are sharing those same common values.
But anyway, those are some good places to look, but we don't know. I mean, I mean, I
went really hard for, I didn't start looking for a wife to us on the mission field and I
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looked, you know, I wasn't really looking for a wife, but I found one because God was honored,
God honored that and was faithful and responsible. We also know that the church itself has had a hard
time. You know, we know that some churches, especially like in these more backward community
areas, whatever have shrunk. So there's like you said, not as many young people, not as many
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of the pockets of age group for marriage. In fact, those, one of the statistics was they're
waiting longer and needing the economic stability. And most people are finding it's harder to
bind land, it's harder to find a job that's going to last a lot, you know, a little longer, harder to
get a place where you feel secure, most, most of what we've heard that the agendas out there are
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for us not even to be able to get to that place unless we depend on the government. So a lot of
things like that are probably pertaining to people being able to find these people, you know, the other,
the other marriage partners or whatever. We were talking to a counselor this week about the meat
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of trying to stay together marriage. And I think that's another piece of it. You were talking about
different styles of love. And one of the passages from Ephesians 5, we talked about this week,
is directly to husband and wife. And we know as Christians that the marriage is the picture of
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Jesus and the church. And one thing I wanted to point out when we didn't talk about this
on Tuesday, but that I think is so beautiful in this passage when it's addressing directly men
love your wives, women respect and honor your husbands and you know, love submission.
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The chapter, the thing that we forget that marriage really does represent is the sanctification.
And we've talked about how the church, your mantra right now and...
We touched on it, but we didn't talk about it.
Yeah, your mantra right now in sermons has been, Jesus saves us, but the church, church shapes us.
Right. So in marriage, we know that's a sanctification process as well, but chapter 5 verse 27 says,
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he did this, or he made her holy cleansing her with the washing of the word, what Jesus did to the church.
He did this to present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or anything like that.
Yeah, I didn't talk about that at all. I think that is the coolest, I don't know,
phrasing that I've seen. Well, what does it say? One thing it says is it's for his benefit.
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Yeah, but it's, he's, I'm both in, it's like we've always said about salvation. He's the one that draws us,
he's the one that saves us, he's really the one that does it all. We are just
allowing him, we are a partaker in, but he in this marriage, making us holy, cleansing us with a
washing of the word, sorry, does this to present us as holy and blameless and a righteous bride or whatever,
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to himself. I just think that's so funny and picturing like a wedding and how if the bridegroom actually
went back and fixed her hair and fixed her up and made sure her dress was beautiful, you know, not,
not at all, letting her see him, but just fixing her all up so that when she came out, she was exactly
what he wanted. I mean, that's what Jesus does for us. He makes us ready and presentable to our bridegroom
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who is himself. I just think that's so cool. Anyway, I don't know if, is your implication in a cross,
in a cross like that, if we will be people who are submitted to Christ, he too will shape us to be ready,
to be received and to be presented holy and blameless to, to each other, so I'm trying to say.
Oh, yeah, I mean, that's what this means is that we are actually submitting to him, but this was
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a, in context, it was to the husbands to love your wives as Christ loves us or the church or his bride
or whatever and gave himself for her, but that part of it is what that did when he gave himself for her,
which is what I would, you know, I would challenge men out there, boys who are not married, whatever.
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What's a way that you can give yourself for this bride that you, number one, want, maybe don't have yet,
maybe don't even know what is, but giving yourself, making yourself a servant so that you can find
that person, but also because in that gesture, in that giving yourself, you're making her, whoever
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she might be, holy, cleansing her with washing the word anyway. It's just cool how Jesus did that,
so that we could be his bride. So he worked really hard to make sure we were his bride and exactly
the bride he needed and wanted. He, it didn't depend on the woman being a particular way or
even I would say probably even look a certain way or, you know, be, that's just a neat analogy to me.
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And I, I think that if more marriages could see that, like you just said, it's, it's God who's making us
presentable before him, but also for each other. You know, it's kind of,
made for perfection. It's kind of interesting you, when you referenced my little mantra of late
church shaving us, I can think of a story in our history recent, within 20 years, of a man who married a
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woman, married her and he was in jail when they got married. And in his own self-esteem and whatnot,
you know, he got out of jail and he got a job and he was doing things well and his wife
was faithful and loving a loyal to him and all that, but, um, but he began to question that maybe he
married her because he was, um, didn't think she was a guard of the jail. She was a guard of the jail. Yeah,
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that's without getting into the weeds on the story. But yeah, but the point of matter was he didn't,
she was, she struggled with some things that made him and some other girl was flirting with him and
he was drawn away and he began to question that the reason I bring in the church here in what you're
talking about, I think this applies, is that we moved in on that situation and had a long
man to man to man to man there was four of us. We went in and we sat down with him and we talked
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this out and talked about what marriage was and the commitment that he made and the value of that
and how important it was and, um, and we just held him held his feet to the fire about, did that
valmine anything? I don't care if you're in jail or not, you made this vow to this woman and you're
going to throw your marriage away based upon that. And he decided that we were right. He submitted
to that and he, um, humbled himself before the throne. Humbled for not us the word of God because we
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were presenting the word of God to him, which, and we used Ephesians 5 extensively and she, unfortunately,
passed away with some respiratory issues during COVID, but he loved her to the very end. He was destroyed
when she died and, um, and we're talking probably 10 more years of marriage after that, but, but nonetheless
and she was young and so, you know, if I've read it recently, there's some, he's been able to move
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forward with his life, but, but he experienced what marriage could be because he stayed faithful to that.
He was made ready for her. He was shaped by the church, by him, a Jesus in that process and he grew.
Does that, is that a good analogy? And made it, yeah, well, he made a choice, which I think is really all
avoiding divorce is. It's making a choice. Making a decision. There are difficult decisions and
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there are difficult forgivenesses and there are difficult situations, but it is still really
ultimately comes down to a choice. And we know of a situation right now where the couple is deciding
or choosing other coping mechanisms rather than their own family, their children, their, their marriage,
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the why would you choose these temporary highs, literally, that give you some sort of, you know,
I can make it through this day. Right. And that's tough because Peter tells us, you know, to be vigilant
and alert for your enemy, the devil is speaking around like a roaring lion, lion, search and who he can devour.
He can devour. You could say search which marriage to devour. And if you're constantly coping with
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something that alters your ability to be vigilant and alert, you're going to wind up chasing after
things that are destructive in your in that relationship. But even just if you just backed up a little bit
and looked at this, what am I choosing? I'm choosing this temporary, yeah, throw away feeling for what is
valuable, which is this relationship, this, I mean, children obviously there's a lot involved in that.
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You're passing on to the next generation. What's important, what is, what is of value. I know that people
aren't, wouldn't even say that's what they're choosing, but it is. And they're not, they're not able to
see that. I think that the main temptation of the enemy right now is that is, is temporary,
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false, whatever, however we would put that pleasure for a moment, coping, you know, things that make us
right now feel okay. But then you've got to wake up and deal with that again tomorrow. And you've got
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this same person or these same people that are yours to take care of or to destroy, I guess, you know,
what's your choice to make. But anyway, it's right to evaluate. What am I doing? What choices am I making?
What is this, what is the valuable thing here? And can I choose what is right? And like I'm saying,
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if it feels like to me, it ought to be logical, it should be that, but when the enemy wants to destroy
something, he's going to blind us to that anyway. Yeah, I heard one time that if we, if we are dealing with
stress or trouble and realize we have some options, one of them is to change our location, we can move
away, we run away from it, or we can change our situation, somehow our circumstances or
(23:09):
financials or whatever, or that was to change ourselves. Maybe it was just the two change and most people
choose to change their location. Everything else. Everything else. Everything else.
And I know even as, you know, being married, you and I being married, as long as we have any time we
face a self-change, there's this innate and there's this, it's in urge inside of you to say, oh, I can
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make an excuse. I've got to hold on to this because I like who I am. I don't want to have to work out or
change. Maybe not so much in you. I mean, I'm, it's definitely not easy. I agree. Because you notice
something, you see that it's a choice you're making. It's, it's a decision, but the sadness of it is,
you make it a decision no matter what. Right. You're either choosing to throw something away,
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or to redeem it. And I just wish, I wish young people knew the value of, I wish we could see
into the future even after death and how God sees it. Because there's so many pieces that do just
feel temporary. They feel right now. They feel like they're painful. They feel, you know, like you're
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confronting right in front of you, someone who doesn't care about you or see your pain. And yet,
if you could look into the future or even again past death, maybe into your grandchildren's lives,
you'll, you could see the effects. It matters so much. If you could step back from it now, you could
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probably still see some of the effects. I feel like that has helped keep us married a lot of times
because you have to evaluate that. What about worst case scenario? I played this out in my mind.
How many people are affected by this decision? You know, again, like you said, so instead, could I change
something about myself or allow God to change it? Because it's not even within my willhouse to change,
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really, I can do the best I can to decide. I'm going to go God's way. I'm going to go my way. But
it's still his to transform me to make me. Yeah. And the thing is, is you and I, we have this conversation.
And whenever we do, there's, you and I've been married for so long and in this for so long. We
almost kind of have a disbelief that anyone could see that where where this has to begin. We're
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addressing the things that are out there. But as we talk about the dearth of available material in
the young people and how they need to and we're answering that so you need to find somewhere that's
where there's people that are grounded and anchored in faith. And my go to my go to my go jerk,
I was going to need jerk. My go jerk reaction to this is to when we first read about the statistics was
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well, I had answers because I've been walking that for a lot. But the world has been most of these
kids out there, young kids and older people. Is it, I find it interesting, you can still be in the
midst of good moral counsel or good faith counsel and still not anchor yourself to that. It's like
you're, it's like there's boats in the harbor and summer anchored and summer just floating out in
(26:11):
the middle. First time storm comes. They'd, once in the middle, not only do they float around a more
unmoored, they crash into the anchored boats and create a whole lot of chaos in the harbor.
And so I would, the reason I mentioned that is this whole long married couples business that you
talked about last time. You know, the kids, they get into marriages and if they get properly moored,
they have a better chance or survival. But when you look at long, long married couples, some of
(26:35):
the statistics that came up were, were elements of that unmooring. The biggest one that it stood out to
me was the baby boomers face a 50% divorce chance versus today's cohorts, which is closer to 40.
And the over it has a lot to do with independent income, women who have jobs on their own and who
(26:57):
have been, they don't have a need. It has to do, they don't have a need to have the spouse for each
other. They're not, they're independent. Once the one thing that ties them together is gone and
oftentimes that's children, more often than not, children. And so as this happens in the situation,
you wind up having, you wind up having these folks going ahead and getting married with they call
(27:19):
gray divorce delayed marriage. Let's see here, cultural shifts. Marriage decline if you're marriage
due to gaps marriage or material already mentioned that. But yeah, so what do you find? We're looking at
our notes here. If anyone wants to know what's happening in the room, we're seeing what we got going
on here. I don't know where you read. Well, the statistics were also being able to find that.
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And like I said in the past couple of decades, it was a lot about going out, getting a career,
having a career path, women were pushed to have a career path. So yeah, after you've been married
quite a while and your children are out of the house, you've got your own life. You don't even need
each other anymore. In that sense, the sad part of it is women probably can survive somewhat there.
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But I've heard that men really struggle so much more to be on their own or to be left by a spouse
who doesn't desire to be with them. Men, I think, have an unwritten attachment that is,
especially if they have a faith base. That's harder, maybe to perceive, harder to see from the outside,
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but it's deeper on the inside than even the women. And I wonder about that. I wonder if the,
because like I've even seen in my own family, the men have kind of softened in their age, realizing
they really do need the wife. They, a lot more, it's a lot more visible at the older they get. Whereas
(28:48):
women have tended to be independent anyway. We have had to run the home. We've had to be. Yeah,
we've had to come up with and a lot of women out there have had really great jobs. So they've come
up with their own income. And like you said, there's really not a, for lack of a good word,
codependency. But it's a good thing when we're codependent in that way. We are dependent on our
(29:12):
relationship needing to be there, not in a, in a negative way, but in a good way. We've, we've come to
rely on each other, whatever. So I'm just saying it does seem like a, women have kind of been
taught in our culture to keep that separation just in case kind of. Well, here's it, you know, I,
(29:33):
I, I quickly googled it while you were talking. And here's the, here's the leading reasons for
grade of war, space on recent statistics, 2025, amongst couples that are 50 and older. So this,
if you're listening to us and you're younger than 50, you got a few years to figure this out. But
my wife and I desperately need to read this together. And it's like, marriages past 25 years.
Right, right. Has marriages past 25 years. And this is statistically come from US centrist, pure,
(29:57):
pure, pure, respieu research. And some other ones. But the first one that's listed, the leading one
is growing apart or drifting apart. And this is going to deal with that empty nest business.
It's that's which is the number two one is empty nest syndrome from very well mind.com. It says
over decades, couples may evolve in different directions, leading to emotional disconnection or
loss of shared interest. This is the most commonly cited reason divorce at any age. But it's
(30:19):
particularly prevalent in long term marriages where partners feel they have fallen out of love.
So it affects about 34% of grade divorces involving marriages of 30 plus years.
So yeah. And the second one is empty nest syndrome. Once the children leave home couples, and this is
from GoFamilyLaw.com. Once children leave home couples often realize their relationship was
(30:41):
centered on parenting, leaving little and common. This transition exposes underlying issues.
And it's a top trigger for separations after 50. And that comes actually that comes from research
from Bowling Green State University says notes this is a key fair factor in doubling grade of
horse rates since 1990. So the next ones are more common amongst any divorce and fidelity,
(31:04):
achieving financial disputes, retirement of lifestyle, retirement lifestyle changes. That's
obviously older. Oh, caregiving strain. People leave because they can't handle taking care of
people in their old engine. That's that's the excellent and then abuse verbal physical or emotional.
Anyway, so those are some things that have to do with great divorce. So I but I still think that
it doesn't change our core argument that you have to be more to some because what is the first one,
(31:27):
growing apart or drifting apart, they're not more to shared interests. How are shared
interest to shared interests? Keep us together. Well, if Jesus is the shared interest, then yes,
that's what's keeping us together. But other than that, what shared interests keep us together.
I don't quilt or knit or make crochet and you do really good at it. And legitimately people
our age, we notice that if they don't intentionally go and find things that are interesting together to
(31:52):
them, then it does start to be that they've separated a little bit further. And we're kind of experiencing
that because yeah, you don't do those kind of maybe home crafting things that would cause me to want
to be at home and work with these, you know, where we found some common interests is when you're
doing something similar, like a woodwork project, whatever, but we're in the same room or we're in
(32:16):
the same vicinity, finding work with our hands, but sort of alongside each other. The thing I've noticed
since we moved here is it could we could have that danger point because you have tended to enjoy
like the music and the the setting of some of the places that are gathering points around here where
(32:36):
it can tire me or I can be a little more of an introvert so I don't find that as fulfilling or whatever.
That's what you mean. So different personalities and stuff. So I think it's harder work maybe at
these stages because when you're younger, you have kids that are in common. You have those natural
things. You're going to whatever might be ball games or for us it was theater productions and stuff
(32:56):
together because our kids are also involved. So we're going to chase those things for us. We have a
musical daughter who we could we could chase some of her things together. We don't have a lot of
that now. So it is going to be something we need to consider. Yeah, it's interesting because you
think about it because as you talk about the musical thing, for example, I could go to a concert
(33:17):
or public gathering anytime anywhere where there's people. I just want to hang out with people and
I don't need a motivator. You had the that we have that in common because of our musical daughter
in the sense that the daughter, the relationship with your child, made you go in those environments
and you found place and point and you might have the other connections there. I don't need the
daughter to have the same experience. Well, for me, so now that's gone. It feels different and it
(33:38):
does feel like we're doing two different things rather than pretty much some of the same kind of
behavior. So I'm left kind of going. Yeah. Why doesn't she want to and you're kind of answering that
question from your right? For me, the combination of we were on the mission field. So we had a natural
push to be out there. That was what I can do when I need to do it. It's not comfortable always. It
(34:00):
doesn't push me to enjoy it. It's just something I know. It's part of my calling. I can push myself
to be there. But the extra added of our daughter was the it made the atmosphere more pleasant and
and another reason to be there. So it was a combination of those things that could
help me. Number one, enjoy it. Number two, be motivated to talk to people because not only did we have
(34:24):
hurt to kind of talk and be fodder for conversation genuinely, genuinely. But then we could move
toward the gospel. So there was a reason that it made it much more, I don't know, inviting maybe.
It was more natural. It made more sense. Yeah, it made sense to you. And so for you and your
(34:48):
personality and what you're wired, some of these things make sense. Me, it's a social thing. I just
were just we're also you're more like you say, I'm like, you've had a day to recover. We've been out
and you're like, I need more than a day sometimes or you know, I need you just sometimes you have to
have that alone time to process the world you've been engaging. I don't I guess I never process
anything. I just think it's like they always say about that. It's with the the explanation of
(35:13):
extrovert versus introvert. It's more tiring to me. It's not it doesn't tire you. Yeah, it doesn't
tire me to be energize you. Yeah, that makes sense. It can tire me. Now it doesn't always. There are some
settings that will give me energy in and what I mean by that is that it gives me if fuels me to need
or want to be and do more of that such as church life worship settings. Some some of that can
(35:37):
encourage me to want to do more, but I am still tired mentally. I get tired quicker from those
environments. So and I don't always interpret it correctly. It makes sense. Sure that it's you know,
it feels physical. It's not necessarily physical. It's more mental, but I don't even know. Anyway,
it makes sense because some of the things that I think oftentimes we find in our own conversations
(36:02):
just when it's the two of us. I think I take things way more at face value and you tend to look at things
a lot more intricately. You're looking. Yeah, I'm very thankful to heavy. Well, that's a negative way
of expressing it. I'm saying it in more of a positive sense in that you you were looking at something
that said to you and you're thinking what are they really saying? What's going on? And I may do that
(36:24):
too, but it's like I'll accept my first answer. Whatever I think it is is the first answer. Okay,
that's probably what it is. And I move on with life right or wrong. I just move on. You're like, well,
here's about six things that could mean. And and it's not that you're it's not a bad not just you're
carrying it to heavy. You're wired to process and to think through things. Yeah. And so even that's
that would be why tears tires me easier. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's exhausting. And I know
(36:48):
that just watching a computer try to think when you nowadays with all the AI systems, you ask
it a really hard question and you say I want you to think deeply about it. It takes longer. You
know, it's still seconds compared to humans, but it can take 10 to 15, 20 seconds. Where's a simple
question? Like, where is this located? Right up. But like we're saying, I think some of
being married or staying married or staying interested in your spouse and trying to love them
(37:13):
is trying to find that middle ground. And especially when we're in another, because now you and I are
in a different completely setting them. We've had for anytime I guess in our marriage. And we have
different circumstances. We have less
reasonings to go toward each other in these settings, I guess. So, so how to be conscious about that is
(37:36):
what I was thinking. I think two things. One, we probably should go back to find our journals, but
before we had kids and see we remember what we like doing together. I know one thing, we used to go
to craft fairs all the time. We don't do that at all anymore. We should probably seek out
that we still have the lingering image of the rim fair, which we like to go to. But as far as
you and I used to remember when we go out in the woods, these wooded places where they have these
craft fairs. I don't know if they do it anymore. But um, and I was thinking we have people right around
(38:01):
us that are retired. They have found different things like we have a one couple that likes to go on
cruises and another couple that likes to do quite a bit of traveling. They do some together and
some separately. Right. Some of that has been true for us since we have or living in the RV. It's
helped for us to be able to go occasionally. Yeah, I was looking to a waterfall destination.
It's going to be well, and I was going to say now that we took this church and we're a little more
(38:25):
set in a spot might be a little more difficult for us. We've got to be a little more intentional
about it. They keep using that word. But it is, but it is right that that marriage itself just like
anything else will get tiring and maybe even lose its flair, its desire. Like you said, the whole
(38:45):
fallout of love thing, which doesn't make sense in my mind because the word love is action. So I
don't know how. Well, that's what I've meant. But attraction. You and I are those kinds of things
obviously with in your older years doesn't place much of well, you went. Hang on a second. I'm still
attracted. I'm still attracted to you. I'm very attracted to her. But it's harder though and we
(39:06):
can't rely on that anymore. So I appreciate that. What I'm saying is that I think ultimately,
first off to the younger ones out there that might be listening. Just because the material looks
sparse, it's not. Number one, don't forget that God is the one who can provide you a mate. That's
right. And if that's the case, put yourself in places where God is most active, that doesn't mean
(39:29):
witnessing evangelism environment like, you know, some sort of nightclub. That means go to a place
where people are seeking God and they're looking for mission work. We were on mission work. We literally
spend a summer missions together and I propose to at the end of the summer missions with us
scared to death. If you went home, I'd never see you again. But at least you know that person has
somewhat the same desires for their lives. If they're able to give up in our instance, it was a
(39:52):
summer or a couple of weeks or something of their lives to commit that. You know somewhat the values
are going to be closer. So don't don't don't wasn't I say don't settle. You know, you don't settle
wait. Even if you wait a little longer, God will come through for you. He did for us. The second
thing I would say for those you would old codgers out there, don't be so simple minded is to think that
(40:13):
you're going to go find someone who's going to sweep you off your feet. You just said it. It's not all about
the you know that's why a lot of times when men remarry after divorce, it's a lot younger person
because that person is you know they're and they're weighing it all on on something that's going to go
away in 10 years or five years and you know the usually those dudes got to have a lot of money to pull
that off. But or at least lie real well. But don't be so shallow. Let God deepen you become
(40:39):
become something more and I'm thankful to you dear or challenging me on the go and constantly to grow
and to be more have more substance to who I am. When I say substance, I'm not meaning I need to be
any statter. I have a lot of not I don't want to be heavier but I don't I don't want to have
there's a word I was looking for like a desert of I don't want there's not lack there because I have
(41:02):
you there and and you and even though I know for spouses sometimes the things that we people might
think are arguments or or heavy disagreements or whatever. When those things challenge me and you
and I we've seen people argue for all the wrong reasons. Here's what I'm trying to say in our as our
kids have grown up and gotten into relationships and families we've seen ugly unhealthy destructive
(41:27):
fighting that is destroys the person the character everything that just that literally word verbally
tear one of their part. But you and I've never fought that way and I'm so grateful for that. I'm so
grateful that your character is never something I have to question when I'm having a when we're having
a difficult conversation and I don't ever feel like you've ever I'm like I joke constantly the
(41:47):
biggest cuss words you've ever used at me is one time you got mad enough call me a creep and it's
stung but it got my well no but it got my attention and it was a good thing because you really didn't
hit my character you just let me know how serious I wasn't paying attention and by the way for the
record this was a long long time ago as far as I know I'm not a creep anymore I can't be a little
creepy. Well legitimately our story is you can struggle and in reality if you don't struggle and
(42:13):
marriage you you may find yourself challenged later to to know why you're married because I think
the struggle is helpful to a large degree it's it's what shapes again we've talked about what shapes
you but it's also what makes you decide what's real and what's right right if you've got the right
(42:34):
partner which I do believe that was a blessing from God that he led us to each other you know
then those kind of struggles are right and good to shape each other when you are able to keep
the right thing at the bottom which is always going to be Jesus and his callings and his truth especially
(42:58):
when you've got children at home I think later on you know you've kind of settled that that's
already there now it's just a matter of keeping it as the focus as the you know fixing our eyes kind
of thing as you go toward life being over eventually that's similar right focus. Life beginning its
(43:19):
new phase okay okay I am the resurrection of the life he believes in me and I'm finishing well
is what we've called it yeah to finish this part of the race we're currently in a particular race
and we're moving on anyway I I continue and I should stop we need to wrap it up lord
I mean tanya and jesus this has been a really great conversation I think so much for it you guys we
look forward to seeing you again next time on ask mom it's end dead I keep on
(43:43):
I keep on I keep on I keep on I keep on
I keep on I keep on I keep on
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(gentle music)
(gentle music)
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(gentle music)
Wish record first. It's important.
(00:03):
Hey, this is Greg and it's time for another episode of Ask and Dad. We're getting better
and better at this part of Atanya UNI. Both aren't you proud of us? I am. I think it's cool.
We even get better at pushing buttons in order or I'm excuse me, of waving at the crowd
(00:24):
so no one is okay to clap because I wouldn't want anyone to think that it was. Yeah, what
I'm gonna say. So how are you doing today? It's been a crazy week.
I'm doing okay. Busy. What do you mean?
I don't know. It's the question you're supposed to ask everybody.
No, it's not. Not when you live together and operate together. That's when you haven't
(00:46):
seen each other for a while. We live together. Oh yeah, we do live together. It does feel
that way sometimes like we're running around crazy. This has been a, but it's been a busy
week so far. Yeah, it's been a busy few weeks. You're right. Not just this week.
But it's still started although it doesn't affect us. It kind of affects our community.
Yeah, it does. It's been, it's been good. The Lord's been good. There's been a lot of good
things happening in our church and our community of faiths. But as usual, we're trying to,
(01:11):
you know, always deal with the questions of life and that's what we want to talk about
about today. Last, last time UNI chatted, we were talking about the force rates and how
an Atlantic article had come out that week on the decline of the force rates in America.
And you asked some good questions. I didn't have any answers to because I was not prepared.
And I got to tell you right now, I am still not greatly prepared, but I'm better prepared
(01:35):
than I was before. But I think that the, like, I think it's funny that you're saying that's
what we talked about. And yet we had just come from a session where a man had talked about
the divorce rates going up in our category of marriage, like past 25 years. Yeah.
So I didn't know about the Atlantic article. So I still have not read that. I've seen a few
(01:56):
clips from it. Yeah. Well, I mean, the big picture from the article, and I haven't read the
little article. I read clips from it. Funny that that's the story of our lives. Here's the
positive sign. And I'm the, here's the negative sign. That's really sad. Anyway, no, it was more
like, here's the thing I did on my own. And here's the thing we did together. Isn't that
kind of how it be? As you said, we went to a thing together, but I told you about the
(02:18):
Atlantic article that I just didn't know the information. I just think it's funny that
you had the positive information. I had the negative from the right. Well, but some
of the questions that came up in that podcast were interesting. You talked about, you were
interested in no more about the divorce rates amongst older people. And so we looked into
that a little bit. And I think we also talked about the, no, I think it's the other way around.
(02:38):
Sorry. I have to counter you. Correct me all day. When you said that the divorce rates
had gone down over in general, I think one of my main questions was, but has marriage
itself gone down? Like literally people just getting married. Because I feel like we've
seen that true for this generation too. A lot of more people not actually signing a marriage
certificate. That's what I'm talking about. So I was thinking that's what we kind of, we
(03:02):
did talk about that. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I posed when I was looking
at that was that question. And you, one of the things that came back in that search was
marriage rates are falling, particularly amongst non-college educated Americans due
to economic instability and challenging dating norms. Like we said, creating a marriage
kids living in their parents' basement. Oh, wait a minute, not kids up to 30 somethings
(03:24):
living in their parents' basement. So see, it plays out like we thought. Yeah, I think
that's true. The call to manhood is it where I like the fault the rest of that sentence
is creating a marriage material shortage. So it's actually literally nobody. If I
we've heard that from a few people, there's no one out there. Who can I marry? Well, I hear
(03:44):
that a lot. And unfortunately, a lot of the women, especially younger women that have
been married. There's a couple of ladies that I know of. One of whom never was married,
but she has a child. But the other one who has a three-year-old girl who just got divorced
was the thing that she was saying was the husband wasn't there. He wasn't, he was concerned
only with his own things. He wasn't concerned about providing for her. He made everything
(04:06):
her fault. Just the list that she was doing, she said it was just becoming more and more
difficult for her. She couldn't even go to church without it being a problem. And so
that's funny because somebody I met in our local watering hole here. I know that our son
has said the same thing from the guy's perspective that he doesn't so far find a lot of the type
(04:30):
of women he'd like to marry. So that's interesting because either there and he's not living in
our basement, thank the Lord. No, it was a shed for a while, but we're doing
for you. He's an apartment now. Well, he's been an apartment on his own for at least
a while and trying to be independent, which I'm proud of him. But I'm saying he's looking
for a specific, maybe character and would like to find someone at least somewhat relatable
(04:55):
to the way he grew up. And anyway, that's difficult. And I agree with him. Because we don't
find even, especially in our ministry right now, we don't find a lot of people who've grown
up in stable, functional homes. Most people are product of divorce. I mean, because literally
the statistics were so bad for a little while there, it affected the church as well a lot.
(05:17):
So a lot of people that we would normally think would be the stable, go, you know, go find
some of these people, they're hard to find. There are some. And now I think it's going
to build back up again because there's a lot more homeschoolers and families that are having
more children. So there's a larger kind of pool of people growing up in some of these homes
(05:42):
that are trying to focus on their home and trying to be, you know, raising children that
are capable of more than just going out to find a career. Because for a while, that's what
it seemed like. The families were so focused on, they have to find a career, not even a
great job or not even a great skill, but some kind of career. So everybody has to go to
(06:02):
college, everybody has to get a degree, everybody has to do this or that. That's kind of
lessening now, I think. I think there's more people now concentrating on some skills and
some practical living things like pulling away from a lecture, you know, so focused on,
like we've even sent a trend recently, we heard people wanting flip phones again. What
(06:25):
I'm saying is kind of withdrawing from some of these things for a less, a more simpler
time kind of thing. I think that those, to some degree, a lot, every generation has, I wish
it was a simpler time. But is that is going back to a more simpler time actually, the resolve
to the question of creating good marriage material or something like that? Well, what I'm
saying is it's a concentration on, like in our country right now, we have the maha movement,
(06:47):
going back to some healthier options and our food supply. That's what I'm trying to
say, these families have noticed some of these trends, the lack of actual good education
in a public setting or the deficits of the things that have been concentrated on in school
settings have been not what's helpful to someone trying to go out in the real world. So
(07:11):
I think people have withdrawn a little because we saw through COVID a lot of deficits in
our kids and what we're actually being taught in the schoolroom, in the classrooms. Parents
kind of woke up, I think, to wait a minute. They're not learning what I thought they were
learning. And so I feel like, socialization has been as good for the kids as they thought
they had been. Yeah, exactly. And the reactions then, I think, have been a little more family
(07:33):
centered, a little more, wow, my kids need to know what I believe. Maybe from our perspective,
what the Bible says, you know, so I don't know exactly how that interprets into the majority
of the population, but you see a little bit more of that little less fear of having more
children. For a while there, I'm not bringing kids into this horrible place or whatever,
(07:57):
but we've seen some that really know we have to rise up. We have to train up some kids
who can lead. Well, one of the things you just brought up was the tendency of many people
not to have an active role in shaping their children. They treat it like kids are somehow
going to naturally shape without guidance. And the truth of the matter is, is that's
like saying, okay, I'll tell you what we're not going to, well, let me put it this way, if you
dam a dam a river, you can get power from it, hydroelectric power, but if you leave it
(08:21):
dam, the river is not that useful. So the water resources and stuff, it's not that it isn't
as useful as it can be. Well, I mean, we can control it and make it move in a direction
that's more beneficial to us or it can be less beneficial to the community society in general.
Maybe my analogy breaks down, but I'm trying. Well, I'm just thinking that we noticed
(08:41):
so much that so many, right there in the, the last couple of decades, we have gone, the
trend has been to put kids in school, kind of ignore it, think that trust that the, trust
the school institution, yeah, and the educational system is going to raise them up and put them
out in the world correctly. And we're noticing it's not doing that, I guess I'm trying to say.
(09:02):
So, so even the trend to homeschool, I know some people are kind of against that, think
that that's kind of withdrawing kids from society and do remember, but I, I have seen less
that, more, almost these agricultural communities where they do get some education, but they,
they have also the concentrations on more practical living and stuff. So anyway, maybe that's
(09:24):
a trend. That's what I'm hoping. On the other hand, that does lend to maybe more harder to
find those same families that connect to that. You know, so if they happen to be in the
same community, that's wonderful. It's not that they have to go out and find them. It's kind
of interesting. I don't know that there is as much a lack of marriage, marrying material
as I, as I think there is a lack of people willing to put themselves in the right environments
(09:48):
to find the marrying material. I mean, granted, and it's like we're, we're serving a small
turnaround church. And one of the things we're doing here is trying to bring young people
back into the church. So bringing our son here and saying, Hey, you're going to meet
someone new. Well, the newest youngest lady in this church might be in her 80s. So available,
lady, I don't know. The youngest ones are married. So, but so the material scam in a small
(10:11):
place, but in larger environments or places where not necessarily it doesn't have to be
a church, but a church does kind of narrow down the playing field to say, Hey, at least
the people that are coming here are committed to something larger than themselves. They may
have committed to Jesus. And therefore, there may be that's a common thread at that point
in time. People who are meeting folks in bars or concert venues or things like that
(10:31):
that are just out in the public sphere online or online, yeah, online dating apps, even
though dating apps supposedly filter some of those things, that's usually not the first
criteria. What's your core moral values? Yeah. Or you can pretend them a lot easier. Yes.
And I think that so the question is, most of these things are looking for a neurotic or
a filet, more of a mixture of, of I'm using that term in the sense of the different kinds
(10:56):
of love, arrows, filet, filet, yeah, that's right. And understanding is not less agape, unless
you settle the agape, the unconditional issue, the unconditional love thing, these other
loves are going to be somewhat perverted or diminished in their, in their ability to
be fully fruitful. A man and a woman can have an attraction to one another, get married
and that can have some fruit and they may even have some grounding and some things that
(11:20):
may let make it last, but as far as giving you a sense of great significance, it's going
to take something deeper than that. Sure. But we're talking about even meeting people,
but that's we're not there yet. Yeah, I started with me. I know I ran off the rail. Sorry.
Because I think, don't settle for anything less is what I'm trying to say. What I like,
I like to understand what this, where even are those kind who would have a good conversation
(11:42):
or would have some of the values that he has and then also maybe a few interests that
he has. So it just seems like there's harder, it's harder to find those pockets of people
to even start a conversation much less, actually want to marry and especially into families
where they aren't quite as the same. Yeah. Some of our other kids haven't weighed that
(12:04):
as heavily, but are kind of coming into realizing that was very a little more important. But I
think we always end up in those situations where you're not quite sure about your in-laws
or whether or not it's, you know, the exact fitting of the virtues that you share. But
a lot of times you can at least narrow that down like you were saying in a church environment,
(12:25):
maybe in a environment that's community based and has a moral foundation, we're hoping
that it would be church-related group, people groups that are sharing those same common values.
But anyway, those are some good places to look, but we don't know. I mean, I mean, I
went really hard for, I didn't start looking for a wife to us on the mission field and I
(12:48):
looked, you know, I wasn't really looking for a wife, but I found one because God was honored,
God honored that and was faithful and responsible. We also know that the church itself has had a hard
time. You know, we know that some churches, especially like in these more backward community
areas, whatever have shrunk. So there's like you said, not as many young people, not as many
(13:09):
of the pockets of age group for marriage. In fact, those, one of the statistics was they're
waiting longer and needing the economic stability. And most people are finding it's harder to
bind land, it's harder to find a job that's going to last a lot, you know, a little longer, harder to
get a place where you feel secure, most, most of what we've heard that the agendas out there are
(13:33):
for us not even to be able to get to that place unless we depend on the government. So a lot of
things like that are probably pertaining to people being able to find these people, you know, the other,
the other marriage partners or whatever. We were talking to a counselor this week about the meat
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of trying to stay together marriage. And I think that's another piece of it. You were talking about
different styles of love. And one of the passages from Ephesians 5, we talked about this week,
is directly to husband and wife. And we know as Christians that the marriage is the picture of
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Jesus and the church. And one thing I wanted to point out when we didn't talk about this
on Tuesday, but that I think is so beautiful in this passage when it's addressing directly men
love your wives, women respect and honor your husbands and you know, love submission.
(14:36):
The chapter, the thing that we forget that marriage really does represent is the sanctification.
And we've talked about how the church, your mantra right now and...
We touched on it, but we didn't talk about it.
Yeah, your mantra right now in sermons has been, Jesus saves us, but the church, church shapes us.
Right. So in marriage, we know that's a sanctification process as well, but chapter 5 verse 27 says,
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he did this, or he made her holy cleansing her with the washing of the word, what Jesus did to the church.
He did this to present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or anything like that.
Yeah, I didn't talk about that at all. I think that is the coolest, I don't know,
phrasing that I've seen. Well, what does it say? One thing it says is it's for his benefit.
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Yeah, but it's, he's, I'm both in, it's like we've always said about salvation. He's the one that draws us,
he's the one that saves us, he's really the one that does it all. We are just
allowing him, we are a partaker in, but he in this marriage, making us holy, cleansing us with a
washing of the word, sorry, does this to present us as holy and blameless and a righteous bride or whatever,
(15:57):
to himself. I just think that's so funny and picturing like a wedding and how if the bridegroom actually
went back and fixed her hair and fixed her up and made sure her dress was beautiful, you know, not,
not at all, letting her see him, but just fixing her all up so that when she came out, she was exactly
what he wanted. I mean, that's what Jesus does for us. He makes us ready and presentable to our bridegroom
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who is himself. I just think that's so cool. Anyway, I don't know if, is your implication in a cross,
in a cross like that, if we will be people who are submitted to Christ, he too will shape us to be ready,
to be received and to be presented holy and blameless to, to each other, so I'm trying to say.
Oh, yeah, I mean, that's what this means is that we are actually submitting to him, but this was
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a, in context, it was to the husbands to love your wives as Christ loves us or the church or his bride
or whatever and gave himself for her, but that part of it is what that did when he gave himself for her,
which is what I would, you know, I would challenge men out there, boys who are not married, whatever.
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What's a way that you can give yourself for this bride that you, number one, want, maybe don't have yet,
maybe don't even know what is, but giving yourself, making yourself a servant so that you can find
that person, but also because in that gesture, in that giving yourself, you're making her, whoever
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she might be, holy, cleansing her with washing the word anyway. It's just cool how Jesus did that,
so that we could be his bride. So he worked really hard to make sure we were his bride and exactly
the bride he needed and wanted. He, it didn't depend on the woman being a particular way or
even I would say probably even look a certain way or, you know, be, that's just a neat analogy to me.
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And I, I think that if more marriages could see that, like you just said, it's, it's God who's making us
presentable before him, but also for each other. You know, it's kind of,
made for perfection. It's kind of interesting you, when you referenced my little mantra of late
church shaving us, I can think of a story in our history recent, within 20 years, of a man who married a
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woman, married her and he was in jail when they got married. And in his own self-esteem and whatnot,
you know, he got out of jail and he got a job and he was doing things well and his wife
was faithful and loving a loyal to him and all that, but, um, but he began to question that maybe he
married her because he was, um, didn't think she was a guard of the jail. She was a guard of the jail. Yeah,
(18:52):
that's without getting into the weeds on the story. But yeah, but the point of matter was he didn't,
she was, she struggled with some things that made him and some other girl was flirting with him and
he was drawn away and he began to question that the reason I bring in the church here in what you're
talking about, I think this applies, is that we moved in on that situation and had a long
man to man to man to man there was four of us. We went in and we sat down with him and we talked
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this out and talked about what marriage was and the commitment that he made and the value of that
and how important it was and, um, and we just held him held his feet to the fire about, did that
valmine anything? I don't care if you're in jail or not, you made this vow to this woman and you're
going to throw your marriage away based upon that. And he decided that we were right. He submitted
to that and he, um, humbled himself before the throne. Humbled for not us the word of God because we
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were presenting the word of God to him, which, and we used Ephesians 5 extensively and she, unfortunately,
passed away with some respiratory issues during COVID, but he loved her to the very end. He was destroyed
when she died and, um, and we're talking probably 10 more years of marriage after that, but, but nonetheless
and she was young and so, you know, if I've read it recently, there's some, he's been able to move
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forward with his life, but, but he experienced what marriage could be because he stayed faithful to that.
He was made ready for her. He was shaped by the church, by him, a Jesus in that process and he grew.
Does that, is that a good analogy? And made it, yeah, well, he made a choice, which I think is really all
avoiding divorce is. It's making a choice. Making a decision. There are difficult decisions and
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there are difficult forgivenesses and there are difficult situations, but it is still really
ultimately comes down to a choice. And we know of a situation right now where the couple is deciding
or choosing other coping mechanisms rather than their own family, their children, their, their marriage,
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the why would you choose these temporary highs, literally, that give you some sort of, you know,
I can make it through this day. Right. And that's tough because Peter tells us, you know, to be vigilant
and alert for your enemy, the devil is speaking around like a roaring lion, lion, search and who he can devour.
He can devour. You could say search which marriage to devour. And if you're constantly coping with
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something that alters your ability to be vigilant and alert, you're going to wind up chasing after
things that are destructive in your in that relationship. But even just if you just backed up a little bit
and looked at this, what am I choosing? I'm choosing this temporary, yeah, throw away feeling for what is
valuable, which is this relationship, this, I mean, children obviously there's a lot involved in that.
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You're passing on to the next generation. What's important, what is, what is of value. I know that people
aren't, wouldn't even say that's what they're choosing, but it is. And they're not, they're not able to
see that. I think that the main temptation of the enemy right now is that is, is temporary,
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false, whatever, however we would put that pleasure for a moment, coping, you know, things that make us
right now feel okay. But then you've got to wake up and deal with that again tomorrow. And you've got
(22:22):
this same person or these same people that are yours to take care of or to destroy, I guess, you know,
what's your choice to make. But anyway, it's right to evaluate. What am I doing? What choices am I making?
What is this, what is the valuable thing here? And can I choose what is right? And like I'm saying,
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if it feels like to me, it ought to be logical, it should be that, but when the enemy wants to destroy
something, he's going to blind us to that anyway. Yeah, I heard one time that if we, if we are dealing with
stress or trouble and realize we have some options, one of them is to change our location, we can move
away, we run away from it, or we can change our situation, somehow our circumstances or
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financials or whatever, or that was to change ourselves. Maybe it was just the two change and most people
choose to change their location. Everything else. Everything else. Everything else.
And I know even as, you know, being married, you and I being married, as long as we have any time we
face a self-change, there's this innate and there's this, it's in urge inside of you to say, oh, I can
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make an excuse. I've got to hold on to this because I like who I am. I don't want to have to work out or
change. Maybe not so much in you. I mean, I'm, it's definitely not easy. I agree. Because you notice
something, you see that it's a choice you're making. It's, it's a decision, but the sadness of it is,
you make it a decision no matter what. Right. You're either choosing to throw something away,
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or to redeem it. And I just wish, I wish young people knew the value of, I wish we could see
into the future even after death and how God sees it. Because there's so many pieces that do just
feel temporary. They feel right now. They feel like they're painful. They feel, you know, like you're
(24:15):
confronting right in front of you, someone who doesn't care about you or see your pain. And yet,
if you could look into the future or even again past death, maybe into your grandchildren's lives,
you'll, you could see the effects. It matters so much. If you could step back from it now, you could
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probably still see some of the effects. I feel like that has helped keep us married a lot of times
because you have to evaluate that. What about worst case scenario? I played this out in my mind.
How many people are affected by this decision? You know, again, like you said, so instead, could I change
something about myself or allow God to change it? Because it's not even within my willhouse to change,
(25:00):
really, I can do the best I can to decide. I'm going to go God's way. I'm going to go my way. But
it's still his to transform me to make me. Yeah. And the thing is, is you and I, we have this conversation.
And whenever we do, there's, you and I've been married for so long and in this for so long. We
almost kind of have a disbelief that anyone could see that where where this has to begin. We're
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addressing the things that are out there. But as we talk about the dearth of available material in
the young people and how they need to and we're answering that so you need to find somewhere that's
where there's people that are grounded and anchored in faith. And my go to my go to my go jerk,
I was going to need jerk. My go jerk reaction to this is to when we first read about the statistics was
(25:50):
well, I had answers because I've been walking that for a lot. But the world has been most of these
kids out there, young kids and older people. Is it, I find it interesting, you can still be in the
midst of good moral counsel or good faith counsel and still not anchor yourself to that. It's like
you're, it's like there's boats in the harbor and summer anchored and summer just floating out in
(26:11):
the middle. First time storm comes. They'd, once in the middle, not only do they float around a more
unmoored, they crash into the anchored boats and create a whole lot of chaos in the harbor.
And so I would, the reason I mentioned that is this whole long married couples business that you
talked about last time. You know, the kids, they get into marriages and if they get properly moored,
they have a better chance or survival. But when you look at long, long married couples, some of
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the statistics that came up were, were elements of that unmooring. The biggest one that it stood out to
me was the baby boomers face a 50% divorce chance versus today's cohorts, which is closer to 40.
And the over it has a lot to do with independent income, women who have jobs on their own and who
(26:57):
have been, they don't have a need. It has to do, they don't have a need to have the spouse for each
other. They're not, they're independent. Once the one thing that ties them together is gone and
oftentimes that's children, more often than not, children. And so as this happens in the situation,
you wind up having, you wind up having these folks going ahead and getting married with they call
(27:19):
gray divorce delayed marriage. Let's see here, cultural shifts. Marriage decline if you're marriage
due to gaps marriage or material already mentioned that. But yeah, so what do you find? We're looking at
our notes here. If anyone wants to know what's happening in the room, we're seeing what we got going
on here. I don't know where you read. Well, the statistics were also being able to find that.
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And like I said in the past couple of decades, it was a lot about going out, getting a career,
having a career path, women were pushed to have a career path. So yeah, after you've been married
quite a while and your children are out of the house, you've got your own life. You don't even need
each other anymore. In that sense, the sad part of it is women probably can survive somewhat there.
(28:06):
But I've heard that men really struggle so much more to be on their own or to be left by a spouse
who doesn't desire to be with them. Men, I think, have an unwritten attachment that is,
especially if they have a faith base. That's harder, maybe to perceive, harder to see from the outside,
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but it's deeper on the inside than even the women. And I wonder about that. I wonder if the,
because like I've even seen in my own family, the men have kind of softened in their age, realizing
they really do need the wife. They, a lot more, it's a lot more visible at the older they get. Whereas
(28:48):
women have tended to be independent anyway. We have had to run the home. We've had to be. Yeah,
we've had to come up with and a lot of women out there have had really great jobs. So they've come
up with their own income. And like you said, there's really not a, for lack of a good word,
codependency. But it's a good thing when we're codependent in that way. We are dependent on our
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relationship needing to be there, not in a, in a negative way, but in a good way. We've, we've come to
rely on each other, whatever. So I'm just saying it does seem like a, women have kind of been
taught in our culture to keep that separation just in case kind of. Well, here's it, you know, I,
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I, I quickly googled it while you were talking. And here's the, here's the leading reasons for
grade of war, space on recent statistics, 2025, amongst couples that are 50 and older. So this,
if you're listening to us and you're younger than 50, you got a few years to figure this out. But
my wife and I desperately need to read this together. And it's like, marriages past 25 years.
Right, right. Has marriages past 25 years. And this is statistically come from US centrist, pure,
(29:57):
pure, pure, respieu research. And some other ones. But the first one that's listed, the leading one
is growing apart or drifting apart. And this is going to deal with that empty nest business.
It's that's which is the number two one is empty nest syndrome from very well mind.com. It says
over decades, couples may evolve in different directions, leading to emotional disconnection or
loss of shared interest. This is the most commonly cited reason divorce at any age. But it's
(30:19):
particularly prevalent in long term marriages where partners feel they have fallen out of love.
So it affects about 34% of grade divorces involving marriages of 30 plus years.
So yeah. And the second one is empty nest syndrome. Once the children leave home couples, and this is
from GoFamilyLaw.com. Once children leave home couples often realize their relationship was
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centered on parenting, leaving little and common. This transition exposes underlying issues.
And it's a top trigger for separations after 50. And that comes actually that comes from research
from Bowling Green State University says notes this is a key fair factor in doubling grade of
horse rates since 1990. So the next ones are more common amongst any divorce and fidelity,
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achieving financial disputes, retirement of lifestyle, retirement lifestyle changes. That's
obviously older. Oh, caregiving strain. People leave because they can't handle taking care of
people in their old engine. That's that's the excellent and then abuse verbal physical or emotional.
Anyway, so those are some things that have to do with great divorce. So I but I still think that
it doesn't change our core argument that you have to be more to some because what is the first one,
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growing apart or drifting apart, they're not more to shared interests. How are shared
interest to shared interests? Keep us together. Well, if Jesus is the shared interest, then yes,
that's what's keeping us together. But other than that, what shared interests keep us together.
I don't quilt or knit or make crochet and you do really good at it. And legitimately people
our age, we notice that if they don't intentionally go and find things that are interesting together to
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them, then it does start to be that they've separated a little bit further. And we're kind of experiencing
that because yeah, you don't do those kind of maybe home crafting things that would cause me to want
to be at home and work with these, you know, where we found some common interests is when you're
doing something similar, like a woodwork project, whatever, but we're in the same room or we're in
(32:16):
the same vicinity, finding work with our hands, but sort of alongside each other. The thing I've noticed
since we moved here is it could we could have that danger point because you have tended to enjoy
like the music and the the setting of some of the places that are gathering points around here where
(32:36):
it can tire me or I can be a little more of an introvert so I don't find that as fulfilling or whatever.
That's what you mean. So different personalities and stuff. So I think it's harder work maybe at
these stages because when you're younger, you have kids that are in common. You have those natural
things. You're going to whatever might be ball games or for us it was theater productions and stuff
(32:56):
together because our kids are also involved. So we're going to chase those things for us. We have a
musical daughter who we could we could chase some of her things together. We don't have a lot of
that now. So it is going to be something we need to consider. Yeah, it's interesting because you
think about it because as you talk about the musical thing, for example, I could go to a concert
(33:17):
or public gathering anytime anywhere where there's people. I just want to hang out with people and
I don't need a motivator. You had the that we have that in common because of our musical daughter
in the sense that the daughter, the relationship with your child, made you go in those environments
and you found place and point and you might have the other connections there. I don't need the
daughter to have the same experience. Well, for me, so now that's gone. It feels different and it
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does feel like we're doing two different things rather than pretty much some of the same kind of
behavior. So I'm left kind of going. Yeah. Why doesn't she want to and you're kind of answering that
question from your right? For me, the combination of we were on the mission field. So we had a natural
push to be out there. That was what I can do when I need to do it. It's not comfortable always. It
(34:00):
doesn't push me to enjoy it. It's just something I know. It's part of my calling. I can push myself
to be there. But the extra added of our daughter was the it made the atmosphere more pleasant and
and another reason to be there. So it was a combination of those things that could
help me. Number one, enjoy it. Number two, be motivated to talk to people because not only did we have
(34:24):
hurt to kind of talk and be fodder for conversation genuinely, genuinely. But then we could move
toward the gospel. So there was a reason that it made it much more, I don't know, inviting maybe.
It was more natural. It made more sense. Yeah, it made sense to you. And so for you and your
(34:48):
personality and what you're wired, some of these things make sense. Me, it's a social thing. I just
were just we're also you're more like you say, I'm like, you've had a day to recover. We've been out
and you're like, I need more than a day sometimes or you know, I need you just sometimes you have to
have that alone time to process the world you've been engaging. I don't I guess I never process
anything. I just think it's like they always say about that. It's with the the explanation of
(35:13):
extrovert versus introvert. It's more tiring to me. It's not it doesn't tire you. Yeah, it doesn't
tire me to be energize you. Yeah, that makes sense. It can tire me. Now it doesn't always. There are some
settings that will give me energy in and what I mean by that is that it gives me if fuels me to need
or want to be and do more of that such as church life worship settings. Some some of that can
(35:37):
encourage me to want to do more, but I am still tired mentally. I get tired quicker from those
environments. So and I don't always interpret it correctly. It makes sense. Sure that it's you know,
it feels physical. It's not necessarily physical. It's more mental, but I don't even know. Anyway,
it makes sense because some of the things that I think oftentimes we find in our own conversations
(36:02):
just when it's the two of us. I think I take things way more at face value and you tend to look at things
a lot more intricately. You're looking. Yeah, I'm very thankful to heavy. Well, that's a negative way
of expressing it. I'm saying it in more of a positive sense in that you you were looking at something
that said to you and you're thinking what are they really saying? What's going on? And I may do that
(36:24):
too, but it's like I'll accept my first answer. Whatever I think it is is the first answer. Okay,
that's probably what it is. And I move on with life right or wrong. I just move on. You're like, well,
here's about six things that could mean. And and it's not that you're it's not a bad not just you're
carrying it to heavy. You're wired to process and to think through things. Yeah. And so even that's
that would be why tears tires me easier. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's exhausting. And I know
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that just watching a computer try to think when you nowadays with all the AI systems, you ask
it a really hard question and you say I want you to think deeply about it. It takes longer. You
know, it's still seconds compared to humans, but it can take 10 to 15, 20 seconds. Where's a simple
question? Like, where is this located? Right up. But like we're saying, I think some of
being married or staying married or staying interested in your spouse and trying to love them
(37:13):
is trying to find that middle ground. And especially when we're in another, because now you and I are
in a different completely setting them. We've had for anytime I guess in our marriage. And we have
different circumstances. We have less
reasonings to go toward each other in these settings, I guess. So, so how to be conscious about that is
(37:36):
what I was thinking. I think two things. One, we probably should go back to find our journals, but
before we had kids and see we remember what we like doing together. I know one thing, we used to go
to craft fairs all the time. We don't do that at all anymore. We should probably seek out
that we still have the lingering image of the rim fair, which we like to go to. But as far as
you and I used to remember when we go out in the woods, these wooded places where they have these
craft fairs. I don't know if they do it anymore. But um, and I was thinking we have people right around
(38:01):
us that are retired. They have found different things like we have a one couple that likes to go on
cruises and another couple that likes to do quite a bit of traveling. They do some together and
some separately. Right. Some of that has been true for us since we have or living in the RV. It's
helped for us to be able to go occasionally. Yeah, I was looking to a waterfall destination.
It's going to be well, and I was going to say now that we took this church and we're a little more
(38:25):
set in a spot might be a little more difficult for us. We've got to be a little more intentional
about it. They keep using that word. But it is, but it is right that that marriage itself just like
anything else will get tiring and maybe even lose its flair, its desire. Like you said, the whole
(38:45):
fallout of love thing, which doesn't make sense in my mind because the word love is action. So I
don't know how. Well, that's what I've meant. But attraction. You and I are those kinds of things
obviously with in your older years doesn't place much of well, you went. Hang on a second. I'm still
attracted. I'm still attracted to you. I'm very attracted to her. But it's harder though and we
(39:06):
can't rely on that anymore. So I appreciate that. What I'm saying is that I think ultimately,
first off to the younger ones out there that might be listening. Just because the material looks
sparse, it's not. Number one, don't forget that God is the one who can provide you a mate. That's
right. And if that's the case, put yourself in places where God is most active, that doesn't mean
(39:29):
witnessing evangelism environment like, you know, some sort of nightclub. That means go to a place
where people are seeking God and they're looking for mission work. We were on mission work. We literally
spend a summer missions together and I propose to at the end of the summer missions with us
scared to death. If you went home, I'd never see you again. But at least you know that person has
somewhat the same desires for their lives. If they're able to give up in our instance, it was a
(39:52):
summer or a couple of weeks or something of their lives to commit that. You know somewhat the values
are going to be closer. So don't don't don't wasn't I say don't settle. You know, you don't settle
wait. Even if you wait a little longer, God will come through for you. He did for us. The second
thing I would say for those you would old codgers out there, don't be so simple minded is to think that
(40:13):
you're going to go find someone who's going to sweep you off your feet. You just said it. It's not all about
the you know that's why a lot of times when men remarry after divorce, it's a lot younger person
because that person is you know they're and they're weighing it all on on something that's going to go
away in 10 years or five years and you know the usually those dudes got to have a lot of money to pull
that off. But or at least lie real well. But don't be so shallow. Let God deepen you become
(40:39):
become something more and I'm thankful to you dear or challenging me on the go and constantly to grow
and to be more have more substance to who I am. When I say substance, I'm not meaning I need to be
any statter. I have a lot of not I don't want to be heavier but I don't I don't want to have
there's a word I was looking for like a desert of I don't want there's not lack there because I have
(41:02):
you there and and you and even though I know for spouses sometimes the things that we people might
think are arguments or or heavy disagreements or whatever. When those things challenge me and you
and I we've seen people argue for all the wrong reasons. Here's what I'm trying to say in our as our
kids have grown up and gotten into relationships and families we've seen ugly unhealthy destructive
(41:27):
fighting that is destroys the person the character everything that just that literally word verbally
tear one of their part. But you and I've never fought that way and I'm so grateful for that. I'm so
grateful that your character is never something I have to question when I'm having a when we're having
a difficult conversation and I don't ever feel like you've ever I'm like I joke constantly the
(41:47):
biggest cuss words you've ever used at me is one time you got mad enough call me a creep and it's
stung but it got my well no but it got my attention and it was a good thing because you really didn't
hit my character you just let me know how serious I wasn't paying attention and by the way for the
record this was a long long time ago as far as I know I'm not a creep anymore I can't be a little
creepy. Well legitimately our story is you can struggle and in reality if you don't struggle and
(42:13):
marriage you you may find yourself challenged later to to know why you're married because I think
the struggle is helpful to a large degree it's it's what shapes again we've talked about what shapes
you but it's also what makes you decide what's real and what's right right if you've got the right
(42:34):
partner which I do believe that was a blessing from God that he led us to each other you know
then those kind of struggles are right and good to shape each other when you are able to keep
the right thing at the bottom which is always going to be Jesus and his callings and his truth especially
(42:58):
when you've got children at home I think later on you know you've kind of settled that that's
already there now it's just a matter of keeping it as the focus as the you know fixing our eyes kind
of thing as you go toward life being over eventually that's similar right focus. Life beginning its
(43:19):
new phase okay okay I am the resurrection of the life he believes in me and I'm finishing well
is what we've called it yeah to finish this part of the race we're currently in a particular race
and we're moving on anyway I I continue and I should stop we need to wrap it up lord
I mean tanya and jesus this has been a really great conversation I think so much for it you guys we
look forward to seeing you again next time on ask mom it's end dead I keep on
(43:43):
I keep on I keep on I keep on I keep on
I keep on I keep on I keep on
(44:13):
(gentle music)
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