Finding Strength in Marital Despair

Transcript

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Hey everybody, it's Tony and welcome back to the Walk Family Podcast.

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I am bringing you a series titled Seasons of Despair, which focuses on different experiences of life, such as marriage, raising kids and loss of loved ones, and how people navigate those hardships.

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Laura and I bring to the table conversations from our own home, as well as introduce some guests sharing their stories.

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Everybody goes through trials and tribulations in life.

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Sometimes it feels we can't ever escape the pain that that brings.

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James 1, 2, and 3 says Consider it pure joy.

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My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, this is easier said than done.

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Despair, by definition, is the loss or absence of hope.

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As a believer in Jesus, there is always that eternal hope we have, but sometimes we don't always feel like it exists.

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It's an incredibly challenging thing when we feel despair in this life, when we think there is no hope and all we experience is hurt and pain.

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My hope and my prayer is that this series will show that you are not alone in your moments of despair.

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Yeah, christ is definitely the glue.

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Tony and I have experienced seasons where marriage was hard and it felt like I'm super frustrated.

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I don't want to fight about this issue anymore.

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I'm tired of feeling how I feel.

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Do I really want to do this?

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What about my goals and my dreams?

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And like all my own sin starts to creep in and my own selfishness starts to creep in and I feel like this what about me sort of feeling and when we've gone through those seasons, really one of the biggest things that we've done is just turn to the Lord together.

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One of the biggest things that we've done is just turn to the Lord together.

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I don't feel like praying and I don't feel like holding your hand, but I know that our marriage brings God glory.

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As I was reflecting on mine and Laura's conversation about marriage, I realized that there are so many married couples that have struggled.

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Laura and I spent some time thinking about marriage almost well, we've been married almost 10 years and all of the ups and downs with it.

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I'm sure you married couples out there have experienced some special moments as well as some really hard moments together, maybe days or weeks where you were filled with doubt or exhaustion or confusion.

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Maybe you had even questioned if your marriage is going to last.

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Maybe your marriage didn't.

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Perhaps hearing our story in a little more depth can provide you with some encouragement and light, knowing that marriage is a journey that is filled with highs and lows.

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I was reading a section in the Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.

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It's a challenging read, but very beneficial.

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Anyways, it's about a man named Christian who is trying to find the celestial city, also known as heaven.

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He and his friend Hopeful journey together on the straight and narrow path until they stumble upon a shortcut.

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They wandered from the path and happened to get captured by a giant named Despair.

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The giant took Christian and Hopeful and threw them in the dungeon of Doubting Castle.

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Giant Despair beats them and tortures them, trying to get them to take their own lives.

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If you haven't read the book, there's an immense amount of symbolism all throughout, but that is exactly what Despair does in life.

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It beats us down to the point where we don't believe there is any hope.

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At an aha moment, christian realized that he had a key hidden in a pocket that unlocks doors the whole time, and the key's name is promise.

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When we seek and cling to the promises of God, only then can we escape our own doubting castle and giant despair.

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I think about this section of the book often, not just for myself but for others, because there are so many times I feel like I am entering into depression or even despair itself.

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But I go seeking God's word to find a key, to find a promise to get me out of the funk that I'm in.

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And I'd be lying to say that I haven't felt depression or despair since I've been married.

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But the promises of the Lord remain true and will always remain true.

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So I hope that this series and this first episode is an encouragement to you, because there are a lot of you hurting right now and maybe have been hurting for a long time or can't seem to escape the hurt.

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I just want you to know that whether you are on the mountain or in the valley, jesus is always with you.

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Point number one.

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So the focus is not necessarily to avoid disappointment, but what to do.

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Through disappointment in marriage or despair, and when marriage is disappointing, there's typically a disconnection or division that only God can restore.

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So that's our first point.

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When you get married, you have all these high expectations about how your spouse should be.

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You have all these high expectations about how your spouse should be and a lot of times you're basing it off of either how you saw your parents interact with each other or flaws you saw in their relationship and how you anticipate it to be in your marriage.

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And the first year or two of marriage is really rough when you're navigating what you thought marriage should have been like and then who you're actually married to as they are.

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Yeah, I think our marriage was tough, the first chunk, the first couple of years.

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I think that there's couples where marriage the first couple of years is full of bliss and excitement and maybe those expectations are being met to a certain level.

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But I do think at some point in time there comes a moment where relationships aren't as perfect as you might think.

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Despair and disappointment in marriage is a very natural part of that first year, especially if you're experiencing a lot of different things.

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For us, we experienced a huge move.

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We moved across the country and we had no family there and it was just the two of us as newlyweds like five months into our marriage and we were expecting a baby unexpectedly.

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So it was like one thing after the next, and so we're navigating all these emotions while figuring out how to be married with no support system.

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So I think there's a couple really big things that we're missing.

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One, we didn't know how to communicate yet and communication is huge in marriage.

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If you can't communicate and put into words the things that you're feeling, your spouse doesn't know how to work on them.

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And then two, you need to have a support system, and that can look like a lot of different things, but I'd hope that you get plugged into a church and that you have a community of believers through your church where you can interact with people who are in different stages of marriage Maybe they're also newlyweds, maybe they've been married for five years, maybe they've been married for 60 years somebody that you can lean on and who can give you encouragement and wisdom as you navigate those early years of marriage.

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Well, the fact that people are sinful and broken, like there's going to be disconnect and there's going to be discord between couples and for us, I think that discord happens from time to time.

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Now, oh yeah, for sure.

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I think couples would be lying if they say they're married and they have no conflict in their marriage.

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That just is impossible.

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Or you're just not actually living, You're just there together, yeah.

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But for us, I think there was a huge disconnect, like you said, communication, like we didn't know how to communicate with each other very well when we first got married.

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And then you're throwing in okay, we're moving, I'm taking you away from your family.

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Like every I never.

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Everything that you knew.

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Yeah, I didn't go away to college.

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I did sort of, but it was a mile down the road from my house and we traveled a lot when I was growing up, but it was always as a family, so I'd never really been away from my family.

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And then, on top of that, I'm away from my family and I'm married to this guy.

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Just a guy.

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Just a guy, no.

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So I'm married and having to navigate all these new emotions that I never really had to go through before and you were pregnant, so I was pregnant and I didn't want to be pregnant.

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That's a whole nother story there's a lot of thing.

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There's a lot of different factors that cause that disconnect between us.

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Now some couples like, yeah, they don't have kids until you know, 10 years into their marriage, where they get to enjoy each other for that extended period of time where we didn't have that and so we had a whole bunch of different things to juggle where some people it's just trying to figure out each other, which is typically a really rewarding experience, but nonetheless, at some point there is typically a really rewarding experience, but nonetheless, at some point there is typically a disconnect because you have certain expectations that go unfulfilled.

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What would you say are the biggest areas of disappointment that we experienced?

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Ooh, the biggest area of disappointment?

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You're not going to like this answer.

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Hit me with it probably moving back to michigan.

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Oh, I mean in the grand scheme of things, like I really enjoyed it out in arizona, but yeah, moving back to michigan after we had left and started to kind of make our own footprints to get pulled back, it was like it was one of the last things I wanted to do.

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Yet we're here.

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For me, there was a couple different things that I really struggled with that first year.

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A lot of them had to do with my expectations of responsibility in the home or responsibility in the marriage.

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Okay, so in my home growing up, my dad did this job, job he took out the trash or took the trash down the road, and my mom mostly did indoor chores and then my dad did all the outside stuff and my dad fixes everything.

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And so then to get married and like, okay, this is actually a lot of work to take care of a whole house by myself.

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Maybe you you should help me, you know, and to not be able to communicate those things, that I need help, but I feel like this is my job, so I need to do it, because this is how my mom did it.

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But not every marriage is the same and you have to be able to communicate like these are responsibilities that I thought I could handle, but I need you to help me handle them too.

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Yeah, dads out there that marry a wonderful woman whose dad fixed everything and you know how to fix nothing.

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There's hope for you.

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It is okay because I know how to fix nothing, and that was part of the disconnect.

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The expectation was that, yeah, I should automatically know how to fix things.

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Every guy should.

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Well, that's not true.

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Here's the solution Call the plumber.

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Don't flood your basement.

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Or the electrician.

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Or the electrician.

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Especially when you're trying to take out a dishwasher that is hooked up to electricity which.

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I didn't know, and so I tried to electrocute myself not once, but twice.

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Yeah, thanks honey, which I didn't know, and so I tried to electrocute myself, not once, but twice.

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Yeah, thanks, honey.

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Nevertheless, the biggest thing is to communicate about those responsibilities, and if something is not working in your marriage, you have to talk about it because it's not going to get better and your spouse can't work on it.

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And you can't work on it if you don't ask for help.

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Well, when that honeymoon stage ends, you know.

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Some people say, you know the honeymoon stage ends at, you know, six months into your marriage and some people say, you know it could last up to five years.

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You know, regardless, when you start seeing the person for who they are, you're not jaded by.

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Okay, you know they're so beautiful or he's so spectacular.

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It's like like, oh, you actually have dark to you, like there's gonna come a moment where you're gonna have maybe some trust issues, or maybe not necessarily trust issues, but there's gonna be like, oh, something is, is wrong, and it's like you have sin in your heart.

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Your spouse has sin in her heart or his heart.

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And it's like you have sin in your heart.

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Your spouse has sin in her heart or his heart, and it's like, whoa, okay, this person is not as perfect as I thought.

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How do you navigate that, especially in a broken world?

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There's a whole bunch of different ways that you can get therapy or assistance and whatnot, but ultimately you need to have a relationship with a foundation on Jesus in order for you to metaphorically build a house together.

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Absolutely yeah.

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If Christ is not the foundation of both of your lives, it just makes it that much harder because you're not headed towards the same goal.

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One of you might be headed towards the Lord, and One of you might be headed towards the Lord and one of you might be pursuing your own desires, but when you're both following Christ, your desires are going to align with his and he's not going to pull you in two different directions.

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Now we're going to fast forward.

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So instead of the beginning phases of marriage, let's say you are established in your marriage, you have a couple of kids, we're working and all of a sudden it's like, okay, what is truly the priority here?

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Is work going to be your idol and priority?

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Are your kids going to be the idol or priority?

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Family pressures, like extended family, outside relationships, personal sins, like there's a whole bunch of other factors that are now in play that you didn't really foresee or think about and that can lead to a really deep despair area of your life.

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Yeah, it's hard to navigate when you had a dream or a vision of how things would pan out and they don't go like that.

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And to navigate through that season of despair and marriage when it's like, wow, this doesn't look anything like what I hoped it would look like I don't like this at all, you know.

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But knowing that you have your spouse and that you made a promise to them to stick with them and to love them through all the things, and that you're walking with the Lord and that you can lean on him, I lately have been dwelling on the verse Galatians 6, 9.

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It talks about not growing weary Because if you persevere you'll reap a harvest of blessing.

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And just thinking about that and the sense of marriage, like sometimes marriage is hard and maybe raising kids together is more difficult than you expected it to be, or maybe there's conflict with your family and you don't know what to do with that, or you don't know how to get along in that season when you see things differently.

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But knowing that if you persevere there'll be so many blessings in that, it's just such a great verse to lean on and to remind yourself of often.

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Well, and that's important, because when you hit a season of life where you are disappointed or you have feelings of despair, where you're really down in the dumps, there's a level of insecurity that you have and if you're going through some sort of struggle and that struggle lasts more than 24 hours, it can last days to weeks, to months, even to years for some people.

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It can last days to weeks to months, even to years for some people.

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There could be a lot of disconnect.

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Issues like the communication just kind of trails off and then you grow distant from each other and that can allow sin to creep in in very destructive ways.

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But making sure that if you have a strong foundation in your marriage, then you're going to have less of those issues moving forward, and that foundation has to start with your relationship with Jesus.

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So if you are banking on having a really strong relationship with your spouse but Jesus is absent, you might be successful for a temporary amount of time maybe a couple years, maybe several years but eventually there's going to be something that cracks and that's going to cause problems down the road.

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Yeah, christ is definitely the glue.

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Tony and I have experienced seasons where marriage was hard and it felt like I'm super frustrated.

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I don't want to fight about this issue anymore.

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I'm tired of feeling how I feel.

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Do I really want to do this?

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What about my goals and my dreams?

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And like all my own sin starts to creep in and my own selfishness starts to creep in and I feel like this what about me?

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Sort of feeling.

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And when we've gone through those seasons, really one of the biggest things that we've done is just turn to the Lord together.

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I don't feel like praying and I don't feel like holding your hand, but I know that our marriage brings God glory.

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I want to continue to bring Him glory.

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To be able to do that, I need Him and you need Him.

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Let's go to the Lord together and I feel like that's been just a consistent thing that when we're going through hard times, turning to him together and holding hands and praying just really helps refocus our purpose.

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Well, that's even difficult, sometimes too right.

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There are moments where we've experienced, you know, frustration, or sadness, or disappointment, and it's like, hey, you know, one of us will say, hey, let's pray together, and the other one will say or ask, like, can you pray?

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Yeah?

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Yeah, you just are at a point where you have no desire to even talk to God, but hopefully the other person has enough strength or encouragement to go before the Lord and encourage each other.

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Encourage you before God.

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At the end of the day, you have to remember you're a team too that even if you don't have the words to say hopefully your spouse does that the Holy Spirit is just working in their heart to say the things that need to be said.

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So one of the key differences here, talking about disappointment and despair, so disappointment is the sadness or the displeasure caused by the non-fulfillment of somebody's hopes and expectations.

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I think that's what people experience a lot in marriage, where you have those expectations.

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Where do you see yourself in five to ten years after?

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you're married.

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It's like, oh you know, maybe a couple kids have a job.

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Big white house with the picket fence.

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Nice house Flowers.

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Not even the American dream.

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Just like having a house.

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And then you know, ten years down the road it's like okay, I have kids that are crazy, I hate my job and the house is too small and I argue with my spouse all the time, though, like those things they compound on each other yeah, but the point is, you know you had these expectations and it's like, oh yeah, you know you checked all the boxes but they're unfulfilling.

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Now despair is a little bit deeper, where it is the absence, the complete absence, or loss of hope, where, in disappointment, there is a level of, you know, frustration, but you can at least see hope to get through it.

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Whether that be you know, a couple of years down the road, it's like it's like trying to get out of debt.

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We came up with a plan and it was like, okay, it took a couple of years, but it was a couple of hard years, but we could see the end in sight, whereas despair, you just don't see the end.

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And I think a lot, of, a lot of people that experience despair in marriage are in a really tough spot.

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That, I would say, is a red flag and needs to be taken care of.

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That is meeting with a pastor, going to a therapist, a Bible-based counselor, somebody to really help you navigate these issues, because you don't want sin to creep in.

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And then you don't want to file for divorce or separation where it's just destroying your family, that's with kids or not.

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So, going back to the family unit, the family unit was designed by God and yet, even though God designed the family, it's still broken, with sinful people in a broken world, and the world is also sinful.

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So, knowing that reality, do you think it is possible that we can still worship God through disappointment?

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Oh yeah, absolutely, I think about.

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How do we, yeah, how can we get to that spot?

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Well, let me pause and answer your first question about is it possible?

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Yeah, I think the Bible talks about, I believe, the verses in 1 Thessalonians about rejoicing, always, praying without ceasing and in everything giving thanks.

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And I think, even in seasons of disappointment.

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Maybe it's even more so important in those seasons of disappointment to pray without ceasing.

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That, god, I need you.

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God, be in this situation.

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God, give me reasons to rejoice, help me to find things to be joyful for, to be thankful for, and I think that God is glorified when we are thankful, even in seasons when we don't feel like it that's huge when you don't feel like praising him and when you don't feel thankful for the things you have or the season that you're in, to write those things down and just give him the glory in those things.

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I think, when it comes to if people were to say you can't worship God while disappointed or even through disappointment, then there's not going to be any room for people to worship God.

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Here's a couple of examples People might be disappointed with a physical body that just isn't working right.

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You have a body that is aging and is not working the same.

00:22:45.633 --> 00:22:54.575
Or maybe you're disappointed with a loss of a job because maybe God designed well he did.

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He designed work to be rewarding, yet because of sin, it's often burdensome.

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Or even you're disappointed because of a broken up family, because God designs family to be intimate.

00:23:08.608 --> 00:23:16.490
And so, like you have all of these different examples where you're going to be disappointed or you're going to fall into despair.

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And if you say, well, I'm going to wait to try and worship God after I don't feel disappointed, it's not going to happen.

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And the fact is, you can worship, we can worship God through despair and through disappointment, even though our feelings or our emotions get in the way.

00:23:36.070 --> 00:23:39.288
And so how do we do that?

00:23:39.288 --> 00:23:41.881
I got two points, I think.

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The first is people need to lament and then they need to seek.

00:23:47.660 --> 00:23:51.888
Oh, I like that we don't take time to lament very often.

00:23:52.128 --> 00:23:56.871
No, and I think oftentimes people say you know, just seek the Lord, seek the Lord, seek the Lord.

00:23:56.871 --> 00:24:28.844
It's like, yeah, that's valid, but at the same time, I think there's a huge piece that's missing, because we can continue to seek the Lord, but there's going to be moments in time where he's not going to respond and it just feels isolating, or he responds in the exact opposite way that you expect and though it's supposed to bring blessing, your attitude is going to be so far in the dumps that you're going to be well, might fall more into despair than you were before, going to be well, might fall more into despair than you were before.

00:24:28.844 --> 00:24:29.305
And so lament.

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This is a faith-filled complaint to God.

00:24:30.626 --> 00:24:41.848
You're expressing your complaints to God and if you think, you know, if we think complaining to God is bad, it's like it's not he can handle it, and you're also being honest and truthful with him.

00:24:42.400 --> 00:24:45.390
But he already knows your heart anyway, so he knows those things.

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And so, yeah, you don't want to, like when you're in the workplace or when you're at home and all you hear is complain, complain, complain, like yeah, it gets old real quick.

00:24:54.526 --> 00:24:56.705
But God is completely different.

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He's going to listen to those complaints.

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And if you're just kind of, you know, complaining for the sake of complaining, yeah, that's not faith-filled, that's just expressing your frustration, which to an extent is okay.

00:25:14.364 --> 00:25:23.605
But lamenting is a faith-filled complaint, trusting that God is going to show up through your complaints, and then you should transition into seeking him, seeking his will.

00:25:24.126 --> 00:25:25.188
I almost think of.

00:25:25.689 --> 00:25:41.991
I'm going to just say I differ a little bit on my view of lamenting and I probably should look at a real definition of this, but when I think of lamenting, I think of mourning what I hoped would be, but I think that we need to be careful about limiting our time in that season.

00:25:42.661 --> 00:25:55.990
I think it's good to mourn what you hoped would be, but I think it's also important to acknowledge the gifts and the blessings that you have and to look around you and see how God has blessed you in this season, even though you thought it would look different.

00:25:55.990 --> 00:26:06.742
And I think you still need to give him the glory in that, not just moping and saying, oh, woe is me, and then giving God all your complaints about your spouse.

00:26:06.742 --> 00:26:22.188
You could make a list a mile long about the things that you wished would have been or whatever but I think it's important to say God, I had really hoped for this, I had really desired this in my marriage.

00:26:22.188 --> 00:26:23.631
Would you work in my marriage?

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Would you work in my spouse and taking those things to the Lord in a way that's honoring to him and knowing that he's all powerful and he's good and that he has a plan for your life.

00:26:33.148 --> 00:26:35.473
This is in Psalm 51, 12.

00:26:35.473 --> 00:26:43.492
And this was a Psalm written by David after Nathan rebuked him of his adultery with Bathsheba.

00:26:43.492 --> 00:27:04.113
It says Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me when you have the king of Israel, david arguably the best king of Israel fall into sin like he did and cry out, lament to God and seek him.

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Fall into sin like he did and cry out, lament to God and seek him, asking simply to restore to him the joy of salvation.

00:27:12.663 --> 00:27:18.595
At the heart of every Christian is the fact that you are going to be welcomed into the kingdom of heaven when you die.

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You have a relationship with Jesus, and oftentimes we just completely overlook that, and so, through despair, through disappointment, reminding ourselves and seek, lamenting and seeking God and asking him to restore to, even to even ourselves, the joy of salvation is really rich.

00:27:41.653 --> 00:27:47.431
Thank you so much for tuning in to the Walk Family podcast today.

00:27:47.961 --> 00:27:52.291
If you haven't realized already, laura and I are switching the format of our show.

00:27:52.291 --> 00:28:07.490
The primary difference is that we have changed our releases to fit more of a serial format, which means we will be sending out episodes throughout, each week for a season, then, once the next season begins, another series will come out.

00:28:07.490 --> 00:28:11.891
Each series will contain around 10 to 12 episodes give or take.

00:28:11.891 --> 00:28:17.653
For the winter season of 2025, seasons of Despair is our series.

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We still release an episode on Tuesdays, but you may see another episode pop up later in the same week as well.

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Also, be sure to hit the little bell to subscribe.

00:28:28.684 --> 00:28:32.240
It gives you each episode instantly once it's published.

00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:42.152
You can always connect with us at our website, thewalkfmcom, and, if you are really interested, a link in the show notes below allows you to sign up for our monthly newsletter.

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Our letter contains updates on the Smith family to stay connected with us, while also providing tips, tricks and challenges we are experiencing.

00:28:51.201 --> 00:29:02.490
If you sign up, you also get a free sneak peek to the first chapter of Prayer and Promises, which is a book that I'm writing and will hopefully be publishing this year.

00:29:02.490 --> 00:29:04.946
Thanks again and be blessed.

Finding Strength in Marital Despair

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