Navigating Marriage Through Busy Seasons Podcast Episode

I don’t think even necessarily that the ultimate goal is a better marriage. It is a more sanctified individual that is walking more closely with the Lord, but it’s also a sanctifying work in the busy season that I think anchors us to something much bigger that God can do and is doing when we accept there are seasons. 

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Wonderful as always, to have you along today, I’ve got Kaleb Beyer here in the studio with me. Welcome Kaleb. Good to be with you, Matt. Kaleb, we’re going to talk about busy seasons in marriage. 

Let’s just think of that family who’s tied to the agricultural calendar, for example. You’ve got a rhythm and a busy season. Accounting has a busy season, education has a season when school is in session and when school is not in session. And the list could go on and on where in marriage we bind ourselves one to another. And we live life together. And those seasons can pose challenges.  

And so, we really want to speak about the nature of this particular situation with your experience in working with people. Yes, for sure. Both personally, but also in working with couples in various circumstances where there’s a season that squeezes the marriage or places pressure on it. And so, navigating those periods and seasons can be challenging in various ways. And so, I think it’s pertinent to be able to have a conversation and to think through. Let’s just go right there speaking to some of the challenges. What are some of the challenges that a marriage going through seasons can expect.  

Yeah, so for one, it’s just the reality of stress. If we use farming or agriculture as an example, when it comes to planting season, it is about getting seed in the ground, and at times that means long hours. That means low sleep. That means, also the stress sometimes with the weather and breakdowns with equipment and then it’s true also in the harvest season. 

And those are two activities that cannot be pushed off. Absolutely. And it affects the bottom dollar, which again, we would say, oh well, as a farmer, that’s what you depend on for the rest of the year. And you have that conversation with an accountant as well. During the tax season they have no ability to move April 15th. That is the deadline. Yeah, and in teaching as well. Spouses in the teaching profession have certain parts of that calendar when they are taxed with a lot of supervision, a lot of activity, and they can’t move that. Yeah. So, you have the stress piece. 

You also have the reorientation that at some level you’re necessarily focusing on your marriage less. Your mind is being consumed by things that are pressing that have a deadline. And so that can be distracting to the relationship. 

Well, certainly in a relationship attention is really important. To be attentive to your spouse, to be attentive towards a relationship, to be attentive to the family. Yeah. And there is a very warranted distraction from those things. Is that what you’re speaking to? 

Yeah. And with that, one marital researcher, John Gottman, talks about love maps, and that’s about knowing what’s going on in each other’s lives. Well, knowing and updating those, the idea would be we need to update those over time. It’s not like Rebecca knows. She has one conversation, and she knows what’s going on in your life for the rest of the year. 

No, we need to update those each week, sometimes each day. What do you have going this day? Well, when there is a busy season, there’s less time for fulfilling my inner world with what’s going on in my spouse’s life. Does that make sense? And updating it and so there’s less connection. 

I was just going to go there. It sounds to me like connectivity is on the line. Yeah. So, speak to connection then. What do we mean by connection? What is connection and what can the absence of connection do? Yeah. So, when we talk about connection, it is that aspect of knowing. Not just knowing facts about our spouse, but actually knowing them, knowing their heart, what’s going on with their emotions, what they’re looking forward to that week, what they have coming up that they’re afraid of, or that’s consuming their mind. Right. Or their heart, or even their walk with the Lord and how they’re walking through that. 

And so knowing it is actually not just knowing it cognitively in a sense that I’m able to identify it, but experientially I’m able to connect with what it’s like for my spouse to walk through this day, what it’s like for my spouse to walk through this week. Right. We would say that’s connection and my spouse understanding that. 

I get that if this communication isn’t done and connection is not made in the ways that you’ve prescribed, what can we expect? Yeah. It just provides inroads to other things coming in, whether that’s an increase in more unhealthy conversation, or just critical thoughts or unhelpful thoughts towards my spouse or stories we would tell. We’ve talked about stories before, but it leads to our minds being filled with unhelpful things related to the relationship or our spouse and feeling alone at some level in this relationship, like I’m over here, whether it’s the spouse in the field or the spouse at home with kids. 

It’s like I’m doing this on my own. This doesn’t feel good. It’s not good for man to be alone. So, let’s speak to each spouse separately. Let’s talk about spouse A as the one who is busy and spouse B as the one who is picking up all of the pieces. 

Okay. Are those two clear? Yeah. Let’s take one at a time. What would you say spouse A should be thinking or remembering? Yeah, so this is the challenging thing, Matt, because spouse A is the one that’s busy in the field in this example. So, to keep in mind their various ways, if we take the example of a farmer in the field, to stay connected or check in, or to be able to seek, to pursue what it’s like for spouse B to be at home picking up the pieces. And so, there is an intentional understanding of what’s happening even though that means stepping outside of the stress of am I going to get so many acres done today or there was just a breakdown. And so, I think it is intentionally seeking the other and trying to understand in an understanding way. So, as was said before, that’s the connective piece that we need to step into as spouse A. We need to connect with the lack of us in another place. 

Yeah. Right. Yeah, in an understanding way and maybe we don’t see that seems to be a possibility. Yeah, when we’re pretty distracted and we’ve got our minds on other things. I think at times, and maybe that’s part of it that spouse A acknowledges through this busy season, there are times I’m going to miss it. 

How can we have a conversation as a couple to be able to bring those conversations up. You know what? I feel like you’ve been missing what’s happening at home. Can we have a conversation about that? And obviously it’s going to look different in busy season than when you have an evening together. 

But at least together you have language to use to bring up that sense of not feeling heard or understood or seen. In the relationship, it sounds like a check-in type of mentality. Yeah. Going into the season with a check-in type of mentality is pretty important. Yeah, and I think we need to acknowledge that we can’t expect life to look in the busy season like in the off season. It’s just unrealistic. We have to have realistic expectations, and that maybe you’re speaking a little bit to spouse B, while both spouses need to have the understanding of this. 

Go to spouse B. Certainly that would probably be one of those times where we could say role acceptance. This can be different for different people, I would say in this example of those who are in the farming community where spouse B has grown up in the farming community and they have an understanding of what that means and what it looks like and maybe have come to accept it.  

Others have come to say, I don’t like this. I don’t want it. And here I’m married to a farmer. Yeah. But there is a need for there to be an appreciation. What is it about this that we can appreciate? Maybe it is the off season. Yes. I don’t like the busy season but is there something about this that actually is a pro, we would say that’s a benefit? And so, I think the need for spouse B to be able to come to a place of accepting the role of this is our lot. Okay. And I am now making some guesses here. If that is not done, bitterness could probably find a way in. 

Absolutely. Yeah. So, that’s really important and it can very easily come into a piece of personalizing or feeling not chosen and that somehow even a spouse who is really intentionally trying to be responsible and a good steward, that somehow leads to conflict as a couple. 

And so, I think as part of that, Matt, one of the things I also would encourage spouse B to do is try to understand what it means to be a farmer. To be an accountant. To be interested at some level, understanding some of that experience. Does that make sense? Because I think with that, you know, it’s interesting. 

I was thinking about this podcast. I talked with several couples and one older couple in Washington Church, whom I really appreciate, and I feel like they’ve navigated this well. One of the things spouse B said was you know, when she came to realize the finances and what that meant for spouse A and how finances work for a farmer versus finances for someone who has an eight to five job. And she really learned about that. It was really a helpful thing for her, and they were in it together making decisions around finances. So, this idea is that we make our money from here to here. Yes. That’s it. Yes. It doesn’t happen any other time. Yeah. And sometimes there are unpredictable things that come up that the weather affects the markets. 

And so, in some years, it’s great. Another year isn’t, and some of those things are just outside of the control of either spouse and so how do we walk through that together as a couple? But again, back to that awareness and understanding some of those simple, basic things about an accountant or a farmer or a teacher. 

But I hear even as you say that though, that spouse B really joins spouse A. And with a we mentality. That this is our lot and this is what we do. Even though we seem separated at this moment, yeah, the busy season has taken its effect, which I think is a really subtle and important point. 

Kaleb, if I were to, I don’t know, what’s the term, get a sense of the way the wind is blowing in today’s culture, marriage is seen a bit more parallel than integrated. That is spouse A does their thing; spouse B does their thing. Yeah. And as long as we can make this work between the two of us, we’ll be fine, but the moment we can’t, then things can dissolve because after all, what we each do individually is most important. 

Is that a fair projection of our culture. Yeah. On a high level, this type of self-accusation I think is maybe some of the terminology there. Yeah. But you’re really calling us to something very different in order to thrive as a marriage in busy season. Yeah. 

Yeah, certainly we would say in Scripture we’re called to oneness, and we’re called to esteem others more highly than yourself. You know, this sense of other doesn’t mean that you forget about yourself, or you don’t take care of yourself in the sense of managing stress well and being able to speak up and share. You know what, I need some time this weekend, or things like that. 

But certainly, it sounds like what you’ve laid forward here is you really do need a framework. Yeah. Both spouse A remembering that they are a we with spouse B and spouse B remembering that they are a we with spouse A. Yeah. And so, understanding each one flowing back and forth. And that check in which you’ve prescribed goes both ways. Yes. And I think that’s an important piece of saying, I see you and I understand this is hard even when this is what our calling or occupation is in life. I know it’s not the easiest. 

And that we can have those conversations and just acknowledge that together as a couple. I think following up with this idea of marriage we’re really positing this conversation with a marital understanding that has a large arc to it that sees past the season. 

In fact, sees the entire calendar, in fact sees the entire marriage over decades. Right. Which is a very different look and feel from only seeing the day that you’re in. So, speak to this larger understanding of marriage that people have stepped into together. With a life that ebbs and flows according to the seasons. 

I think it is helpful for us to have as couples, things that anchor us in time but that we also carry with us. And so, some have used the idea of rituals. We have these things that we do regularly that connect us in a larger reality than this moment, this busy season, this whatever it is, which helps us maintain our connection even when things are more stressful or more difficult or less time, because we know we’ve had other experiences. In a sense, there’s something to look forward to. Right? Yes, you are in preparation for something that you’re reflecting on from that you’ve completed. Yeah. Those types of things are maybe what you’re speaking to in the marital concept. Which is really powerful. 

Yeah. And a couple of those, just again, in talking to some couples, one said that they knew coming through this busy season, they always planned a vacation immediately following planting season. And the family knew it, the kids looked forward to it. And so, there was a sense of, hey, we get through this, we’re going away together. 

And even that can create some conversation during the busy season of, oh, I can’t wait for this to end. Again, that’s one small, but really healthy example that this couple and family is able to look forward to, and with those vacations, they have memories that now they share together as a family, and they become those special times and an artifact of the way we’ve done life. 

Yes. Which are very much a part of the career and the seasons. Yeah. And another one was with agriculture where the spouse at home would bring out a meal and come to the actual field. And for 30 minutes, this means spouse A stops the tractor. And he was very intentional about doing that. And that brought the kids out. And so, they had a meal together. It means stopping, but again, for a short time that we’re able to connect and have some time together.  

Yeah. And I even hear a bit of celebration in what that could have been for couples to build in. What does it look like to celebrate in the season, even though it’s big? Yes. And even though it’s busy and both spouses, just speaking about how meaningful that was, I think that maybe the meaningfulness flows out of an understanding of what it’s like for the other spouse. 

Right. Wow. He is under a load, stressed, and he stops and spends 15, 30 minutes here. Yeah. You know what, she has a lot of things going on at home, and she makes the meal and comes, that brings the kids out and we spend some time together in the field. So, I think the part of the rich meaning is an understanding of the commitment that the other spouse is making to make it happen. 

I really like that, Kaleb, and I hope that just excites brainstorming creativity among our listeners. Yeah. What does it look like in your context? What does it look like with the busy season that you and your family experience, whatever that is on the calendar? What are creative ways to celebrate the busy season, or it’s finish or it’s progress. Yeah. They’re exciting and that is oneness in walking through a busy season together. So, Kaleb celebrations have an aura of big and thoughtful. I would have to believe that some of the solutions to living life in busy season is not the grandiose. Right. So, tell me that there’s something much more local and easier. Yeah. And thankfully there is Matt, right? The whole idea is small things often and that’s the recipe. 

Yeah. And so, what are those small things? Sometimes we just go past these, so when you leave in the morning, how do you say goodbye? Right. Or when you get home. Again, we think about a farmer, maybe the one spouse is in bed, and yeah, so we have to be thoughtful about what this looks like. 

Maybe it’s FaceTime text message, but we’re intentional about, we would say that this whole concept again comes from John Gottman, and he talks about six hours to a better relationship in your week. But one of the interesting things is as you look at that, first you think about six hours, like, yeah, where’s that going to go? 

Wow. Yeah. But. If you put it on a calendar, it’s like five minutes. Goodbye. You know, five minutes. Hello. It’s again small things often, but you’re intentional about those moments that you’re together and before you leave, hey, what do you have coming up today? Right? And then the way you embrace physically matters. 

And so, we’re really intentional about turning towards each other, acknowledging each other, expressing appreciation. Five minutes, and that’s a big deal to do that regularly, day after day after day, that can keep out some of the bitterness, the difficult aspects. It’s not the cure all, but it certainly goes a long way to supporting a couple’s connection through the busy season. I love that. And Ecclesiastes 3, talks about the seasons. For everything there is a season and a purpose under heaven, which is really hopeful, right? To see seasons as purposeful. So, maybe as we close here, Kaleb, what’s God possibly doing in these seasons? 

Because I think he probably doesn’t want to waste it. Right? Yeah. I don’t think even necessarily that the ultimate goal is a better marriage. It is a more sanctified individual that is walking more closely with the Lord and manifesting him day to day and through seasons. 

When I think about God’s heart for this. We have the marriage relationship that we’re called to, we’re called a steward, but it’s also a sanctifying work in the busy season that I think anchors us to something much bigger that God can do and is doing when we accept there are seasons. 

And some seasons I don’t like. I would rather not go through them, but how is it that we are able to learn how to walk through that well and accept life as it is, not as I’d want it to be. I think Jesus provides a really healthy, good model. I think that’s great, and I like that conclusion, Kaleb. Really what we’re talking about here is suffering of some sort. And we suffer together. We suffer well with patience, with one another. Yeah. And I think that when you’re walking through that suffering together, it is a beautiful thing because, you know, there are some things they’re suffering with that are just part of this and they’re doing that to serve you right. To love you.  

And I think that’s a really beautiful thing. That’s powerful. Thanks Kaleb. Thanks, each one for listening. We have so much respect for your marriages, your families, and the calendar years. It would look different for everybody, but I would imagine seasons come to play at some level and this has been excellent. 

Thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you each one for listening. God bless you all.