February 19, 2025 • 39 mins
In this heartwarming episode of the Love Like Crazy Podcast, hosts Jay and Stacey Coleman welcome the amazing Karen Ehman, author of numerous books, including the New York Times bestseller Keep It Shut and Keep Showing Up: How to Stay Crazy in Love When Your Love Drives You Crazy.
Karen shares personal stories from her 37-year marriage, insightful advice on navigating conflict, and practical tips for keeping your marriage thriving in today’s world.
Karen discusses the beauty and challenges of opposites in marriage, managing conflict rooted in emotional baggage, unmet expectations, and untrue perceptions. She also reveals how finding a shared ministry can spark a deeper connection with your spouse.
Together, Jay, Stacey, and Karen explore the purpose of marriage as a tool for personal and spiritual growth, while sharing relatable anecdotes and encouragement for couples at every stage.
Whether you’re newlyweds or celebrating decades together, this episode is packed with wisdom, humor, and hope to help you build a love that lasts. Tune in for a powerful conversation that will inspire you to keep showing up in your marriage every single day.
Find Karen’s books and connect with her on Instagram or at KarenEhman.com for more inspiration and resources!
Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share the Love Like Crazy Podcast to help us continue strengthening marriages and families.
Let’s continue building stronger marriages and families—together.
Whether you're a young family seeking encouragement or simply love uplifting stories of faith and family, this episode offers heartfelt wisdom, humor, and inspiration.
Don’t forget to:
Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with future topic suggestions
Share this episode with friends or anyone facing a tough season
Join us next time as Jay and Stacey for more insightful and family based content.
As always, we’re Jay and Stacey, and this is Love Like Crazy.
Podcast Produced by Hi Hello Labs
Website: hihellolabs.com
Karen shares personal stories from her 37-year marriage, insightful advice on navigating conflict, and practical tips for keeping your marriage thriving in today’s world.
Karen discusses the beauty and challenges of opposites in marriage, managing conflict rooted in emotional baggage, unmet expectations, and untrue perceptions. She also reveals how finding a shared ministry can spark a deeper connection with your spouse.
Together, Jay, Stacey, and Karen explore the purpose of marriage as a tool for personal and spiritual growth, while sharing relatable anecdotes and encouragement for couples at every stage.
Whether you’re newlyweds or celebrating decades together, this episode is packed with wisdom, humor, and hope to help you build a love that lasts. Tune in for a powerful conversation that will inspire you to keep showing up in your marriage every single day.
Find Karen’s books and connect with her on Instagram or at KarenEhman.com for more inspiration and resources!
Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share the Love Like Crazy Podcast to help us continue strengthening marriages and families.
Let’s continue building stronger marriages and families—together.
Whether you're a young family seeking encouragement or simply love uplifting stories of faith and family, this episode offers heartfelt wisdom, humor, and inspiration.
Don’t forget to:
Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with future topic suggestions
Share this episode with friends or anyone facing a tough season
Join us next time as Jay and Stacey for more insightful and family based content.
As always, we’re Jay and Stacey, and this is Love Like Crazy.
Podcast Produced by Hi Hello Labs
Website: hihellolabs.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hey everyone, and welcome to this episode of Love Like Crazy.
We're your hosts, Jay and Stacy Coleman. Thank you so
much for joining in. We have such a special treat
for you today. We are going to talk with Karen Emon,
who is the author of fourteen books, including the New
York bestseller Keep It Shut. She is also a speaker
(00:44):
for Proverbs thirty one Ministries, and she has written for
Encouragement for Today also that reaches like four million women daily.
And she's the mother of three adult children who are
also now married, living in Michigan with her husband, Todd,
and we are so excited to welcome her to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, before we jump into the show, I do want
to take a moment and thank all of our listeners
for being a part of this podcast. If you're enjoying this,
make sure that you like, you subscribe, you share, you
help us get the word. O't invite all your friends
to be a part of this as we're all about
strengthening marriages and strengthening families and I'm excited about this
episode today. I know that you and Karen have known
(01:26):
each other for some time. You've read all of her
books and of the great Karen, I appreciate you speaking
into my wife's life and helping her in so many regards.
It's great to have you with us today. Thank you
for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Thank you, James. Jaceam happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yes, well, Karen, you know a few years back you
were able to come to our church speak to our
Journey Girls, which is our women's ministry, and we just
had such a wonderful time. We had already done quite
a few of your Bible studies and have done more since,
and we just love you know, we love your studies.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
We loved having you at our church.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
And and then one of the ways that I described
you to our women was I said, you know, I
had met you in person at the She Speaks conference,
and I said, you just want to like sit down
and you know, bake cookies with Karen, because she's just
like it's like you just want to, like, you know,
it's such a cozy, warm feeling to to talk with
(02:27):
you and and be around you.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yes, I want you bake cookies.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yes, she does tell us about that one the.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Ribbon at the County Fair for maker Wow.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Cookie.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah. I love following you on social media and and
seeing all of your your cooking tips. We joke on
on on this podcast that cooking is not my favorite
thing to do unless it's like a really simple recipe.
So I truly admire you and and your award winning
baking and hell that you do that is wonderful. So
(03:03):
today we wanted to talk to you about one of
the books that you've written, because you've written many books,
but this one in particular is on marriage, and it's
called keep Showing Up. And I love the and I'm
going to for those on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
I'm going to show you the book.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
The subtitle says how to stay crazy and love when
your love drives you crazy, And so that is a
really interesting title of this book. So tell us a
little bit of why you wrote it and why that title.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well, I wrote it because actually that statement is totally
the truth about my marriage. My husband and I often
joke that a dating site would never have matched us
up because we are so polar opposites and having somebody
that's opposite is kind of cute at the beginning. Those
things that endear you to them when you're dating are
the things that later drive you up the wall. And
(04:03):
we just do not at all attack life in the
same way, you know, he Zig's Isaad. We didn't agree
a lot on how to parent our kids, to how
to hang the toilet paper on the toilet paper well,
I mean just everything. We're so opposite. But we both
very much loved the Lord, very much wanted to be
in ministry, and so that spark of wanting to serve
(04:25):
God together is what drew us together and what helped
us to stay together. We've been married now thirty seven years,
but it's never ever been a walk in the park.
It is constantly having to die to yourself, having to
adapt to this person that is just so polar opposite.
And you can let those things drive you crazy, or
you can let them drive you to your knees and
(04:47):
make you more like Christ.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yes, I know for us when we first got married
it was I don't know if i'd say we're complete opposites,
but there's a lot of things about us that that
flow in that direction. The one thing that aggravated me
the most was toothpaste. She is a mangler with the
tube of toothpaste and I'm a roller from the bottom,
(05:09):
and we find it so you do it the right
way exactly. I'm normal. I mean, she looks like she
takes the tube of toothpaste and rolls over with the car.
And so we saw that we just each got our
own tube of toothpaste. Now that is how easy fix,
easy fix.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, So there's just some things you just have to
work out, you know, come up with a creative solution,
for sure. So there's a story in the in the
beginning of this book that you talk about when you
and your husband were newlyweds. Can you tell us a
little bit about that story of your early days of marriage.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yes. So my husband came from a family that was
still intact when his parents passed away. They'd been married
over fifty years. I came from a home that split
apart because of my father's affairs and him deciding to
divorce my mom. He was an alcoholic as well, and
abusive to all of us. However, I always have to say,
(06:08):
but the last twenty years of his life he came
back to Lord and was a godly man and reconciled
with all the people that he'd hurt. So it has
a good ending to the story. But growing up, I
just didn't have a good model of what marriage was.
So I met this guy at college. I wanted out
of the home that I was raised in because of
the emptiness that was there, because my mom had to
(06:32):
work a lot to provide for us, because my dad
often with how child support, and I just wanted out.
And I saw this guy, and I thought he was
my you know, Prince Charming. This man is my plan,
and we're going to go forward and we're going to
have a happy marriage and everything is just going to
be a walk in the park. And that just didn't happen.
We attack life so differently. We would fight over the
(06:56):
silliest things, and I remember just sitting on the floor
one day just crying and thinking, what kind of mess
have I gotten myself into? Maybe I should have listened
to the pastor that did our premial counseling. He didn't
tell us not to get married. He knew we both
loved the Lord, and he loved both of us and
was excited we were getting married. But he had us
(07:17):
to do a battery of all sorts of personality tests
that were around back then, and the ones that we
took made us come out on whatever kind of evaluation
scale they have that we had less than a five
percent chance of staying marriage married based on my personality type.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Would you say five percent?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Less than five percent? He said, less than five percent
of the people with your two personality specific ones. Not
just like in general you're an extrovert. In general, you're
an introvert, but your specific patterns, your specific graph, but
they stay together less than five percent. But of course
we're going to beat the five percent. But I just
(07:57):
had a really hard time because I think I thought,
because I saw so much fighting and violence in my home,
that a good marriage never had any conflict at all.
And my husband's very laid back and doesn't like conflict.
I grew up thinking conflict was normal. And so luckily
the pastor's wife, who was married to the man that
(08:20):
did our premial counseling from my home church, she took
me aside and she said, you know, Karen, you're creating
conflict where none exists, just because it feels familiar to
you to have conflict in the home and you're not
used to being married to this reserve, laid back cucumber
of a guy. You know, he just was as cool
as a cucumber. Nothing ruffled his feathers. He never wanted
(08:43):
to fight about anything.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Did that aggravate you that he didn't want to fight
about anything.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
It did. But what aggramraated me the most is, you know,
I said, his parents were married over fifty years, but
they very much had the relationship where the woman was
in charge and the man just took the order and
did what she said. So he never saw a man
make a decision. So he was extremely laid back, indecisive.
And you know, as we were saying those things that
(09:10):
attracted you to your spouse in the first place, I
love that my husband was cool and calm and laid
back and easygoing and agreeable. But then after we'd been
married a few just weeks, I thought, he won't even
make a decision. He can't make a decision. He just
sits there and says, I don't know, what do you think.
He just didn't want to make any decisions. And he
loved because he's laid back and kind of introverted. He
(09:34):
loved that I could talk. He said, you just make
everybody feel comfortable. You talk to everybody, from the bad
boy at the grocery store to the president of the
Christian coality. I love how you can talk. But about
three days into our honeymoon, he thought, is she ever
going to.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Stop talking about.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
He has told me that if I pass away before
he does, he's already decided what he's going to put
on my team. Stone.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Oh my goodness, can't wait to hear this.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
A period I'm talking funny says, you have no periods
in your There's like a comma or a semicolon, but
there's always more to come. A period it is finished.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Well, let me ask you this. Did you the fact
that he wouldn't make a decision or uh, you know,
just kind of lending that. Did that? Did you find
that frustrating in the sense of, hey, I want this
guy to lead, because you know, a lot what we
talk about a lot within the churches, we talk about
men leading their family, leading spiritscy and all these types
of things, and I've always told our guys, your wife
(10:42):
wants you to lead your family. In that situation, did
you find that, I'm going to use two words, or
did you find it like frustrating or maybe even exhausting
that that he.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Would not It was exasperating, Okay, it was eating because
even though I'm pretty decisive and pretty confident in making decisions,
not all the time, but for the most part, I
am I know what I want, I know how to
get it. I didn't want that to be that way
in our marriage. I wanted him to lead. I wanted
(11:14):
him to make the decisions and to be confident. But
he was so afraid that he would make the wrong
one that he was just like you know, analysis paralysis, right.
He would overanalyze everything and again the opposite thing, driving
us crazy. It's like, you know, he would say, ready aim,
(11:37):
Wait a minute, I got to aim? Am I aiming?
I'm trying to aim? And I'm like, just fire already,
and you would tease me and say, but you don't
do ready aim fire? You go? You know, ready fire? Wait?
Was I supposed to aim?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You know?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
So it just it bothered me. I wanted the decisions
to made be made, but I wanted him to make them.
I wanted him to make them the way I would,
and he was so afraid that he wouldn't make them
the way that I would, that he just didn't make
them at all. And so even if it was something
super simple like I would say, hey, your mom called
today and she wants you to call her back and
(12:14):
let her know if we're gonna go there for the
fourth of July or not. And I really don't care.
I'm find anyway, I'm fine staying home. I'm fine going there.
He would like overanalyze it for two days, like should
we go or shouldn't we go? Is I'm going to
be mad if we don't go? But oh gee, maybe
Kit my nickname is Kit. Maybe Kit really wants to
stay home, you know, and maybe that would be better.
You know. He would agonize over whether we're going, and
(12:36):
I'm like, flip a coin, I really don't care. But
he just couldn't bring himself to you know, purchase things.
He would over you know, analyze. I remember one time
he was going to buy a bicycle. It took him
all summer long to decide which pike between these two
because he was so afraid one was gonna have better
gears or better breaks than the other one. He's much
(12:57):
better now, He's gotten more confident over time. But I
really do think a lot of it, you know, we
a lot of why we do what we do is
because of how we were raised. Not you known critical
it all, but he did see that in his home.
The husband of made decisions.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well, his personality probably lent to that. But he what
was modeled for him is what he followed exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
And here you are growing up in this home where
it wasn't as settled and as stable, and you were
looking for that, you know, you were looking for those
decisions to be made and to be led, you know,
in that way. And so I'm assured it was very
difficult and exhausting for you for sure.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Well, I know that a lot of times you talked
about growing up in a household where there was conflict,
and you know, a lot of times people, you know,
conflict's unavoidable. It's one of these things that just kind
of happened. You put two people in an environment where
they're together all the time, there's going to be conflict.
What are some of the greatest areas that you see
in marriage where maybe people tend to have conflict, and
(14:03):
what are some of the ways they can work through
it and even as conflict a good thing.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, you know, I think often when you hear about
marriage and conflict in marriage, people will say, oh, it's finances,
or it's you know, sex, or it's raising the kids.
But we really felt like all conflict in our marriage
boiled down to one of three things, and those three
things are emotional baggage from our past, which we were
(14:31):
kind of talking about already, also unmet expectations and untrue perceptions.
And let me just give you an example of all
of them. Like for the emotional baggage, you know, I
remember one day when I thought Todd would like I
asked him if he knew about something, and he said
he didn't, but I thought he did, and I said, oh,
(14:53):
come on, quit playing dumb with me. I didn't think
anything of it. I just that's a phrase that they
used in my house growing up, you know. And I'm like, oh,
what done with me? And then I noticed he was
acting different the rest of the day, like a little
aloof a little bit, like he was upset or offended
or whatever. And I said, what's going on? Are you
mad at me about something? And he said, well, I
just really don't appreciate being called dumb. He has dyslexia.
(15:14):
He struggled through school. He did feel dumb. He remembers
being in fifth grade and having to walk the Hall
of Shame down to the third grade room for reading
class because he wasn't up to reading level. And he's
always been very sensitive that some emotional baggage he came into,
you know, brought into our marriage that he doesn't like
it if he feels called out, like if I correct him,
if he pronounces something wrong. He doesn't like that. Well,
(15:37):
I you know, I didn't know that was his emotional baggage.
He's sitting there with his suitcases. Baggage is closed. I
don't know what's in it. And I just said a
phrase that I always say, Hey, don't play.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Dumb with me.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
But because of that emotional baggage, you know, we had
conflict over. For example, or an example of an unmat
expectation is you know, when I grew up, even though
my father was not in the home, he still owned
the house that we lived in, so he took care
of it. And my dad can fix anything, well, he
could fix anything. He passed away recently, but he could
(16:09):
fix anything. And my older brother could fix anything. And
so I had this expectation that when we got married
and the faucet started to drip, that my husband would
fix it.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
And guess what, when.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
We were married, about three months the foss started to
drip and I said, are you going to fix that?
And he said, well, uh, who do I call? And
I'm like, call, you go down to the hardware store
and you get a washer. Oh, just let me do it.
And I just did it myself because I had this
expectation that he was going to know how to fix
things and he didn't. And then the untrue perceptions that
(16:42):
comes in a lot when we assign a motive that
is not there when it comes to our spouses their
behavior or you know, some action that they take. For example,
I remember one time asking my husband to bring home
(17:03):
some creamer. I was out of half and half and
I wanted to bring some home, some creamer. So he
brought it home. He sat it on the counter and
I was highly offended because he brought home fat free creamer.
So I had this untrue perception that he thought, I
wish you were a little more fat free too. No,
or one time I remember being in the grocery store
(17:23):
and we ran into somebody that my husband works with.
He makes cadillacs at the General Motors plant, and there's
somebody that was on his line on on the floor
and the line that he is in, and we ran
into this person at the grocery store and he talked
to him, chatted, and I stood there and he never
said a word about me, never introduced me, and I thought, oh,
he wishes I were a little more fat free and
(17:44):
he's embarrassed to introduce me to this or this homeworker. Well,
that was a very untrue perception because the reality was
my husband has a really hard time I'm remembering names.
He couldn't remember the guy's name, and he was so
embarrassed to say, hey, here's this is my wife, you know, kit,
And here is what was your name? Again, So he
(18:08):
just chose not to introduce me at all.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
But just like once you get so far into conversation,
you're kind of locked in, like this guy knows my name, so.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
And I just you know, I assigned that motive there
that that wasn't there. It was an un perception. Wasn't
that he was embarrassed of me? He was embarrassed that
he didn't remember the guy's name.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, So so many different aspects to to learning how
to get along with one another. And one of the
one of the things that you said in your book,
which is something that my husband says often tell her
about the phrase.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
That yeah, I always say that whenever I do pre
medal counseling I tell people, hey, opposites attract, and then
after you get married, opposites attack. Just because you said
it a few minutes ago. The things that are so
cute when you first get married are not cute whenever
you get down the road. And the next thing you
know is World War three in the house.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
So and this consistent thing of having to learn, you know,
as you get married, then finding out okay, so we
do come into the marriage with all this baggage. You know,
we have different perceptions and just it ends up being
misunderstandings towards each other, which causes that conflict.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I do want to know one thing you said that
when the sink started dripping, you were like, I'll just
fix it myself. Did you fix the sink?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I did?
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Okay, go girl, you go, girl, Stacy.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
She's calling I would be calling the plumber or whoever.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
She's like, we got some good friends that are plumbers.
I'll call them for sure. Well, let's talk a little
bit about modern day marriage. You know, it's kind of
like we're at the place where things have changed a lot.
You guys have been married. I think you said thirty
seven years. We've been married thirty two years. There's a
lot of factors that are actually against the modern day couple,
and a lot of it's based on social media. We
(20:04):
recently were talking about that in one of our episodes,
about the expectations the young moms, young couples have because
of what they see on social media is the perfect,
you know, depiction of what marriage should be. And there's
even this thing that you know, mom's shaming and all
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
There.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
There's a lot of stuff going on with social media
right now that we did not face when we were
first married. I mean, you've always got things you look
at other couples and you're like, why can't our marriage
be like theirs? But it's ramped up to a whole
other level now because of social media, because of what
our young couples are facing. Can you speak to that
a little bit and kind of talk about some of
(20:41):
the stuff that young couples are facing in these days.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Yeah, not only is.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Social media hard, but I think just in general, society
used to encourage marriage and encourage people to stay together
and hang in there for the long haul, and now,
you know, we make so light of it. Divorce is
rampant that there aren't legitimate biblical reasons for divorce. They're
not saying that at all, but people know. I mean
they joke about it. I actually saw on Pinterest once
(21:09):
where there was a pin for how to throw a
divorce party, and they played games like trash the wedding dress,
and I mean it was just it was awful. But
I think society doesn't encourage us to stay married like
it used to. And then we see this factor of
social media. We're sitting down eating leftovers with our spouse
(21:31):
after we've just had a domestic dispute, you know, and
gotten an argument about something, some kind of conflict came up,
and we're scrolling through our phone and all of a sudden,
we see somebody that we know, you know, whether it's
a friend or a coworker or whoever. And they're out
to dinner at a very fancy restaurant looking like they're
all romantic, and the wife strategically has you know, her
(21:54):
hand in the shot with her upgraded diamond ring. He
just got her. And you're sitting there eating leftovers, fuman man,
and you think, wow, it seems like they have a
better marriage, or maybe they've built a new house, and
you are looking at your house that desperately needs to
be modeled and remodeled, and you think, wow, it seems
like they have the perfect house and the perfect marriage,
and now here comes their kids. They're posting a picture
(22:19):
of their child getting student of the month at the
middle school. And about that time, your phone rings and
it's your middle school calling to let you know that
your son sits busted in the vice principal's office for
a joke involving a substitute teacher in firecrackers that the
principal didn't think was funny. Not that that's ever happened
to anyone I know anyhow, you know, it seems like
(22:40):
everyone has a better marriage. It seems like their house
is bigger, It seems like they're romance or romantic. I
call it that we're coming apart of the scenes. And
I don't mean s a MS, I mean see MS
because it seems like everyone else has it better than us.
But we have to remember that people are not posting
the reality of what's happening behind therefore, whiles they're posting
(23:02):
the best. And how many of us can name someone
who we thought, from looking at social media had the
perfect marriage, even the perfect Christian marriage. And all of
a sudden, they're gonna find out one of the spouses
had a double life, they had an affair on the side,
or they just decided I never really loved you and
(23:24):
I'm gonna, you know, call it quits. And all of
a sudden, that perfect picture that was depicted on social
media cracks of heart. But we don't remember that. And
the heat of the moment when we're eating those leftovers
and we're mad at our spouse and we see that
other went out with their romance going on, we just
get jealous.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
We get jealous, that deep seat of comparison, you know,
wanting what everybody else has, or you know, what the
Joneses have. You know. Yeah, we talk about that a lot,
about the you know, social influencers. There are just different
people in general, post the highlight reels, and it's not
really reality. It's not really that the expectations that that
(24:04):
we should put on ourselves are expect that our spouse
is going to do everything like someone else because our
marriage and individually we're unique in our in our own
way for sure. So m.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
You know, you write about how.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
How spouses often have the wrong view of the purpose
of marriage, so so tell us what is that wrong view?
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Well, I think yeah, I think often we think that
marriage is to fulfill us and complete us. You know
that these two half people come together and now they're
finally whole. You know that whole you.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Completely think yes, like the.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah, that's just that's not true. You are a whole person.
If you're single, you're not half a person. That's a
wrong perception. And it's two whole people who have very
different personalities, sometimes different beliefs and thoughts, and our people
who have a sin nature. It's two whole people with
(25:11):
their whole package coming together trying to blend and to
meld and to get along. And it's hard, but we
have to remember that it's not two halves come together
and now we're complete. It's two whole people coming together
trying to be more like Jesus. And marriage is often
(25:32):
the tool that God uses to chip away our rough
edges and to smooth us out. And I like to
think of our spouse as our sandpaper spouse. They kind
of rub us the wrong ways sometimes, but they help
to smooth off those rough edges. So we need to
remember it's not this perfect picture of completion that's finally
going to make us happy. Marriage is hard and it's
(25:54):
not about you. But your marriage is a message and
people are watching you preach. Are they going to see
the gospel when they see They're going to see unconditional
love and acceptance and forgiveness and you know, starting over
giving you a great granting grace and giving new chances.
(26:15):
Or are they just going to see that constant conflict
that you don't resolve in a healthy way and it
just drives you further and further apart. I really love
to keep that in mind, that marriage is a message
and people are watching.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
It reach you.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
That's a great statement. I love that because one of
the things I've actually taught our church in different series
that I've done regarding marriage and whatnot, is quit looking
for your spouse to fulfill in you, but only Christ
can fulfill in you. It's like, you're in perfect person,
your spouse is an imperfect person, and quit looking for
in them what only Christ can do in you and
(26:51):
the fulfillment that He can bring to you through the
relationship that you have with Him.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
So I was just going to interrupt you, but I
actually had a friend say to me one that's when
I was pouring out my heart through about you know,
something Todd wasn't doing right. You know, she said, even
the very best husband makes a very poor God.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
That's a good statement. I might steal that, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Quite expecting him to be God. He's he's he's your spouse.
He's not your God. Only God can make you happy
all the time. Only God can know your every thought
and you know, empathize with your every feeling. Can you know,
meet your every need? Only God can do that. So
quit trying to make your spouse your God, because even
the best spouse makes a poor God.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
That's good. Well, now let me kind of turn the
corner here, and I want to ask you a question
on this because it's you know, couples, you see, like
can get begin to get bored in their marriage, and
especially it's easy in this regard with you talked about
social media. You know, you look out there, you see
everybody else is doing all this amazing stuff and you're
seeing the highlight reels. So you think, well, our marriage
(27:54):
is boring. Give us some advice. What can couples do
to kind of keep that spice? You know, we've talked
talked about this in past episodes before, but I'm curious
what your thoughts are, what can they do to kind
of keep the spice in the marriage.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Well, you know, it's funny. I'm probably going to give
an answer to it people aren't expecting because I think
it's funny when I think back to when we are
first married and the advice we were given, whether it
was from couples who were married, our pastor and his wife.
Books we were reading on marriage that were Christian books,
you know, so many of them talked about, you know,
(28:30):
putting the spark back in your marriage and having regular
date nights, and you know, maybe on Sunday nights, sitting
down and going over your schedule for the week and
asking yourself, you know, what's your high point of the day,
what's your low point of the day. All of those
things can be helpful. But I'm telling you what has
kept me the most in love with my husband, and
I know he would say the same thing is together
(28:53):
as a couple and also separately as individuals, encouraging each
other and us together as a couple to find a ministry,
to find something you're supposed to be doing by yourself,
and to find a ministry as a couple. Together, I
have watched my husband be a small group leader at
(29:16):
our church. I've watched him. There was a period in
his life where he did some mentorship with an at
risk elementary school child after school once a week, and
I would bake cookies for this little boy, cookies, and
I would pray for my husband as he spent time
with him, and I would, you know, try to come
(29:36):
up with little games for him to play with him.
I would just cheer him on as he was pouring
into this kid's life. And he's you know, watched me
as I've done ministry together. We've found ministry as a couple.
There was an abuse shelter. My mom was an abused wife,
and there was an abuse shelter that opened that too
long ago in the big city near where we live.
(29:59):
It's just about team minutes from us, and so we
signed up to go and help there as a couple.
And so my husband would help do just little maintenance
jobs around the house that he could do because now
he does know how to change a washer.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Balcodness.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
But he would would shovel the driveway, or he would
sweep the floors. He would help, you know, paint a room.
I would go and I would help cook the meal
for these women. They Every Wednesday night you had a
Bible study and then sometimes I would teach the Bible study.
We would take our children with us, and our children
and my husband would play with the kids of the
(30:38):
moms that were in this half house, and together we
found a ministry. And I think it's so important, especially
to do something for someone who doesn't have life as
well off as you do. You know, so often we
we just talked about it. We see people who have
life better than us, we think on social media, and
we feel less thand by comparison. But I'm telling you,
(31:00):
when you and your spouse find a ministry going and
helping somebody who really needs help physically or financially or emotionally,
and you reach out to them, and you see your
spouse being Jesus hands and feet to other people, it
makes me fall so in love with my husband when
I see him doing ministry. And he would say the
(31:20):
same thing for me. So I'm not against date nights.
We actually, over our thirty seven years, were not really
big on datelines. We were so busy raising our kids,
and our kids were in so many sports. Our date
night was sitting at the baseball game forty five minutes
early while they were warming up, we would have an
iced tea, iced coffee and sit and that was like
our quick, let's get in a date night because we
(31:40):
were so busy. I'm not against those things, but I
think finding your unique ministry that takes your skills and
takes your interests and your passions and does something for
someone less fortunate, I think is a real way to
keep the spark in your marriage.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
So it could be, as you know, finding a ministry
to serve in as far as like a homeless shelter
or something like that, or possibly even serving within the
church together like you know, greeting or something of that nature.
I agree with you. I think that that's wonderful. When
you're serving together and you watch your spouse serve, it
really does stir your heart to love that person even more.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Yeah, and it.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Helps you personally too, when when you step outside of
your your own self, your own circumstances to reach out
and help someone else, you know, it's it's uplifting, you know,
for yourself, especially like if you're walking through say a
difficult time grieving or or something of that nature, it's
always better to step outside of yourself to minister to others.
(32:42):
And then there's the team aspect of doing it together,
which makes it even better, you know, in building your marriage.
So I defin I love that part in your book.
I think that's a I know it's not probably the
most common, you know, suggestion, but it is the most
probably important and realistic thing that needs that needs to happen.
(33:05):
So one of the things that I was telling my
husband this, you know, with reading this book keep showing
up that it's specifically really written towards the wives. And
so is there like one thing that you would want to,
you know, tell the tell the wives, you know, a
(33:25):
way to experience a better marriage.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
What would that be?
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Well, I think, you know, keeping in mind that your
husband is not your God. But also I like to
remind myself that my husband is not just my husband,
he's also my brother in Christ. So for the woman
who's married to a man who's a Christian, you know,
I think sometimes I am just about ready to unload
(33:54):
and my husband or to say something that later I
might regret, and I think, wait a minute, what I
say this to? You know, my friend Noel, who goes
to my church, who's a brother, he's actually my pastor.
Would I say that to him? Would I say that
to another brother in Christ? Would I treat them that way?
Would I use that disrespectful tone, or would I be
(34:16):
accusatory like that? Or would I give them the benefit
of the doubt? And I think for me sometimes swapping
out the fact that this is my husband and putting
another Christian friend that's a male in there, I would
I would approach it very differently. So why am I
not talking to my husband like that?
Speaker 4 (34:34):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
That's pretty intriguing that you say that, because years ago,
whenever we were youth pastors, and bear in mind this
was many years ago, we did a dating series with
our teenagers and we were talking about I said, you
know that little girl that you think that is so
cute or that little you know guy, you know, vice versa.
You need to understand that scripturally, that is your your
(34:55):
brother or your sister. And they were all like, oh,
that's gross. But the reality is we are brothers and
sisters in Christ. And I love the aspect of that
mindset of you know, remembering that we are the family
of God. We are brothers and sisters, and we would
not talk to one another respond to one another in
that way. So I think that's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Yeah, yeah, it definitely is.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
This is This has been a great conversation, Karen, and
I definitely love the aspect. And you write about this
in your book too, about your spouse being like sandpaper,
you know, uh, to kind of deal with the rough
edges from it on my shoulder here. You know, I
(35:39):
think that even though we come into the marriage with baggage,
you know, from our childhood, from our past, that the
Lord can definitely use those things that rub us the
wrong way to help grow us, you know, grow us
in our relationship with each other, but also grow us
in our relationship with the Lord. Because because of that sandpaper,
(36:01):
we're having to go to the Lord, you know, in
prayer about our spouse or about our own actions, and
from all that we're going to all grow. And so
I think that's the important thing about you know, about
our marriage, that that we that we keep everything in
front of Jesus. He's showing He's showing the book again.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I'm sure people need to read this book. Yeah, I
just uh, the the subtitle there, how to stay crazy
in Love when your love drives you crazy. That that
is awesome and I think it's it's perfect that on
the Lovelike Crazy podcast we're talking about this. So tell
people where they can find this book. Yet they need
to get this book. You need to read this book.
Tell them where they can find it at.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Sure it's available most anywhere. Books are sold on Amazon
or Burns and Noble. I saw them on my website
Hereingeman dot com and even spelled e h M. And
I hope they find it helpful, Okay.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
And then and then where can they connect with you?
Like on social media?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Yeah, the best place is just to go to Kiereneman
dot com and and eman eh and there you'll see
at the bottom of the homepage all my social media handles.
And my favorite place to hang out is Instagram. I
also have Pinterest in Facebook and Acts which used to
be Twitter, but I'm most active on Instagram Instagram.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
So, and you also post lots of different recipes and
different things that you're doing in the kitchen. So so
if there's any of our listeners that are interested in that,
you post a lot about your baking, your blue ribbon baking.
So well, it's been such a pleasure to talk with
you about your book today and just talk to you
(37:41):
in general. We just I love being able to spend
time with you. You know again, we love your Bible
studies we do at our church all the time, and
just so many of your books that I've read, and
so I highly encourage for all of our listeners to
check out Karen Emon and the different books and Bible
studies that she has written, and it would be so
(38:02):
so very helpful for you and this book, especially for
your marriage.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
So this has been great today, Kieren. Thank you so
much for joining us and being our guest today.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
It's been fun hanging out well, and to all of
our listeners, we hope that you guys have enjoyed this.
Thank you for being a part of the Love Like
Crazy podcast. Make sure that you like, you subscribe, you share,
leave us a comment, give us a review. We love
to hear feedback from you guys, And thank you so
much for helping us to build this podcast. And as always,
I'm Jay and I'm Stacy and this is Love Like Crazy.
Hey everyone, and welcome to this episode of Love Like Crazy.
We're your hosts, Jay and Stacy Coleman. Thank you so
much for joining in. We have such a special treat
for you today. We are going to talk with Karen Emon,
who is the author of fourteen books, including the New
York bestseller Keep It Shut. She is also a speaker
(00:44):
for Proverbs thirty one Ministries, and she has written for
Encouragement for Today also that reaches like four million women daily.
And she's the mother of three adult children who are
also now married, living in Michigan with her husband, Todd,
and we are so excited to welcome her to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, before we jump into the show, I do want
to take a moment and thank all of our listeners
for being a part of this podcast. If you're enjoying this,
make sure that you like, you subscribe, you share, you
help us get the word. O't invite all your friends
to be a part of this as we're all about
strengthening marriages and strengthening families and I'm excited about this
episode today. I know that you and Karen have known
(01:26):
each other for some time. You've read all of her
books and of the great Karen, I appreciate you speaking
into my wife's life and helping her in so many regards.
It's great to have you with us today. Thank you
for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Thank you, James. Jaceam happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yes, well, Karen, you know a few years back you
were able to come to our church speak to our
Journey Girls, which is our women's ministry, and we just
had such a wonderful time. We had already done quite
a few of your Bible studies and have done more since,
and we just love you know, we love your studies.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
We loved having you at our church.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
And and then one of the ways that I described
you to our women was I said, you know, I
had met you in person at the She Speaks conference,
and I said, you just want to like sit down
and you know, bake cookies with Karen, because she's just
like it's like you just want to, like, you know,
it's such a cozy, warm feeling to to talk with
(02:27):
you and and be around you.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yes, I want you bake cookies.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yes, she does tell us about that one the.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Ribbon at the County Fair for maker Wow.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Cookie.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah. I love following you on social media and and
seeing all of your your cooking tips. We joke on
on on this podcast that cooking is not my favorite
thing to do unless it's like a really simple recipe.
So I truly admire you and and your award winning
baking and hell that you do that is wonderful. So
(03:03):
today we wanted to talk to you about one of
the books that you've written, because you've written many books,
but this one in particular is on marriage, and it's
called keep Showing Up. And I love the and I'm
going to for those on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
I'm going to show you the book.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
The subtitle says how to stay crazy and love when
your love drives you crazy, And so that is a
really interesting title of this book. So tell us a
little bit of why you wrote it and why that title.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well, I wrote it because actually that statement is totally
the truth about my marriage. My husband and I often
joke that a dating site would never have matched us
up because we are so polar opposites and having somebody
that's opposite is kind of cute at the beginning. Those
things that endear you to them when you're dating are
the things that later drive you up the wall. And
(04:03):
we just do not at all attack life in the
same way, you know, he Zig's Isaad. We didn't agree
a lot on how to parent our kids, to how
to hang the toilet paper on the toilet paper well,
I mean just everything. We're so opposite. But we both
very much loved the Lord, very much wanted to be
in ministry, and so that spark of wanting to serve
(04:25):
God together is what drew us together and what helped
us to stay together. We've been married now thirty seven years,
but it's never ever been a walk in the park.
It is constantly having to die to yourself, having to
adapt to this person that is just so polar opposite.
And you can let those things drive you crazy, or
you can let them drive you to your knees and
(04:47):
make you more like Christ.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yes, I know for us when we first got married
it was I don't know if i'd say we're complete opposites,
but there's a lot of things about us that that
flow in that direction. The one thing that aggravated me
the most was toothpaste. She is a mangler with the
tube of toothpaste and I'm a roller from the bottom,
(05:09):
and we find it so you do it the right
way exactly. I'm normal. I mean, she looks like she
takes the tube of toothpaste and rolls over with the car.
And so we saw that we just each got our
own tube of toothpaste. Now that is how easy fix,
easy fix.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, So there's just some things you just have to
work out, you know, come up with a creative solution,
for sure. So there's a story in the in the
beginning of this book that you talk about when you
and your husband were newlyweds. Can you tell us a
little bit about that story of your early days of marriage.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yes. So my husband came from a family that was
still intact when his parents passed away. They'd been married
over fifty years. I came from a home that split
apart because of my father's affairs and him deciding to
divorce my mom. He was an alcoholic as well, and
abusive to all of us. However, I always have to say,
(06:08):
but the last twenty years of his life he came
back to Lord and was a godly man and reconciled
with all the people that he'd hurt. So it has
a good ending to the story. But growing up, I
just didn't have a good model of what marriage was.
So I met this guy at college. I wanted out
of the home that I was raised in because of
the emptiness that was there, because my mom had to
(06:32):
work a lot to provide for us, because my dad
often with how child support, and I just wanted out.
And I saw this guy, and I thought he was
my you know, Prince Charming. This man is my plan,
and we're going to go forward and we're going to
have a happy marriage and everything is just going to
be a walk in the park. And that just didn't happen.
We attack life so differently. We would fight over the
(06:56):
silliest things, and I remember just sitting on the floor
one day just crying and thinking, what kind of mess
have I gotten myself into? Maybe I should have listened
to the pastor that did our premial counseling. He didn't
tell us not to get married. He knew we both
loved the Lord, and he loved both of us and
was excited we were getting married. But he had us
(07:17):
to do a battery of all sorts of personality tests
that were around back then, and the ones that we
took made us come out on whatever kind of evaluation
scale they have that we had less than a five
percent chance of staying marriage married based on my personality type.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Would you say five percent?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Less than five percent? He said, less than five percent
of the people with your two personality specific ones. Not
just like in general you're an extrovert. In general, you're
an introvert, but your specific patterns, your specific graph, but
they stay together less than five percent. But of course
we're going to beat the five percent. But I just
(07:57):
had a really hard time because I think I thought,
because I saw so much fighting and violence in my home,
that a good marriage never had any conflict at all.
And my husband's very laid back and doesn't like conflict.
I grew up thinking conflict was normal. And so luckily
the pastor's wife, who was married to the man that
(08:20):
did our premial counseling from my home church, she took
me aside and she said, you know, Karen, you're creating
conflict where none exists, just because it feels familiar to
you to have conflict in the home and you're not
used to being married to this reserve, laid back cucumber
of a guy. You know, he just was as cool
as a cucumber. Nothing ruffled his feathers. He never wanted
(08:43):
to fight about anything.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Did that aggravate you that he didn't want to fight
about anything.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
It did. But what aggramraated me the most is, you know,
I said, his parents were married over fifty years, but
they very much had the relationship where the woman was
in charge and the man just took the order and
did what she said. So he never saw a man
make a decision. So he was extremely laid back, indecisive.
And you know, as we were saying those things that
(09:10):
attracted you to your spouse in the first place, I
love that my husband was cool and calm and laid
back and easygoing and agreeable. But then after we'd been
married a few just weeks, I thought, he won't even
make a decision. He can't make a decision. He just
sits there and says, I don't know, what do you think.
He just didn't want to make any decisions. And he
loved because he's laid back and kind of introverted. He
(09:34):
loved that I could talk. He said, you just make
everybody feel comfortable. You talk to everybody, from the bad
boy at the grocery store to the president of the
Christian coality. I love how you can talk. But about
three days into our honeymoon, he thought, is she ever
going to.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Stop talking about.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
He has told me that if I pass away before
he does, he's already decided what he's going to put
on my team. Stone.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Oh my goodness, can't wait to hear this.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
A period I'm talking funny says, you have no periods
in your There's like a comma or a semicolon, but
there's always more to come. A period it is finished.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Well, let me ask you this. Did you the fact
that he wouldn't make a decision or uh, you know,
just kind of lending that. Did that? Did you find
that frustrating in the sense of, hey, I want this
guy to lead, because you know, a lot what we
talk about a lot within the churches, we talk about
men leading their family, leading spiritscy and all these types
of things, and I've always told our guys, your wife
(10:42):
wants you to lead your family. In that situation, did
you find that, I'm going to use two words, or
did you find it like frustrating or maybe even exhausting
that that he.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Would not It was exasperating, Okay, it was eating because
even though I'm pretty decisive and pretty confident in making decisions,
not all the time, but for the most part, I
am I know what I want, I know how to
get it. I didn't want that to be that way
in our marriage. I wanted him to lead. I wanted
(11:14):
him to make the decisions and to be confident. But
he was so afraid that he would make the wrong
one that he was just like you know, analysis paralysis, right.
He would overanalyze everything and again the opposite thing, driving
us crazy. It's like, you know, he would say, ready aim,
(11:37):
Wait a minute, I got to aim? Am I aiming?
I'm trying to aim? And I'm like, just fire already,
and you would tease me and say, but you don't
do ready aim fire? You go? You know, ready fire? Wait?
Was I supposed to aim?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You know?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
So it just it bothered me. I wanted the decisions
to made be made, but I wanted him to make them.
I wanted him to make them the way I would,
and he was so afraid that he wouldn't make them
the way that I would, that he just didn't make
them at all. And so even if it was something
super simple like I would say, hey, your mom called
today and she wants you to call her back and
(12:14):
let her know if we're gonna go there for the
fourth of July or not. And I really don't care.
I'm find anyway, I'm fine staying home. I'm fine going there.
He would like overanalyze it for two days, like should
we go or shouldn't we go? Is I'm going to
be mad if we don't go? But oh gee, maybe
Kit my nickname is Kit. Maybe Kit really wants to
stay home, you know, and maybe that would be better.
You know. He would agonize over whether we're going, and
(12:36):
I'm like, flip a coin, I really don't care. But
he just couldn't bring himself to you know, purchase things.
He would over you know, analyze. I remember one time
he was going to buy a bicycle. It took him
all summer long to decide which pike between these two
because he was so afraid one was gonna have better
gears or better breaks than the other one. He's much
(12:57):
better now, He's gotten more confident over time. But I
really do think a lot of it, you know, we
a lot of why we do what we do is
because of how we were raised. Not you known critical
it all, but he did see that in his home.
The husband of made decisions.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well, his personality probably lent to that. But he what
was modeled for him is what he followed exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
And here you are growing up in this home where
it wasn't as settled and as stable, and you were
looking for that, you know, you were looking for those
decisions to be made and to be led, you know,
in that way. And so I'm assured it was very
difficult and exhausting for you for sure.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Well, I know that a lot of times you talked
about growing up in a household where there was conflict,
and you know, a lot of times people, you know,
conflict's unavoidable. It's one of these things that just kind
of happened. You put two people in an environment where
they're together all the time, there's going to be conflict.
What are some of the greatest areas that you see
in marriage where maybe people tend to have conflict, and
(14:03):
what are some of the ways they can work through
it and even as conflict a good thing.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, you know, I think often when you hear about
marriage and conflict in marriage, people will say, oh, it's finances,
or it's you know, sex, or it's raising the kids.
But we really felt like all conflict in our marriage
boiled down to one of three things, and those three
things are emotional baggage from our past, which we were
(14:31):
kind of talking about already, also unmet expectations and untrue perceptions.
And let me just give you an example of all
of them. Like for the emotional baggage, you know, I
remember one day when I thought Todd would like I
asked him if he knew about something, and he said
he didn't, but I thought he did, and I said, oh,
(14:53):
come on, quit playing dumb with me. I didn't think
anything of it. I just that's a phrase that they
used in my house growing up, you know. And I'm like, oh,
what done with me? And then I noticed he was
acting different the rest of the day, like a little
aloof a little bit, like he was upset or offended
or whatever. And I said, what's going on? Are you
mad at me about something? And he said, well, I
just really don't appreciate being called dumb. He has dyslexia.
(15:14):
He struggled through school. He did feel dumb. He remembers
being in fifth grade and having to walk the Hall
of Shame down to the third grade room for reading
class because he wasn't up to reading level. And he's
always been very sensitive that some emotional baggage he came into,
you know, brought into our marriage that he doesn't like
it if he feels called out, like if I correct him,
if he pronounces something wrong. He doesn't like that. Well,
(15:37):
I you know, I didn't know that was his emotional baggage.
He's sitting there with his suitcases. Baggage is closed. I
don't know what's in it. And I just said a
phrase that I always say, Hey, don't play.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Dumb with me.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
But because of that emotional baggage, you know, we had
conflict over. For example, or an example of an unmat
expectation is you know, when I grew up, even though
my father was not in the home, he still owned
the house that we lived in, so he took care
of it. And my dad can fix anything, well, he
could fix anything. He passed away recently, but he could
(16:09):
fix anything. And my older brother could fix anything. And
so I had this expectation that when we got married
and the faucet started to drip, that my husband would
fix it.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
And guess what, when.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
We were married, about three months the foss started to
drip and I said, are you going to fix that?
And he said, well, uh, who do I call? And
I'm like, call, you go down to the hardware store
and you get a washer. Oh, just let me do it.
And I just did it myself because I had this
expectation that he was going to know how to fix
things and he didn't. And then the untrue perceptions that
(16:42):
comes in a lot when we assign a motive that
is not there when it comes to our spouses their
behavior or you know, some action that they take. For example,
I remember one time asking my husband to bring home
(17:03):
some creamer. I was out of half and half and
I wanted to bring some home, some creamer. So he
brought it home. He sat it on the counter and
I was highly offended because he brought home fat free creamer.
So I had this untrue perception that he thought, I
wish you were a little more fat free too. No,
or one time I remember being in the grocery store
(17:23):
and we ran into somebody that my husband works with.
He makes cadillacs at the General Motors plant, and there's
somebody that was on his line on on the floor
and the line that he is in, and we ran
into this person at the grocery store and he talked
to him, chatted, and I stood there and he never
said a word about me, never introduced me, and I thought, oh,
he wishes I were a little more fat free and
(17:44):
he's embarrassed to introduce me to this or this homeworker. Well,
that was a very untrue perception because the reality was
my husband has a really hard time I'm remembering names.
He couldn't remember the guy's name, and he was so
embarrassed to say, hey, here's this is my wife, you know, kit,
And here is what was your name? Again, So he
(18:08):
just chose not to introduce me at all.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
But just like once you get so far into conversation,
you're kind of locked in, like this guy knows my name, so.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
And I just you know, I assigned that motive there
that that wasn't there. It was an un perception. Wasn't
that he was embarrassed of me? He was embarrassed that
he didn't remember the guy's name.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, So so many different aspects to to learning how
to get along with one another. And one of the
one of the things that you said in your book,
which is something that my husband says often tell her
about the phrase.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
That yeah, I always say that whenever I do pre
medal counseling I tell people, hey, opposites attract, and then
after you get married, opposites attack. Just because you said
it a few minutes ago. The things that are so
cute when you first get married are not cute whenever
you get down the road. And the next thing you
know is World War three in the house.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
So and this consistent thing of having to learn, you know,
as you get married, then finding out okay, so we
do come into the marriage with all this baggage. You know,
we have different perceptions and just it ends up being
misunderstandings towards each other, which causes that conflict.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I do want to know one thing you said that
when the sink started dripping, you were like, I'll just
fix it myself. Did you fix the sink?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I did?
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Okay, go girl, you go, girl, Stacy.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
She's calling I would be calling the plumber or whoever.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
She's like, we got some good friends that are plumbers.
I'll call them for sure. Well, let's talk a little
bit about modern day marriage. You know, it's kind of
like we're at the place where things have changed a lot.
You guys have been married. I think you said thirty
seven years. We've been married thirty two years. There's a
lot of factors that are actually against the modern day couple,
and a lot of it's based on social media. We
(20:04):
recently were talking about that in one of our episodes,
about the expectations the young moms, young couples have because
of what they see on social media is the perfect,
you know, depiction of what marriage should be. And there's
even this thing that you know, mom's shaming and all
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
There.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
There's a lot of stuff going on with social media
right now that we did not face when we were
first married. I mean, you've always got things you look
at other couples and you're like, why can't our marriage
be like theirs? But it's ramped up to a whole
other level now because of social media, because of what
our young couples are facing. Can you speak to that
a little bit and kind of talk about some of
(20:41):
the stuff that young couples are facing in these days.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Yeah, not only is.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Social media hard, but I think just in general, society
used to encourage marriage and encourage people to stay together
and hang in there for the long haul, and now,
you know, we make so light of it. Divorce is
rampant that there aren't legitimate biblical reasons for divorce. They're
not saying that at all, but people know. I mean
they joke about it. I actually saw on Pinterest once
(21:09):
where there was a pin for how to throw a
divorce party, and they played games like trash the wedding dress,
and I mean it was just it was awful. But
I think society doesn't encourage us to stay married like
it used to. And then we see this factor of
social media. We're sitting down eating leftovers with our spouse
(21:31):
after we've just had a domestic dispute, you know, and
gotten an argument about something, some kind of conflict came up,
and we're scrolling through our phone and all of a sudden,
we see somebody that we know, you know, whether it's
a friend or a coworker or whoever. And they're out
to dinner at a very fancy restaurant looking like they're
all romantic, and the wife strategically has you know, her
(21:54):
hand in the shot with her upgraded diamond ring. He
just got her. And you're sitting there eating leftovers, fuman man,
and you think, wow, it seems like they have a
better marriage, or maybe they've built a new house, and
you are looking at your house that desperately needs to
be modeled and remodeled, and you think, wow, it seems
like they have the perfect house and the perfect marriage,
and now here comes their kids. They're posting a picture
(22:19):
of their child getting student of the month at the
middle school. And about that time, your phone rings and
it's your middle school calling to let you know that
your son sits busted in the vice principal's office for
a joke involving a substitute teacher in firecrackers that the
principal didn't think was funny. Not that that's ever happened
to anyone I know anyhow, you know, it seems like
(22:40):
everyone has a better marriage. It seems like their house
is bigger, It seems like they're romance or romantic. I
call it that we're coming apart of the scenes. And
I don't mean s a MS, I mean see MS
because it seems like everyone else has it better than us.
But we have to remember that people are not posting
the reality of what's happening behind therefore, whiles they're posting
(23:02):
the best. And how many of us can name someone
who we thought, from looking at social media had the
perfect marriage, even the perfect Christian marriage. And all of
a sudden, they're gonna find out one of the spouses
had a double life, they had an affair on the side,
or they just decided I never really loved you and
(23:24):
I'm gonna, you know, call it quits. And all of
a sudden, that perfect picture that was depicted on social
media cracks of heart. But we don't remember that. And
the heat of the moment when we're eating those leftovers
and we're mad at our spouse and we see that
other went out with their romance going on, we just
get jealous.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
We get jealous, that deep seat of comparison, you know,
wanting what everybody else has, or you know, what the
Joneses have. You know. Yeah, we talk about that a lot,
about the you know, social influencers. There are just different
people in general, post the highlight reels, and it's not
really reality. It's not really that the expectations that that
(24:04):
we should put on ourselves are expect that our spouse
is going to do everything like someone else because our
marriage and individually we're unique in our in our own
way for sure. So m.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
You know, you write about how.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
How spouses often have the wrong view of the purpose
of marriage, so so tell us what is that wrong view?
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Well, I think yeah, I think often we think that
marriage is to fulfill us and complete us. You know
that these two half people come together and now they're
finally whole. You know that whole you.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Completely think yes, like the.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah, that's just that's not true. You are a whole person.
If you're single, you're not half a person. That's a
wrong perception. And it's two whole people who have very
different personalities, sometimes different beliefs and thoughts, and our people
who have a sin nature. It's two whole people with
(25:11):
their whole package coming together trying to blend and to
meld and to get along. And it's hard, but we
have to remember that it's not two halves come together
and now we're complete. It's two whole people coming together
trying to be more like Jesus. And marriage is often
(25:32):
the tool that God uses to chip away our rough
edges and to smooth us out. And I like to
think of our spouse as our sandpaper spouse. They kind
of rub us the wrong ways sometimes, but they help
to smooth off those rough edges. So we need to
remember it's not this perfect picture of completion that's finally
going to make us happy. Marriage is hard and it's
(25:54):
not about you. But your marriage is a message and
people are watching you preach. Are they going to see
the gospel when they see They're going to see unconditional
love and acceptance and forgiveness and you know, starting over
giving you a great granting grace and giving new chances.
(26:15):
Or are they just going to see that constant conflict
that you don't resolve in a healthy way and it
just drives you further and further apart. I really love
to keep that in mind, that marriage is a message
and people are watching.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
It reach you.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
That's a great statement. I love that because one of
the things I've actually taught our church in different series
that I've done regarding marriage and whatnot, is quit looking
for your spouse to fulfill in you, but only Christ
can fulfill in you. It's like, you're in perfect person,
your spouse is an imperfect person, and quit looking for
in them what only Christ can do in you and
(26:51):
the fulfillment that He can bring to you through the
relationship that you have with Him.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
So I was just going to interrupt you, but I
actually had a friend say to me one that's when
I was pouring out my heart through about you know,
something Todd wasn't doing right. You know, she said, even
the very best husband makes a very poor God.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
That's a good statement. I might steal that, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Quite expecting him to be God. He's he's he's your spouse.
He's not your God. Only God can make you happy
all the time. Only God can know your every thought
and you know, empathize with your every feeling. Can you know,
meet your every need? Only God can do that. So
quit trying to make your spouse your God, because even
the best spouse makes a poor God.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
That's good. Well, now let me kind of turn the
corner here, and I want to ask you a question
on this because it's you know, couples, you see, like
can get begin to get bored in their marriage, and
especially it's easy in this regard with you talked about
social media. You know, you look out there, you see
everybody else is doing all this amazing stuff and you're
seeing the highlight reels. So you think, well, our marriage
(27:54):
is boring. Give us some advice. What can couples do
to kind of keep that spice? You know, we've talked
talked about this in past episodes before, but I'm curious
what your thoughts are, what can they do to kind
of keep the spice in the marriage.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Well, you know, it's funny. I'm probably going to give
an answer to it people aren't expecting because I think
it's funny when I think back to when we are
first married and the advice we were given, whether it
was from couples who were married, our pastor and his wife.
Books we were reading on marriage that were Christian books,
you know, so many of them talked about, you know,
(28:30):
putting the spark back in your marriage and having regular
date nights, and you know, maybe on Sunday nights, sitting
down and going over your schedule for the week and
asking yourself, you know, what's your high point of the day,
what's your low point of the day. All of those
things can be helpful. But I'm telling you what has
kept me the most in love with my husband, and
I know he would say the same thing is together
(28:53):
as a couple and also separately as individuals, encouraging each
other and us together as a couple to find a ministry,
to find something you're supposed to be doing by yourself,
and to find a ministry as a couple. Together, I
have watched my husband be a small group leader at
(29:16):
our church. I've watched him. There was a period in
his life where he did some mentorship with an at
risk elementary school child after school once a week, and
I would bake cookies for this little boy, cookies, and
I would pray for my husband as he spent time
with him, and I would, you know, try to come
(29:36):
up with little games for him to play with him.
I would just cheer him on as he was pouring
into this kid's life. And he's you know, watched me
as I've done ministry together. We've found ministry as a couple.
There was an abuse shelter. My mom was an abused wife,
and there was an abuse shelter that opened that too
long ago in the big city near where we live.
(29:59):
It's just about team minutes from us, and so we
signed up to go and help there as a couple.
And so my husband would help do just little maintenance
jobs around the house that he could do because now
he does know how to change a washer.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Balcodness.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
But he would would shovel the driveway, or he would
sweep the floors. He would help, you know, paint a room.
I would go and I would help cook the meal
for these women. They Every Wednesday night you had a
Bible study and then sometimes I would teach the Bible study.
We would take our children with us, and our children
and my husband would play with the kids of the
(30:38):
moms that were in this half house, and together we
found a ministry. And I think it's so important, especially
to do something for someone who doesn't have life as
well off as you do. You know, so often we
we just talked about it. We see people who have
life better than us, we think on social media, and
we feel less thand by comparison. But I'm telling you,
(31:00):
when you and your spouse find a ministry going and
helping somebody who really needs help physically or financially or emotionally,
and you reach out to them, and you see your
spouse being Jesus hands and feet to other people, it
makes me fall so in love with my husband when
I see him doing ministry. And he would say the
(31:20):
same thing for me. So I'm not against date nights.
We actually, over our thirty seven years, were not really
big on datelines. We were so busy raising our kids,
and our kids were in so many sports. Our date
night was sitting at the baseball game forty five minutes
early while they were warming up, we would have an
iced tea, iced coffee and sit and that was like
our quick, let's get in a date night because we
(31:40):
were so busy. I'm not against those things, but I
think finding your unique ministry that takes your skills and
takes your interests and your passions and does something for
someone less fortunate, I think is a real way to
keep the spark in your marriage.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
So it could be, as you know, finding a ministry
to serve in as far as like a homeless shelter
or something like that, or possibly even serving within the
church together like you know, greeting or something of that nature.
I agree with you. I think that that's wonderful. When
you're serving together and you watch your spouse serve, it
really does stir your heart to love that person even more.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Yeah, and it.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Helps you personally too, when when you step outside of
your your own self, your own circumstances to reach out
and help someone else, you know, it's it's uplifting, you know,
for yourself, especially like if you're walking through say a
difficult time grieving or or something of that nature, it's
always better to step outside of yourself to minister to others.
(32:42):
And then there's the team aspect of doing it together,
which makes it even better, you know, in building your marriage.
So I defin I love that part in your book.
I think that's a I know it's not probably the
most common, you know, suggestion, but it is the most
probably important and realistic thing that needs that needs to happen.
(33:05):
So one of the things that I was telling my
husband this, you know, with reading this book keep showing
up that it's specifically really written towards the wives. And
so is there like one thing that you would want to,
you know, tell the tell the wives, you know, a
(33:25):
way to experience a better marriage.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
What would that be?
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Well, I think, you know, keeping in mind that your
husband is not your God. But also I like to
remind myself that my husband is not just my husband,
he's also my brother in Christ. So for the woman
who's married to a man who's a Christian, you know,
I think sometimes I am just about ready to unload
(33:54):
and my husband or to say something that later I
might regret, and I think, wait a minute, what I
say this to? You know, my friend Noel, who goes
to my church, who's a brother, he's actually my pastor.
Would I say that to him? Would I say that
to another brother in Christ? Would I treat them that way?
Would I use that disrespectful tone, or would I be
(34:16):
accusatory like that? Or would I give them the benefit
of the doubt? And I think for me sometimes swapping
out the fact that this is my husband and putting
another Christian friend that's a male in there, I would
I would approach it very differently. So why am I
not talking to my husband like that?
Speaker 4 (34:34):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
That's pretty intriguing that you say that, because years ago,
whenever we were youth pastors, and bear in mind this
was many years ago, we did a dating series with
our teenagers and we were talking about I said, you
know that little girl that you think that is so
cute or that little you know guy, you know, vice versa.
You need to understand that scripturally, that is your your
(34:55):
brother or your sister. And they were all like, oh,
that's gross. But the reality is we are brothers and
sisters in Christ. And I love the aspect of that
mindset of you know, remembering that we are the family
of God. We are brothers and sisters, and we would
not talk to one another respond to one another in
that way. So I think that's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Yeah, yeah, it definitely is.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
This is This has been a great conversation, Karen, and
I definitely love the aspect. And you write about this
in your book too, about your spouse being like sandpaper,
you know, uh, to kind of deal with the rough
edges from it on my shoulder here. You know, I
(35:39):
think that even though we come into the marriage with baggage,
you know, from our childhood, from our past, that the
Lord can definitely use those things that rub us the
wrong way to help grow us, you know, grow us
in our relationship with each other, but also grow us
in our relationship with the Lord. Because because of that sandpaper,
(36:01):
we're having to go to the Lord, you know, in
prayer about our spouse or about our own actions, and
from all that we're going to all grow. And so
I think that's the important thing about you know, about
our marriage, that that we that we keep everything in
front of Jesus. He's showing He's showing the book again.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I'm sure people need to read this book. Yeah, I
just uh, the the subtitle there, how to stay crazy
in Love when your love drives you crazy. That that
is awesome and I think it's it's perfect that on
the Lovelike Crazy podcast we're talking about this. So tell
people where they can find this book. Yet they need
to get this book. You need to read this book.
Tell them where they can find it at.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Sure it's available most anywhere. Books are sold on Amazon
or Burns and Noble. I saw them on my website
Hereingeman dot com and even spelled e h M. And
I hope they find it helpful, Okay.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
And then and then where can they connect with you?
Like on social media?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Yeah, the best place is just to go to Kiereneman
dot com and and eman eh and there you'll see
at the bottom of the homepage all my social media handles.
And my favorite place to hang out is Instagram. I
also have Pinterest in Facebook and Acts which used to
be Twitter, but I'm most active on Instagram Instagram.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
So, and you also post lots of different recipes and
different things that you're doing in the kitchen. So so
if there's any of our listeners that are interested in that,
you post a lot about your baking, your blue ribbon baking.
So well, it's been such a pleasure to talk with
you about your book today and just talk to you
(37:41):
in general. We just I love being able to spend
time with you. You know again, we love your Bible
studies we do at our church all the time, and
just so many of your books that I've read, and
so I highly encourage for all of our listeners to
check out Karen Emon and the different books and Bible
studies that she has written, and it would be so
(38:02):
so very helpful for you and this book, especially for
your marriage.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
So this has been great today, Kieren. Thank you so
much for joining us and being our guest today.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
It's been fun hanging out well, and to all of
our listeners, we hope that you guys have enjoyed this.
Thank you for being a part of the Love Like
Crazy podcast. Make sure that you like, you subscribe, you share,
leave us a comment, give us a review. We love
to hear feedback from you guys, And thank you so
much for helping us to build this podcast. And as always,
I'm Jay and I'm Stacy and this is Love Like Crazy.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com