145. Remaining Sane in Your Marriage While Parenting a Toddler: Our 4th Year of Marriage

Carrie: Welcome to episode 145. I am back with my husband. Today, for those of you who are new to the show, every year we get together and do a anniversary episode and I think it’s still relevant. It’s helpful for people to know a little bit about our lives, but then also the things that we talk about on these episodes really are relatable as far as marriage and parenting and those types of situations that I know other people are going through too. So hopefully it helps you feel more normal.

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.

We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right in to today’s episode.

Happy October. I hope that you are enjoying all the fun things that fall has to bring. Here on the podcast, we are doing a very special giveaway in October. We are going to be giving away a 100 gift card to Amazon for anyone who is an email subscriber to the list and who rates and reviews our show on iTunes.

There will be full instructions for entering the giveaway in our show notes, because I don’t want to take up too much time here. You can always reach us for further information at kerrybach. com slash podcast. I will tell you, Steve, that one of our more popular episodes on the show is our dating episode.

Would you believe that?

Steve: No, I would not.

Carrie: Anyway, well, I guess there are a lot of other people like myself who were anxious about dating, who are going through anxiety about dating. That’s a relatable episode to individuals who are struggling with that. And I know a lot of people have relationship anxiety based on past relationships.

So I’m glad that people are benefiting from that episode that we recorded over four years ago now on the floor of our old walk in closet.

Steve: Yes, thankfully we have upgraded slightly here, so that’s good.

Carrie: Yeah, people can’t see that now. Has it really been four years? Wow.

Steve: I mean, it makes sense, we’ve been married, but still, wow, time flies.

Carrie: Yes. That’s good. This episode is actually coming out on our anniversary day.

Steve: Well, that’s a good day for this to come out.

Carrie: Yes, it was a slightly chilly morning in October when we got married.

Steve: Yes.

Carrie: At a park during COVID. So here we are, four years later, life’s quite different than it was back then. We got married and we had a daughter and now we are in the toddler parenting years.

Steve: Oh yes.

Carrie: Do you want to tell the folks some of the fun things that we get to hear on a regular basis and deal with? I love you so much. Me too.

Steve: I hear that one quite often. What else? She has a lot of phrases. What is this? I always was prepared for the constant question of but why, but why, but instead our daughter chose the route of what is this?

And it could be anything, it could be her foot, it doesn’t matter, and after you tell her she’s going to ask it again and again and again, but the same thing. What is this? I have told you 25 times that is your foot, but that is how she gets attention and learn.

Carrie: Sometimes she doesn’t know what it is, but sometimes she does know what it is and you’re like, why are you asking me?

Like, you know, that’s a dog. I don’t understand. And then I’m trying to figure out, is she asking me, is that a particular type of dog or is she asking me something specifically on the dog? Like, is that a collar? Like, what is it that she’s really wanting to know? Because sometimes it’s a little bit more detailed.

Steve: And I will say it is fun and interesting to kind of learn from her view of things. Things we take for granted that we just know. We know what those are. We know why we say this or do that. But to learn things for the first time from her view and her perspective, that’s kind of neat. And she always, not always, but almost always replies with, uh huh.

She just suddenly understands now and you know she has no clue. It’s just a response. But anyways.

Carrie: In a lot of ways, it’s been a really good year with her. There’s been a lot of highs, her taking some swimming lessons this summer, which was really sweet. And she started out just being totally terrified of the pool and the concept of being in the water.

But then she really warmed up to it and enjoyed her lessons. And now occasionally she’ll try to float in the bathtub, which is cool. So that’s nice. There’s also been some lows of lots of big emotions when you’re two, like lots of screaming and tantruming and

Steve: overwhelm and Yes. I know now I know why older people are hard of hearing because maybe just possibly they had children that screamed for 10 straight minutes because they didn’t get their way.

And that’s probably why our parents have ringing of the ears and all of those things because of all the screaming. So it’s part of it.

Carrie: Yeah. Sometimes I just have to plug my ears and walk away cause she’s got some lungs on her and she can scream really loud and she never loses her voice. That is a thing that does not happen at all.

So here we are. What are some of the challenges that you feel like we’ve experienced in terms of parenting her? Potty training. What was the question

Steve: again? I’m sorry. Potty training. Potty training. And do we let her just wear a diaper, not wear a diaper, wet her clothes? Go naked. Go naked. What do we do here?

Potty training, what? How long does this take? Huh. Oh, we could do this in a weekend. Yes, you can go insane in a weekend too, but I don’t know if that’s the route I want to go.

Carrie: She is.

Steve: As much as I joke about it, and forgive my sarcasm, that’s my coping mechanism, but she is beginning to get it, I think. She constantly informs me and us that, hey, I’ve gotta go potty, I’ve gotta go the other way, I’ve gotta whatever.

Of course, at this point, it’s part of the learning process.

Carrie: The ship has already sailed by that point, so she’s saying something about it.

Steve: Right, exactly. But we’re getting there. We are getting there. It’s just a slow go. And I’m sure every parent has tips, and the thing we’ve noticed from others the most is that was the worst part about parenting.

And going into it, we’re like, Don’t tell us that. But now that we’ve been through it a little bit, and we’re not finished, but we would agree with you that’s probably the worst moment in all honesty, or at least from my perspective, I would agree.

Carrie: That we’ve been through so far. Yeah. I think part of the problem is that you have these expectations, right, or people tell you like what to expect.

Oh. Do this, just pump them up with a bunch of juice and have them go naked and have the little potty seat, do the songs, dance around if they go to the bathroom, and like, you’ll be fine, and they’ll get it, and then you realize over time as a parent, you’re like, okay, everything does not always work the way you want it to.

that people are saying it will go and for me I have to reframe that and say that doesn’t mean I’m a failure as a parent because it didn’t work out exactly as I thought it was going to go but more how can I learn my child and what’s going to be best for her how is she going to be motivated to learn and what’s her timeline what’s her process which may be different than someone else’s timelines though so that’s been.

Challenging conception. I think so much to where as parents in this bubble, it’s like being in a, this glass bubble and you feel like everyone is looking at you or are they judging me because I wasn’t able to potty train my child in a weekend. It’s a school wondering, like, what’s going on? You keep sending her in pull ups.

Is she trained yet? Is she not? They’re asking me, like, uh, how’s the potty training going? I’m like, uh.

Steve: And of course you have to wonder, surely we’re not the first parents who have potty trained their child for you to understand that, and nothing against the school, but when they keep asking, you have to wonder, like, what are these other parents doing?

Do they, does the weekend thing just work for them? Because I think it doesn’t, given the responses I’ve heard from other people, but other parents.

Carrie: And maybe it does when you just hit him at that right time and maybe we started too early. I don’t know.

Steve: I don’t know. But I know that we’ve tried to be patient and diligent and we just gotta keep with it.

But it’s hard. It is definitely hard. I know last night, Oddly enough, and I don’t think I told you this, she didn’t want to wear her diaper to bed. I said, Oh, you know, honey, that is daddy’s comfort zone right there. No, we’re not going to bed without a potty. No, no, can’t do that. But I appreciated the idea that tells me that she is slowly getting it.

She’s getting used to at least the idea of it. Maybe not fully understanding the science behind it, but the idea of it.

Carrie: Long term goals, child. Long term goals to go to bed in underwear for sure.

Steve: Yes.

Carrie: One thing that’s certainly a challenge, you have different challenges earlier on in your relationship. Like when you’re first getting to know someone, and then you live together, there’s other challenges that come up that you have to kind of figure out and navigate through.

And then when you have a child, there’s this shared responsibility of the child trying to be on the same page and do the same things for them. Then also trying to figure out how do we have time for ourselves as a couple? What does that look like? Date night was super easy when we were first married and didn’t have a kid.

It’s like, oh, no problems. We’ll just go out, whatever. We want to kind of within reason and finances, but we didn’t have to worry about getting a babysitter or making sure our kid was in bed by a certain time. We didn’t have to have those challenges. And that’s hard.

Steve: Yeah, that is hard, especially when, not just for date night, but people will invite us places or church will have an event or whatever and, oh yeah, it starts at six or let’s meet at six, whatever.

Yeah, that’s not gonna work because we want to start the process of putting her to bed at like 630. That’s not a routine you want to break. There are a lot of routines that I’m willing to break for one night or whatever, but going to sleep is not one of them. That is a hard no, most of the time. And, uh, we miss a lot of things.

Carrie: There’s a challenge too, I think, with making friends with children who also have toddlers because a lot of times somebody in the family will be sick, you’ll be trying to get together with people and then it’s like, oh, well, so and so in our family is sick. And that can be a challenge, I think, to make connections.

We have a really great friend group and really great supports. A lot of people that don’t have children that are married. But. We don’t really have a whole lot of, that’s something that I’m kind of continually processing in my own mind. How can I get my mom tribe? They haven’t really showed up on the scene yet, so if you want, if you’re in the area and you want to join, I’m available.

That’s hard too.

Steve: We had children later in life. so most of the people, at least my age, I’m even older than you, they’re on grandchildren now. And I heard somebody recently that was actually a year younger than me talking about their seven year old grandchild. And I thought, oh my gosh, that’s, no, I don’t even have a seven year old.

I have two and a half year olds. We’re later, so it’s hard to find people in our same mix, which fortunately for us, it’s making friends with people doesn’t mean they have to be our age.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: That’s a blessing, but it’s difficult.

Carrie: It’s hard to make friends, though, as an adult. I hear this a lot from clients, not just you and I have certainly talked about it, but other people too.

It’s hard to find reciprocal relationships where you can kind of go back and forth and invite people and they invite you and those types of things. It’s a challenge.

Steve: It is.

Carrie: Well, when we were talking about date night, one of the things that we were challenged by that we’ve been going through this year is grace marriage.

So grace marriage emphasizes a few different things. For those of you who don’t know what grace marriage is, it’s a marriage enrichment program that meets four times a year at church. They have little videos that you watch and then you. break up into a small group, you may have some small group discussion about the specific topic, but then you have one on one time with your spouse, a lot of break offs kind of with your spouse where you can talk about specific topics in your relationship, which has been really interesting.

It’s different. We’ve never done anything like that before. What’s your overall impression been?

Steve: Well, I think that grace marriage is a wonderful, wonderful tool for any couple. A lot of people might think that that’s something that you go through once you have difficulty, but every relationship has its difficulties.

And if you’re the relationship that says, we have none, I suggest you get the information and go quickly because everybody has a problem. It just, every relationship has an issue. And so it’s good to build your foundation on as a couple. And grow from, and we’ve had times where we watched our little video segment, whatever.

And then we went off to the side and discussed some questions about what we just saw or heard. And there have been situations where, or questions that I didn’t realize that answer was going to be what Kerry said. I had no idea. I was like, Oh, I didn’t know that’s how you felt. Wow. Okay, that changes some things.

And for good, usually. It makes you more aware. You go into things thinking you know everything, but usually you don’t.

Carrie: Right, I think there definitely have been some surprising moments, even when they ask you, like, what do you appreciate about your spouse? And then you share that with each other, you make a list, like, here are some things that I see in you, some positive qualities in these different domains in your life.

And I was like, oh, wow. That was really nice that Steve said that about me.

Steve: And isn’t that the thing though, that it’s good to hear the good things. We always like, ugh, you never, you this, that, whatever. We complain about one another. That’s just how couples are. I mean, we don’t go around complaining about one another all day, I hope.

But it’s not as often that you hear the good things of what someone thinks about you. I think that’s a, I don’t know if misnomer is the right wording for that, but it’s assumed that the other person already understands what you feel.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: But even if they know what you feel, they need to hear it every now and then.

Yeah. That’s something I’ve definitely had to grow on and learn from.

Carrie: Yeah, it’s something that we’ve been to two of these so far, and it’s something that they essentially kind of started out with on both of them was talking about appreciation for your spouse. Because it is, it’s easy for us in our minds to get focused on the negative, not just in your relationship with your spouse, but other areas of your life.

Like, oh. Let me think about all the things I don’t like about this job instead of, oh, here are the really good things about this job, or here are the positive things that are happening in my work situation. And so if we have to really retrain our brains in that sense to focus more on things that are good and true and lovely.

Like the scripture tells us to do, I think that that’s crucial for our sense of contentment and joy in our life, really focusing on those positive things, but Gottman, who’s a marriage researcher, talks about, I think it’s like a seven to one ratio talking to your spouse, like, Seven compliments for every one criticism is a good ratio to have.

Steve: I gotta get back on the ball. I’m behind.

Carrie: No, you’re good. You’re good. That was one piece of grace marriage that we really got out of, but then another piece had to do with what we were talking about earlier, this sense of dating your spouse and how we put a lot of emphasis in early on in our relationship as we’re getting to know that person, to Go out and do fun things or spend time together, but then life gets busy in our marriage, jobs get busy, your parenting gets busy, then there’s church responsibilities that we have, we have a small group that we lead once a week, so that takes up some time to plan that, certainly, and all the other things that we have going on, and then to really make our relationship a priority, and that’s something that we’re kind of failing forward in, I would say, Sometimes we’re really good at the date stuff, and sometimes for us it looks like a date day while our daughter is in school.

If I can carve out some time on a Wednesday during the week, or if we can get somebody to watch her or go to drop in child care, things like that, we have like an evening out.

Steve: And wasn’t it in the past, and I may have mentioned this before, but the, that my doctor said, Doctor appointments are not a date, that doesn’t count, because we’re always together on those, almost always, and it’s often just the two of us, but what we have done, is you go to the doctor appointment, and then afterwards, we might go out for coffee, or for lunch, or something.

And I’ve enjoyed that. In a sense, it’s also a reward for getting past the doctor appointment, which if you have to go to the doctor often, as I have had, it’s a real treat to get to do something special, even if it is just going for coffee. So it’s nice.

Carrie: And I cannot remember the name of the restaurant, but there’s this really good taco place across from Vanderbilt.

Would we go to see you? You’re a neurologist. And so it’s like, yes, because usually you have to wait a while. You’re waiting a while around there and then you get to see the doctor and then it’s like, okay, let’s go get tacos afterwards. Yes,

Steve: absolutely. And I’m normally not as much, I like street tacos and I like authentic tacos.

Some people call those things tacos. They are not tacos. But that’s just my rant. But this place was wonderful. It had a good atmosphere and really good food. So I’ll leave it at that. But that was definitely, that’s a place I want to go back to.

Carrie: Yeah, for sure. One of the things that we’ve done over this past year through church, well, we’ve got a couple of things going on.

I’ve talked about this before, but we are part of a church plant that we are trying to plant a church from kind of the main church over where we’re going to and then put one in Smyrna. So, that’s kind of, we have different activities and outreaches for that. We don’t really have a name yet. We don’t have a pastor.

It’s a very bizarre type situation. We do have several small groups that are going and outreach events that are happening. But we are also reading through the Bible, which has been interesting part of the process this year. I know that you’ve probably read through the Bible before. What do you feel like has been different about this year as you’re reading it through?

Steve: Well, we’re doing it chronologically,

Carrie: Which is a big difference.

Steve: By going through the Old Testament, it can be very difficult to get through all the sections that are like begat and so and so’s name and this many years and this much measurement and those things. But then when you can have the order that it was put in, it becomes more relevant.

Because when you’re reading the Bible as we have it now, it doesn’t make as much sense to me. Now it makes more sense on some of those areas.

Carrie: They intersperse the prophets with chronicles or, you know, kings and chronicles, the parts that overlap, put those together and they kind of, this one did something interesting with the Psalms.

It kind of interspersed them throughout the different pieces of the Old Testament. where they felt like they were relevant. When I was reading through a different chronological Bible, they grouped the Psalms together almost by topics. Here are the Psalms about this for worship and here are the Psalms about this.

I think the thing that has stood out to me about it is a couple of things. One, There are just some weird parts of the Bible. There’s no other way to say it. There’s just, like, there was one time Like the talking donkey? Well, there’s the talking donkey, but I mean, there was a time where God told something like Jeremiah to throw his underwear in the river.

Yeah. And then Ezekiel hit some of the stuff that he did was just very strange. And

Steve: statues with all the faces, yeah, yes,

Carrie: yes, a lot of symbolism. And if you look at the whole theme of the scriptures, reading through chronologically, it’s like God has certain commands, God’s holy, and he’s like, Hey, I need you to follow these laws.

But because God’s all knowing, he already knew people were going to mess it up. It’s like, here’s your commands, of course they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. God said, okay, you’re getting shipped out of here, like, I’m going to have some people come in and conquer you, you’re going to be exiled, but I’m going to bring you back.

And so there’s this interesting parental balance. And I feel like we go through it as parents, right? It’s like, okay, strict versus gracious and loving. It’s like, you got to be strict at times and say, no, you’re not getting away with that. Get your little butt in time out. You know, you’re not acting right.

Like you don’t get to just haul off and hit me because I didn’t give you what you wanted. You have to get in time out. And then. There’s also these pieces of like, Hey, I love you. Come sit over here and let me talk with you or tell me about your day or what happened today. And I see that with God too. God saying, Hey, you’re in the wrong.

There were so many things going on. They’re like, you’re not treating the poor correctly. You’re not taking my ceremony seriously like that. He was speaking through the prophets, but then he said, okay, but I’m going to bring you back. And I love you. And I’m not letting you go. And I’m not ever giving up on you.

So, even when we mess, God has good plans for us. God wants to bring us back into relationship with him. That door is always open and anybody that’s hearing this, it feels like they’ve gone too far from God or they’re like, I just can’t get it together. God knows that and understands. He might be disciplining you through this process, but it’s before you’re good because he wants to bring you back into relationship with him in a healthy way.

Steve: And I’ve heard people say this, I’m just too far gone. There’s no such thing. You’re still living and breathing. You are not too far gone. I can think of an individual in my mind who was on their deathbed, taking, I don’t even know if they had seven breaths left in them, and they wanted Jesus right then and there.

They’re like, yeah, I knew him as a child. Let’s go back to that. And I thought, golly, they went their whole life practically from their twenties onto their deathbed. Just running, running from him, and then on their last few breaths, they realized in the reality of everything and their shame and their pride and whatever was holding them back before, he still loves me.

He hasn’t given up on me, even in your last seven breaths or whatever it is. So it’s never too late. He just wants to love us. Like you said, it’s the same way with parenting. A good parent, you always love your child, even in the midst of the kicking and the screaming and the chaos. And just like with God, you just want to spend good quality time with your child.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: When God wants out of us, spend some quality time with me. My goodness. Slow down for a minute. Stop being so selfish.

Carrie: And sometimes when we’re having a bad day, we just need love. Absolutely. Recently, with Faith, I’ve been telling her if she starts to get kind of whiny or fussy, I’m like, do you want me to hug the cranky out of you?

And sometimes I say that to her first thing in the morning because she wakes up a little cranky. So today I said, do you need me to hug the cranky out of you? And she’ll say, yes. And I’m like, okay, well, come here.

Steve: Yeah, I think she wakes up like I do, a little cranky, a little out of it, and she comes around.

And for the record, she’s 99 percent of the time, she’s sweet and fun loving. She’s at her best when other people are around though.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: So I used to joke and say, let’s just put a bunch of mannequins in the house or always have people over or something because that’s when she’s her best.

Carrie: That’s when she’s her best self.

Steve: I don’t think I want to potty train that way though.

Carrie: Uh, no, that’d be a little awkward. So give everybody your update on your SCA. So you have Spina Cerebellar Ataxia. And how has it been going this last year? Because that was kind of took up some of our first few episodes.

Steve: Well, my unbalanced is a little bit more balanced.

Don’t know if that makes sense, but I have a disease that part of it is, is that I’m unbalanced and nothing has really gotten worse for the most part. I’m still going through some of it. I still have the aches and the pains and the different little things. I’ll spare y’all the wah, but you take it day by day and you just deal with it.

Everybody has something, right? So, I haven’t really gotten anything major that’s new, which is great news. When I go to the neurologist next, I’m kind of interested to see if they see any changes, but my regular doctor, everything’s normal, good, with me in general, so that’s a good thing.

Carrie: As far as we know, your vision hasn’t changed over the last two years hasn’t changed.

Steve: There’s some minor things that I get, but it’s part of it. So yeah, having it not change any further, that’s a real blessing. If I lost complete sight today, I’d be okay with it. I mean, I could live with that. My prayer was answered in that I just wanted to see my daughter. That was it. And I’ve gotten to see so much of her, especially when she’s dancing around and being silly.

She’s got some dance moves, I’ll tell you. But anyways, it’s good to see that.

Carrie: Even in spite of all the challenges that we face and that you have, we’re living a blessed life right now and just are thankful for each day that you’re here and able to spend time with Faith and able to see her and able to be involved and do the things that you do.

So love and life in our new house and yes,

Steve: we’ve had a lot of changes this year haven’t we?

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: Goodnessvgracious.

Carrie: We have.

Steve: But all good. All good. I remember a couple years ago finding out my diagnosis and having faith and some of those things that went on. That was a tough year. Those changes were difficult.

These changes were things that do help us.

Carrie: Yeah. Things that we’ve been wanting. So now I have a bonus area upstairs where I can work and record the podcast, but for the most part, you don’t come up here. You did come up today, but for the most part, you don’t come upstairs.

Steve: This might be my fifth time upstairs, maybe.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: Fifth, I think fifth, but I do not come upstairs very often. That is not something I enjoy doing. That’s part of the reason we moved out of the other house was because of the stairs.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: But it’s nice for you. You can get away from me and not have to deal with me for a little while. Not that I’m that problematic, but it’s nice.

You can come up here and be by yourself and no issues.

Carrie: Well, thanks everyone for listening to our show today and telling you about our fourth year of marriage update. We are happy to be here and hopefully you got just what you needed out of this episode. That’s our prayer, but it’s a nice little, I think, almost journal entry for us once a year that we do.

Kind of update people on our relationship and on our year. Hopefully you can learn something from our stories. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person.

And leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith in OCD is a production of by the well Counseling Opinions given by our guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or by the Well counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.