Episode 79: When the People You Love Get What’s Left of You

Kristy: 00:07
Welcome to Unshaken, the podcast where unwavering faith meets real life. I’m Kristy, and together with my husband Tony, we dive into authentic conversations, offering biblical insights and sharing stories that inspire resilience, especially for families navigating the unique challenges of disabilities. Join us each week as we explore faith, family, and the journeys that keep us grounded in Christ. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Let’s stand firm together. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Unshaken. This is Kristy. I’m with Tony. Today we’re gonna talk about why our families shouldn’t get what’s left of us after the best of us has been spent out in the world on work or whatever our pursuits are outside the home. And I think this happens a lot. We’re out there, we’re interacting with people that aren’t part of our most intimate circle. They’re not our primary people necessarily. And so they get our patience. They get the best version of us. I can spend an entire day at the school being relatively patient, gentle, careful with people, making decisions, doing the hard things without letting my thinning patience and growing frustration show to them because that’s my job. It’s my job to make those decisions and to be the one who is steady and in all of that. So I use up all of my regulation, all of my ability to be nice at work. I get in the car, drive home, and here we are. My regulation is spent.

Tony: 01:47
What we want to bring you today, what does this look like in our own lived-out days?

Kristy: 01:53
So I want to go to Colossians because that’s the how-to, right? I’m in Colossians 3. This is verses 12 through 14. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. So I’m going to pause there for a second because there is no next piece that says, and wear that to work, and then come home and strip it off at the door and be your regular self with your family. It doesn’t say that. It says, bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. And I think that’s really the place where I think we all want to get toward, where I’m hoping this whole conversation will drive toward that, right? But man, there’s a lot of real estate between coming home from work and having all of those virtues on underneath love, with love being the thing that shows the most. And it shouldn’t be like that. It shouldn’t be so hard. I don’t know why it is so hard, but I’m here to tell you it is. And I’m guessing that I’m not the only one who has that situation where you know, where there’s just a real transition that can be tough in between. It was funny, we were talking about this, and I told Tony, I said I need a lobby outside the house where I can linger for 20 minutes and work it all out before I come in. Because I think some days we do spend the best restraint that we have on our coworkers, on my students. You know, it might be customers, clients, people in your ministry, it could be even people we don’t know, strangers, systems that fail us or that we just find frustration in. All of that happens out in the world. And all of that happens within our very fragile professional personas. If I explode at work, if I yell at the people that I honestly really want to yell at and who might benefit from being yelled at if anybody can, that blows up the whole world, right? So I hold it in. I pray that God would make me nice, that he would guide me through and let me not cause an explosion. I have pre-solicited from Tony and from the kids notes to stick in my lunch when I make my lunch in the morning. I have notes that they have written me that they folded up. I’ve never read them. And I just stick one in there each day because I know that halfway through, that’s gonna help me. It’s gonna connect me to that love that I’m supposed to be wearing over everything and it’s gonna help me get through the rest of the afternoon. So notice what I said. It’s my family that’s getting me through my work day. And then I come home. So let’s pause that for a minute. We go to work and we get tired, we get frustrated, we get overstimulated, our fuel is depleted. I think that’s, you know, that’s how it’s meant to be. That’s how human beings work. But then at the same time, when we get home and we’re at that place of depletion, the people closest to us should not become the place where I stop fighting that fight to still be nice and to still be loving and leading with love. You know, I’m not saying that that we need to fake it. Like we don’t, I don’t have to come home and say, like, I’m done, I’m opting out, like, good luck to you guys. But also I shouldn’t count on them to bear the brunt of that, of my frustration and and weariness and world weariness without consequence, certainly, but at all. That’s my family. That’s the best thing I have going besides God, is my family. Those are the people who wrote me the notes to get me through the afternoon and then I’m gonna come home and unload on them. That’s not right. It’s not about faking it, right? It’s not about coming in and pretending like I had an easy, cheesy day and everything is good. It’s about finding balance between coming home and being able to be in my safe place with my safe people and not have to perform that way anymore, not having to guard my every word and at the same time remembering to keep love first and to treat the people in my home, the people who love me and who I love so very deeply with compassion and respect because that’s how I want my home to feel. That’s how I want my family to feel. I want them to know that they’re the most important thing. They’re the reason that I go out in the world and do the other thing. I think there’s so many days. Sometimes I’ll text Tony. I get to work around eight and kids start being dropped off at 8:50. And sometimes I text him before nine o’clock and I’m like, babe, it’s gonna be a day. And it’s because so-and-so’s mom, instead of dropping them off in the car line, they parked and walked in and wanted to have their five minutes with me before school. And I’m thinking, like, wow, this is not an auspicious start. You know, stuff happens through the day, problems come up, and it seems like that’s the case. Weirdly enough, when it rains, my kids have a hard day. The sound is dysregulating, routine gets disrupted, they can’t go outside. All the sensory stuff is different, it looks different, smells different. It’s just gonna be a tough day. I know from the morning when I when I leave here and it’s it’s overcast and it’s just gonna be like that. I come home, I walk through the door, and Tony’s like, hey, I’m so glad you’re here. And I’m like, Can you not handle that yourself? You’re killing me right now. That’s never how it should be, but that’s what happens. And so, in front of all our friends, let me say I’m sorry for the times that that has happened. I will be more mindful going forward of that.

Tony: 07:34
If the people that you love are getting the version of you that everyone else was protected from because you were working, noticing it is not a reason for shame. And Kristy, you’re forgiven because I’ve done this to you countless times. When you do notice it, instead of shame, it’s an invitation for a conversation, which is what we had before we started recording and what we’re having now. It’s an invitation to bring the same care home without pretending that you’re not tired. This is not about, oh, you shouldn’t be tired at the end of your day. No, we’re all going to be tired at the end of a workday. That’s normal, that’s life, that’s being human, that’s okay. What often happens is stress enters the room when we walk through that front door at the end of the day. And we haven’t said anything, there haven’t even been words exchanged yet, but you can feel that stress, you can feel that tension as soon as you walk through the door. If if you’re the one walking through the door and your family feels it too, as soon as they’re in that same space with you, because you’re the one that’s bringing it into the home, into the space. If we can sort of recognize it, that’s step one. And again, scripture talks about this, and we’ve we’ve named this scripture before, you know, it’s in James, it’s James chapter 1, verses 19 and 20, and it says this, my dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. That last statement is the one that really hits me like a ton of bricks. Because God is wanting us to be his righteous sons and daughters, and when we are quick to anger and we’re not quick to listen, we’re not doing what God is calling us to do. Whatever happened in the outside world, when you walk through the door coming home, nobody knows that yet. Like nobody knows what kind of day you’ve had yet. You might still be processing what happened that day. Maybe you just got off the phone five minutes ago and whoever you were interacting with really ticked you off. That anger just hasn’t subsided yet. When those things are going on, a simple sentence can sort of change how everyone is interacting in that environment. And it’s just simply, hey, I had a rough day, I can feel that. Let me take a few minutes. Maybe it’s changing out of the work clothes, maybe it is grabbing a shower, because sometimes just having that water hit you can just kind of regulate your body a little bit. Maybe it’s listening to a worship song, maybe it is praying for a couple minutes. Whatever it is that kind of helps you just get that reset, that’s what can help get the stress out of the energy that’s followed you home.

Kristy: 10:54
That’s happens to me a lot. I don’t always realize that I’m in a work headspace or a stressed headspace. And I’m not always stressed at work and I’m not always, you know, unhappy when I come home. But I do think that sometimes I get into a problem-solving mode, or I’m I’m thinking critically about processes and things like that. And I might come in and you might ask me a very normal thing, or I’m running water and I don’t hear you, or something, you know, some little thing. And I snap as if you’re like the 47th question that’s happened today. And you might be, but it’s the first one from you. The thing is, I don’t always know until I’ve been rude that I was stressed or that I was in a kind of a heightened perspective. And I think there’s a lot of value in an intentional decompressing process that I have to start when I walk out the door at work, not when I walk in the door of this house. That drive home, it’s short these days, it’s 10, 15 minutes. But then that 10 or 15 minutes could be the transition that would allow me to walk in a more loving version of self than if I continue in the car to worry about the things or to perseferate on the things that have been with me all day.

Tony: 12:13
I want you to come back to that point about transition because I think it’s key, but there’s something here that I just want to name. When we are able to name where the pressure came from, that is what will help our spouse, our family, or whoever else is in the room from carrying the blame for whatever happened to us during the day. I’m really bad about this. I will sit in the car and I will process and just I’ll be brooding in the car, and it has nothing to do with Kristy. But she feels that in the car as I’m quiet, I’m thinking through what went on and how I’m going to solve it, how I’m going to fix it, and she’s wanting to connect, she’s wanting to engage, and I’m not engaging with her, and she feels that energy. So if we can name what’s going on in our heads or what has happened in our days, when we do that, we’re telling the truth about where the stress has come from, and we keep it from being the dominant force in the relationship for that day or for that evening.

Kristy: 13:24
You know, it never occurred to me until just now when you were saying that, that you don’t get that ride home decompression that I literally just was talking about because if you’re riding home from work, it’s because I’ve picked you up. So you get me, the instant you’re stop working and you get in the car, you’re faced with your wifey and you don’t have that travel time as transition. I never even thought about that until literally just this minute. Interesting. But you know, I think you’re right. I think calling it what it is, I think in any situation, calling it what it is, making it human, right? Instead of nebulous, I struggle with vague. I struggle with nebulous. I always wonder if you’re mad at me. And you’re not. I don’t have the impression that we’re mad at each other all that often. But somehow that’s what I assume. And I don’t know why that is. What I will say is if the car time doesn’t do it and I walk in the door and I need more transition time, I need to phrase that. I need to say it, I need to call it out and phrase it in a way that makes it clear that I am not rejecting you, that it’s a matter of, hey, I’m gonna go take off work clothes, I’m gonna go put on something comfy and get that shower, or, you know, just take a little minute and I’ll be back. I’ll be back in 15 minutes and um, I’m gonna want to hear all about your day, just to kind of set an expectation that I’m going to come back as the version of myself that is in a good place and it is best equipped to be that loving, kind person, letting you know that this is not, it’s not gonna be like this all night. I literally just need a few minutes and then taking myself out of your atmosphere so that you don’t have to deal with the energy that I’m bringing in until I can strip that energy off and put it down somewhere else. I think that that has a lot of value for me. When I come home, I am made better and more loving by the people that are here. You know, a lot of the time it’s just Tony and me. We’re here by ourselves. As I move through the evening with Tony, my tank gets refilled. My people battery is spent when I walk in the door and that gets recharged here with Tony. I never want it to be a situation where I’m getting full and he’s getting empty because I’m downloading my worldly garbage onto him. And so I think that 15, 20 minutes of just hiatus. I need just a few minutes and I’m gonna come back and I’ll start dinner. We can talk through our day, setting that expectation, I think, is is important. And just for a minute, I want to just pop back to scripture because there’s a passage at the beginning of Philippians that I really think is relevant here. This is from Philippians 2, verses 3 and 4. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of the others. Wouldn’t it be a beautiful world if we all did this all the time? If everyone placed everyone else above herself or himself, everyone would be taken care of so beautifully. But somehow we, if we put ourselves first. Some people do need that few quiet minutes. You could see it as the most loving thing to lay it down at the door and try to come in and tough it out, or to opt out. I think either way can be loving. I think you have to do what works for you. But the problem isn’t the need for transition one way or the other. It’s making the other person have the impression that your grumpiness, your dissatisfaction, frustration, exhaustedness is because of them. If I come in and give Tony the impression that he’s the reason that I’m mean as a snake, that’s really big damage that I have caused. There’s no reason for that to happen.

Tony: 17:15
What usually helps me when when I do need a minute is probably listening to some worship music, resetting myself with paying attention to the words that are being sung in the worship songs. That refocuses my mind on God and Jesus and the good things that He has done for me and my family. And it for me, that’s just a mental reset. Then I can look at my beautiful family and look at all the blessings around me. What happened out there is out there. I’m here with my beautiful wife and my wonderful family. I need to be here, I need to be present in this moment and just celebrate the blessings that I have that are surrounding me, versus focusing on the garbage that’s out there that I’ve dealt with for eight, nine, ten hours. Needing a few minutes, like Kristy said, it’s not rejection, but the key is communicating that need to Kristy with love and respect, making sure that I follow through with whatever I said was gonna happen. So if I asked her for 15 minutes, then at the 15-minute mark, I need to be able to walk into the room and engage. Ultimately, that transition is what helps protect both people, especially in your marriage.

Kristy: 18:45
The last thing in the world that I want to happen is for Tony to, you know, he knows I’m on my way home and for him to become stressed because he doesn’t know what I’m bringing into the house. He doesn’t know what kind of reaction or reception he’s going to get as I walk through the door. I need to get to a place where when I, the moment I walk in the door, I open the front door and take a step in, I belong to my family. That is my primary thing as soon as I cross that threshold. And if the best way to love my family well is to say, hey guys, I’m gonna get a quick shower, I’ll be right back, let’s talk about our days and I’ll start dinner. That’s a loving way to meet my family, but they should never have to worry about who’s gonna walk through that door. Is it gonna be the “momster” or is it gonna be Kristy? And I never want that to happen where there’s that situation of dread or fear that terrifies me that that could ever even possibly happen.

Tony: 19:45
The sad thing with all of this is that the person that we love the most, which is our spouse, is usually our safest person. They are the ones that usually get the brunt of whatever the negative stuff is, because we know that they’re safe. So that safety starts becoming entitlement, and that’s backwards. The person that loves us the most and the person that we are safest with deserves our best and deserves to have the best version of us because they love us so much and because they are the safest person for us. Too often this becomes backwards.

Kristy: 20:26
So I’ll come in and Tony typically is when he’s here when I come home, he’s in a recliner, and there’s a little small couch like directly across from him where I’ll sit and I’ll say, You will not believe what happened today. And then I start my rant and I realize I am polluting the living room with my cranky energy. An option that might be smarter would be to say, like, babe, it has been a day. I’m gonna give you the 30-second update here, and then I’m gonna go just take a little minute. Maybe we can talk about it over dinner and not just, you know, not unload at all or whatever like that. But it’s true. When something happens, even when it’s good, that’s the gift from God in having a spouse is when something happens, good, bad, or otherwise, he’s the first one I think of sharing it with. You know, and when I’ve had an awesome day, and I really don’t want to give you guys the impression that I have a bad day at work every day because I don’t. I have a lot of really, really good days. And most days are just mixed bag like everybody else. But when something happens, I’m like, oh, I can’t wait to tell. I wish he was here. I wish he could see this. I wish he could have witnessed what I just saw these kids do or how this team came together. It was just beautiful. And I want to share that. And I have to be very careful, you know, when I want to vent out the other thing to just trust that he’s in a a mind space to hold it. Just because I came home feeling something and he’s the one I want to dump it to. There’s a loving filter, I think, that has to happen at least, you know, until the energy dissipates.

Tony: 22:00
We have to also realize that there’s two people in this equation. So Kristy’s had a good day, bad day, mixed bag. And I also have the same possibility for all three outcomes. I’ve either had a good day, I’ve had a bad day, I’ve had a mixed bag. We have to keep those things in mind that it’s not just, oh, you were here and I just walked in the door, so you’re obviously ready for me. That may not be the case. There may be stuff going on on both ends, and you both need time to talk it through with each other, but too often I think we walk through the door and the other person is waiting for us. We just go on our rant at that point.

Kristy: 22:47
So I could say, hey, um, these are the events that happened through my day. And because you are a perceptive, loving husband, you can say, gosh, babe, that must have been a tough day without me forcing you to go through my emotional roller coaster and dragging you through, you know, every last detail of it. Like you shouldn’t have to live it. You could just get the summary and that would be good enough. Also, though, I am someone who processes by talking things through. And you, our unshaken friends, have been the recipient or the victim of that over our episodes, because a lot of times it’s only by saying it out loud my brain is able to kind of wrap around it. And I’m like, oh, I never had that realization before this moment. And so poor Tony. Tony hears a lot of my words. And it’s because the processing that he does on the inside, I do in the living room or in the car or in the bed. I talk through my stuff. It’s different to talk through your stuff than it is to bring your emotional cloud with you when you talk about your stuff.

Tony: 23:54
I think our spouse, our wife, our husband can be and should be a safe space for us, but they can be a safe space without becoming the dumping ground for every unresolved emotion burden, whatever you want to call it. Safety and tenderness, they’re meant to go together. They’re not mutually exclusive of each other. And I need to be better about this too. I need to be better about being tender with Kristy and not just relying on the fact that she is safe for me to vent or dump out whatever’s gone on in my day. I still need to be tender and loving, no matter what kind of day I’ve had.

Kristy: 24:36
I think that speaks to home. Home is home. Home is not work. Home is not the world. Home is not school. Home is home. And we should be able to talk about things that didn’t happen at the school today, or that didn’t happen in ministry today, or that didn’t happen in podcast editing today. We’re people, we’re people beyond the roles that we play outside this house. We should get to be those people, right? We should get to watch a dumb show together and laugh about it, or we should be able to just chat about the weekend or something. We all are a combination of our circumstances and the things that we do. But at the end of the day, home self is not world self.

Tony: 25:21
When we get this wrong, no one’s perfect. And there are times when we will not do this well. We need to repair the damage that we have caused without trying to make excuses for it. There’s scripture that talks about this in Ephesians. It’s in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 25. Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor. For we are all members of one body. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down when you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as Christ forgave you. This all speaks to the emotional temperature in our homes. And Kristy and I were talking about this. One of the things that we can do to kind of bring down the emotional temperature is to pray with each other. What a gift it is to be able to hold hands and just stop for a second and just pray. Maybe just pray for each other. Even if it’s just 90 seconds total, that does so much to bring down the tension because now it’s not two people, it’s one team trying to navigate the rest of the day, the rest of the evening, whatever it is. And now we’ve both refocused and gotten to a place where we can kind of take that breath and be like, okay, let’s go forward.

Kristy: 27:38
I think the other thing that happens in prayer is that I don’t know how anybody could go to God and still feel like they’re the sun in their own solar system. When we go to him in prayer, it sets a very clear, I am the sinner, I am the supplicant, I am the weak one who needs the strength of the strong one. And it’s very hard to stay in a the world has wronged me, I am exhausted kind of energy when you realize that you are small. There’s something in that looking to our heavenly father for guidance, for support, for restoration, for whatever it is. It puts us back in our place and it makes it easier to go forward in humility instead of in pride or whatever that looks like.

Tony: 28:25
Part of the repair piece, when we are repairing this with each other, we’re not pretending that the stress didn’t happen or that the stress is like insignificant. It’s refusing to make the person that I love the most pay for the pressure that they didn’t create and pay for the stress that they didn’t create. It’s not Kristy’s fault that I’m stressed out over a bad day. So I need to not make her pay for something she didn’t cost.

Kristy: 28:59
At the same time, love supports the other. What I would guard against, and this has happened to me, I have done this before, in coming home and being at the end of the line. Tony says, How is your day? And I’m like, you know what? I just cannot talk about this. I cannot. Let’s talk about your day. And then it’s a stressful time, it’s a stressful season, you know, whatever. And a few days pass, and I’ve opted out in order to not bring that whole ball of wax into the living room. At some point, I have now kept him out of my loop long enough that it’s going to be very hard to bring him back into my loop. This happened a couple of months ago. I just, it was a rough season, and I would come through the door and be like, that’s done. I’m not dealing with that anymore today. You know, and so in not talking through it, you know, at least on some exchange of information level, if nothing else, it becomes like a silo. That’s my outside, you know, life and this is this. And that’s not a way to go either. There is value in saying, like, yeah, it was, you know, it was awesome. So and so, stop by the office, or gosh, it was rough, or such-n-such graduate, stop by, you know, share some information, right? That’s uh that’s how we remain part of each other’s lives. For me, the school is such a big part of where I find joy and what I’m proud of. And I’m an educator. That’s it’s part of who I am fundamentally. And I never would want to create a situation where I’ve excluded Tony from something that is such a part of me. Like that’s a mistake. And I think that could be very dangerous.

Tony: 30:40
At the end of the day, you are allowed to come home spent. This is not an episode trying to claim that you shouldn’t be tired after a day of work. No, you should be tired. It’s normal. But we also have to be responsible to kind of extend the invitation, not try to hide the exhaustion, but rather come home truthfully, be able to look at our families, look at our spouse, and say, hey, I just need a minute so that I decide what love coming from me looks like, and not letting what happened out in the world dictate how I’m going to love Kristy in this moment. But rather the love that I have inside for her and the love that I know that God has given me for her dictate how I love her through the evening and through the days that we spend together.

Kristy: 31:35
At the end of the day, it’s love, right? If it’s that Colossians piece, let love be the thing that brings it all together for you in the end of the day. And Tony’s right, it’s a matter of choice in a lot of situations. The world is going to be rough, right? The world is what the world is. And it’s okay to feel something. It’s okay to come home and not pretend that you’re fine, to not pretend that everything is good, but we can still choose to be tender with our people. I want home to be the safest place where I can come home and say, I’m tired. I am wiped out. I am exhausted today. And at the same time, Tony does not have to pay for how tired I am. Tony is not responsible for what the world did to me today. He’s just the man who loves me, who will hold me for a minute and fill my bucket. Home is where we get filled back up and also where we fill the others up. That is a choice.

Tony: 32:34
From here, let’s choose better. Let’s choose our families. Let’s choose our spouse because they’re our person. They’re pretty cool. Let’s pray. Let’s ask God to help guide us as we walk through coming home and work through that transition to be better for our families, but especially be better for our spouses. Father, we come before you today just so thankful that you created marriage and that you gave us the person that we are married to. Father, I am so so thankful for Kristy. So grateful that you gave her to me. Father, just help me to love her well, help me to lead her well and to lead our family well. Father, help us to have better patience and better self-awareness and self-control, which is one of the fruits of the spirit, so that when we come home, we don’t downplay the stress of the day, but rather we name it and we name what we need so that we can then transition and be fully present and fully engaged with the ones that love us the most. Thank you for Jesus who showed us so many times that it’s okay to get away for a second, and it’s okay to get away to come to you and pray. Father, just help us to do that more often. Help us to know that we can and we should come to you and pray, and that you will help us be better and show up better for our families and ultimately for the communities that we live in. Thank you so much, Father, for everything. Help us to be better and help us to bring your name glory. It’s in your son’s name that we pray. Amen.

Kristy: 34:26
Amen.

Tony: 34:27
Thank you guys so much. Hope you guys have a great day and a great rest of your week, and we’ll see you next time.

Kristy: 34:32
Bye, friends. Thank you for spending time with us.