Faith, Conflict, And Growing Up

Two childhoods shaped by faith, affection, and chaos meet in a marriage that chooses ownership over excuses. We trace how family origins formed our conflict styles, how faith guided our parenting of six, and how reframing turns pain into legacy.

• single-parent home vs youngest of seven
• faith-filled environments with loneliness and anxiety
• affection present alongside absent or conflicted fathers
• conflict styles: open talk vs shutdown and avoidance
• counseling, prayer, and differing church traditions
• early marriage friction and unmet expectations
• meeting in the middle through ownership and repair
• parenting six: discipline, apology, service, and love
• reframing hardship, building resilience, choosing legacy
• practical tools: don’t sleep angry, apologize, keep talking

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Chapters

• 1:15 Setting The Stage: Childhood Homes
• 3:09 Chaos, Love, And Anxiety
• 6:58 Affection, Absence, And Fathers
• 11:02 How Conflict Was Handled
• 18:39 Different Faith Backgrounds Collide
• 22:59 Marriage Growing Pains And Expectations
• 30:33 Meeting In The Middle With Ownership

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:50

Okay, so let's just dive right in. Tell me about your experience growing up. How would you describe your home growing up?

SPEAKER_00: 1:03

I think a word that comes to mind, well, there's a couple words, but one I would say was um it was full of faith, and it was also lonely at times.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19

I would probably answer that question for me, um, turning that question around on myself. There was a lot of chaos growing up, I think. And there was a lot of love. Um, but there was a lot of I think uncertainty at times and chaos. So what was the atmosphere like in your home?

SPEAKER_00: 1:44

Well, I think if you start at the beginning, I grew up in a single family home. And so it was just actually me and my mom. I was an only child, uh, am an only child. And so when I say that aspect of lonely, it was more like it was just me and her. And so when she went to work or she had to do certain things, um, I did spend quite a bit of time alone at times. And so I think that just kind of yeah, that that was that was how I I was surrounded by a lot of family, a lot of extended family. But when it just came to me and her, it was just me and her, which was great. But, you know, I did spend quite a bit of time alone. And yeah, it was faith-filled though. So there was, yeah, there was a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

I grew up youngest of seven. There are six kids pretty close together, and then nine years later, I show up, surprise. And um, so I do remember when I was very little in my early years that we were all under one roof. My parents were married, but then there was, you know, a siblings started moving away, and um the atmosphere in my home um was complicated. It was it was tough sometimes because my family was going through a transition. My parents had been married uh for a while, they had their closer to their 28-year mark, I think is when my family, my parents' marriage began to well before that, but that's when they divorced, but it was starting to unravel. And so some memories growing up weren't great. There was a lot of chaos in the home, and and um well my parents, I I love my parents deeply, and um they were having a lot of challenges, as a lot of families do. Dad's struggling with alcohol, a lot of verbal abuse and physical abuse, and and um things that I maybe experience at a different level than maybe my siblings. And it's interesting because maybe you're listening too, and it's interesting how you can have different sets of people in the same home experiencing maybe the same stressors, exposed to the same stressors, I would say, but their experience of it is actually very individualized, it can be very different. And I think if I had siblings here, they might say some similar things, but have taken a different experience or had a different effect on them. But for me, that was unsettling. So I was I was a very anxious child. So there was a lot of anxiety growing up for me. The atmosphere was uncertain and anxious and um stressful at times. Would you say that your your family and growing up with your mom and extended family was uh was love expressed pretty freely?

SPEAKER_00: 4:51

I would say so. Yeah. I think that we spent a lot of time with extended family and grandparents, and I still had a relationship with my father. And so we did, yeah, I would say love was very much present, very affectionate, um, not just with words, but just actions like you know, pats on the back, hugs, all the things. So I would say so.

SPEAKER_01: 5:18

I think our family was very affectionate too. I mean, my mom was very nurturing. Um my family divorced, my parents divorced uh mom. And it was my mom and I for a lot of years too, for a while there when everybody was moving on. Very affectionate family. We are both from a Hispanic uh heritage and just a lot of affection in that culture. Extended family, large family gatherings, very affectionate. There are times though where I still go back and I think I don't ever recall my father expressing love to me. A lot of times I was a go-between or a messenger, or sometimes caught in the middle of this divorce thing. And so I don't know that I felt his love. So growing up in that kind of environment where on one hand there was some a lot of nurturing and love, but there was still an absence of it from a father toward me. And that was challenging growing up. How did your family handle conflict?

SPEAKER_00: 6:36

That's a really good question. Because as you speak about your dad, um, I also came from my father who was an alcoholic and died actually at a very young age from alcoholism. And I remember at a young age there being quite a bit of conflict between, you know, my parents. But as I got older, I feel like um, as I went back and forth, I did the same thing. Like I would get to spend time with my dad. We would do all the fun things, and I feel like he definitely expressed love, I think, as best as he knew how. Like he'd spend time with me, we would do all the fun things, but uh he still had, you know, addictions and things that he had to deal with in his life that I think overshadowed the aspect of just being a present dad, I would say. So as far as conflict goes, I even growing up, I feel like the conflict between my parents was just a little bit different because we didn't all live together. But I feel like there was a lot of open communication. So we were able to deal with issues and discuss them. And I was, even though I was kind of going in between them, if there was a problem, then my mom would, you know, as I got older, I would just direct it toward my dad. Like there, there was just never a it wasn't a go-between kind of situation where my dad would, you know, use different things against, you know, my mom and so forth. There were things that my mom didn't necessarily agree with, but she really just taught me to pray for him and encourage him and and be respectful and love him kind of through that. And so I feel like a lot of the conflict that we did have in that situation, and even, you know, in my own home with my mom and extended family, there's a lot of more open communication, like nothing was hidden. I think you you definitely know how, at least in my on that side of the family, like what we were feeling, and learned to work through those things and open about it.

SPEAKER_01: 8:52

I think in in my home, conflict wasn't something that was probably handled very well. A lot of times maybe things weren't talked about, or we didn't know how to confront when something was maybe wrong or out of line or out of place. And I think m my mother did a wonderful job at at protecting me in many respects and and trying to keep me out of the challenging situations that often complicate divorces. Did counseling, did different things like that as a child, I remember. Um, but the conflict is just it's never been something that's come easily or conflict resolution. There's been plenty of conflict and there have been instances where I think people needed to be confronted in different areas. And even to this day, to some degree, I think that we're not we haven't been great at it in my home, my my family of origin. It's it was challenging because we were very much more maybe mercy grace oriented. Um Faith was also still a big part of our our family too. We grew up in a in a faith-filled home uh in terms of just you know, we would go to we would go to church regularly, and that was a big part of my my family's uh experience. But we just weren't great at handling conflict well or stress well. And it's interesting because it's as we're talking about these things today, we're seeing that we kind of have different experiences, and so it kind of creates a situation that when two worlds come together from different backgrounds, different experiences, it can sometimes be very interesting. So when we got married, and we're bringing kind of, and again, we we've kind of skimmed over a lot in our in our growing up years just for the sake of brevity here and the sake of time. But when our when when we fast forward to when we got married, when did you first realize that maybe we were raised completely differently?

SPEAKER_00: 11:18

Well, I would say um, well, I I would say we knew that, of course, beforehand. I would say, even in the faith backgrounds that we grew up in, I feel like that was a big, I wouldn't say obstacle, but it was something that we had to kind of overcome together and determined.

SPEAKER_01: 11:40

We had a little bit different, different ways of our families were different. My family Catholic, your family Protestant, you know, non-denominational. And so there was some, there were some differences of how we kind of saw some things theologically, maybe at the beginning, or our families anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 11:53

Yeah. And so I feel like that I think in some ways kind of prepared us because it allowed us to make our decisions before even we got married, like things that we were willing to compromise on and things that we were not willing to compromise on, as far as like how we would, you know, where we would get married, to how we would raise our kids, to what our kids would be taught. And so I feel like we uh were able to to kind of solidify that at the beginning. And I feel like as far as when did I know that, oh, we have grown up quite differently. I mean, I think there were probably instances where we had fights, and you know, I want to talk it out and like no, we need to deal with this now. And you'd be like, Yeah, I'm I'm good. And you know, I'd be having a conversation, you'd be like, okay, let's go. And I'm like, no, no, no, we have to sit here and talk about this. And so I feel like that happened, you know, quite quite often. And, you know, I think that probably created back then, if I can go back and remember, it probably created quite a bit of frustration in terms of wanting to deal with the situation and not sweep it under the rug. And and I feel like we we would tend to go round and round at the beginning. So I mean, it was definitely a learning curve. I think those were the, you know, that was the big some of the big things that was definitely the conflict. And then we had the minor things, like you were the youngest of seven, so you were the baby, and I was an only child, and you also grew up though, as a baby, per se. I mean, you were the baby, but you were also like an only child because there was so much um time in between your other siblings, and I feel like not were you you were just not the baby, but there were a lot. You had more than one mom in that group of siblings.

SPEAKER_01: 13:55

Three brothers and three sisters, but yeah, I I had a lot of sisters that were very helpful.

SPEAKER_00: 14:02

Yeah, yeah. And so I think as we, you know, were on our own, the dynamics played that those dynamics played a big role into like what you would expect in terms of like, oh, this is what I always had. And I'm like, you know, hey, I'm an independent person, so let's this is how we do things and let's let's stay on the same page, but this is the page we're staying on.

SPEAKER_01: 14:26

I think, you know, I think I was very used, much used to certain things, mom doing things a certain way, right? Uh my siblings maybe too, and uh you were very independent. And I think when we looked at that, you mentioned you hit it right the nail right on the head, and that it was dealing with conflict. I think when we first we would have fights or we would have issues, uh, and even to this day we struggle with it. I struggle with it. You know, it's still a source of contention when we look at when we look at these dynamics. And I do have a tendency to just want to shut down or not talk about it. And if we don't talk about it, maybe it'll just go away. There's different reasons for that, but again, it's it impacts our relationship. It impacts how we resolve conflict, how we handle stress, how we show up for each other. Um through that, through some of these differences that we've just highlighted, okay, we've talked about some differences. How would you say that maybe we have been able to kind of meet in the middle? How have we kind of dealt with these differences, whatever they may be, from different expectations we had coming into marriage to the expectations maybe that we still struggle with to communication issues? How have you found that we have been able to sort of meet in the middle?

SPEAKER_00: 16:00

I think it's come from a lot of conversations. Like, and I think we did have to go back to just really understanding this is the way that you grew up, this is the way that I grew up. We need to figure out what works for us because even though those are our families of origin and that's the things that we learned, not all of them were healthy. And so we need to establish new patterns or new ways that are gonna actually work where we're winning and we're more of a team instead of, well, this is how I grew up. Well, this is what I this is how I learned, or this is what I did. So it wasn't necessarily you're right and I'm wrong, or vice versa. It was this is not working. So what are we gonna find that that works? And I think even even now, you know, we have to go back and identify what are the things that are the most important to us in terms of conversation or being feeling like you're actually being hurt or like you're dealing with certain situations, these are the most important points. Like we, you know, we've kind of come up with those things, like these are the most important points that help me. And you've reiterated what like is important to you. And so I think being able to keep those things at the forefront so that we develop as a team and not necessarily just coming in as, you know, I'm the right one because I grew up this way, or vice versa.

SPEAKER_01: 17:31

I think I think it all starts with what I'm hearing there too, is it's really probably meeting in the middle for uh for me, finding a path forward when when you realize that these two worlds are colliding, is taking ownership for the fact that I take ownership for the the you know my patterns. And a lot of times we use our family of origin stuff as an excuse. Well, that's just how I was raised. Well, this was uh I'm my father's son. This is how we that's just how we deal with stuff. But that's that's an excuse, that's a cop-out. So taking ownership and saying, you know what, no, this is actually not an excuse, it is actually my responsibility. So when I realize that these are certain patterns of behavior that are ingrained, that are learned over time, I have to say, no, this is no longer a good excuse. It's it's something that I have to say, no, this is my responsibility because I'm responsible for the way I show up now. And the way I show up now is gonna directly impact not only our relationship, but guess who's who else? Right? Our children. And we know that we've been through stuff as a as a couple, and we've been through some real ups and downs and some really difficult seasons. And in time, we'll get to talk a little bit more about different things, I'm sure, but we've been through some tough stuff. And different seasons. So our kids have been affected by our stuff, by our communication patterns, by our not only our successes, but also our failures. And they're they're learning how to, you know, as they get older, into their 20s, some of them now, um, with our six children, and our oldest is married. They're I mean, they're navigating their own journey and having to process their experiences growing up and realizing that they too have to take ownership at some point, you know, and that's tough. And it's that's interesting. That really got me thinking about this whole thing a little bit more, is is I I know what I went through, I know what we're experiencing, but then I think, oh man, I know I haven't done things perfectly, we haven't done things perfectly, so I know that it's and there's they've got some stuff they gotta work through, but that's part of the human experience, right? I think that's part of that makes us grow and makes us resilient in some respects. And I think that that it all starts with ownership. It comes down to just saying, hey, I I accept this, and um this is who I am, and this is maybe these are some things that aren't okay, but this is what I want to endeavor to improve upon.

SPEAKER_00: 20:16

True. I remember specifically a close friend of ours who's also psychologist saying, like, I think as as you talk about like the things that we've learned and that our parents maybe, you know, both the good and the bad um may have walked through or done or whatever. And then as we become parents and you know, all the kids' experiences and things like that. And I remember thinking, oh my goodness, you know, we've messed up, or our kids are gonna have, you know, these things that they have to deal with when they get older. And um, I remember him saying, like, you become an adult when you realize that your parents had issues and had to learn how to walk through those things and get through them. And you get to choose, it's your responsibility to choose, you know, how to move forward. You know, yeah, you forgive and you walk through, but then you do better. And I feel like that that is true. Every generation should be better and grow and get better, and not so much like, oh, I'll never do that like my parents. So I'll never, you know, raise my kids like that or do that. It would be like, okay, God, show me what I need to work on so that I can do better. And it's not just that's that's really good.

SPEAKER_01: 21:36

I remember those conversations with that psychologist. Wonderful, wonderful man. And it and I to that it, and he, you know, I said, I man, I've I've messed him up, or I've messed my kid up, or I've he's like, Yeah, yeah, you probably have, but guess what?

SPEAKER_00: 21:54

And then that was like, but he's gonna get through it, they're gonna get through it, you know, or and they learn and grow and they get better, and they and that's part of the journey. You know, you realize, oh, my parents were just doing the best that they could. Yes, they made some mistakes, but they they're they've learned and they've grown, and and I can do the same and do better.

SPEAKER_01: 22:14

Well, we can understand why they were the way they were, the things they they go through. You can have actually some empathy, you know. A lot of times we have judgments and we have a lot of negative feelings, and and certainly that we should never go through abuse. That's never okay. I'm not justifying that. But I did know my father had an extremely difficult childhood. He was abused, he had to deal with a lot of stuff, he had to grow up real early, you know. And you know, that's hard. That's hard. And again, I don't hate my dad. He's gone on now, he's passed. And I was 21, he died when I was young. Both our our fathers died when we were relatively young. And he died just before we got married, and that was difficult, you know, that was tough. Again, and I preface not having that sense of love and approval. And well, I think he was proud of me on some levels and for accomplishments and things. I I just you know, and then he was gone too soon. Uh that's been a tough thing for me to deal with. But I've learned in all the hardships that I've that that that we've been through and and referencing where I'm going with this, is that we can reframe a lot of our experiences and not say, you know, that we we can often at times I think think about victimization and think about oh poor me. But how can we reframe the stories, our experiences, to where they can actually serve us? To where we can take something that was meant for evil and turn it for good. And I think that's a an important part of ownership as well, being able to reframe it, look at it through different lenses and be able to decide, I want to do things differently. So, how are we as a as a couple and as a family, how are we now intentionally trying to do things differently to maybe some to try to avoid some of those mistakes that we might have seen growing up?

SPEAKER_00: 24:25

Well, I think from the beginning, I feel like we have been on the same page in terms of just raising our kids and raising them in the faith and um in the word and really teaching them really truly how to. I I well, from what I remember when they were tiny, and I'm sure they have plenty of stories, it would be interesting to hear all their takes on it, but really just fostering a home where they felt loved, but they also learned to love and learn to get along, learn to serve each other, learn to serve the family, learned that it's not just um there's not always going to be happy moments, but they did have to learn how to deal with conflict, learn how to get along, learn how to, I think serve too was a big thing for them. And we just were able to, I mean, foster that. And I think through in the in the within the realm of just our faith and in prayer and in the word of God, I think that that made all of the difference for us.

SPEAKER_01: 25:40

And I think standard having a frame of reference to to draw strength from.

SPEAKER_00: 25:45

Well, and I think too, learning, teaching them how to deal with the conflict. Like there's gonna be conflict in a house full of six kids. There is gonna be, there are gonna be times where you get angry. So we need to discipline that situation and deal with it and go back to okay, why are you getting why are you in trouble? Let's deal with this, let's, and then have a consequence and then be able to pray and move on and go, okay, let's go and do better. And so, and then they had to even like it, just was really good for them to learn how to go to one another and apologize and you know, please forgive me. And, you know, I think that was really impactful. And there were many times where they, you know, maybe it was one or two kids in particular that had more correction than the others, but they had to really learn how to deal, well, first of all, how to receive correction and deal with the consequence and then go to that person. And so I think that was really important for us to be able to deal with that. And I think now as adults, they, you know, we have a lot of adult children now, and they all love each other and support one another and have learned to, you know, it hasn't always been, you know, a peaceful, quiet home by any means, but they've learned how to deal with the conflict and truly love and serve each other.

SPEAKER_01: 27:14

I really appreciate what you're saying about that because it's really when when you talk about a frame of reference, you talk about God, faith, the word of God, things that we've endeavored to do our best to try to live by. Of course, we've fallen short, but God has always been faithful. And marriage has been an opportunity to really marriage is not for the faint-hearted. I think that's why we see a lot of divorces in in the world. Um it is it's alarming the divorce rate. And I understand, we understand why. Again, and a lot of times it's learning how to live with someone, learning how to do life with someone that's different than you, and then you introduce other little people into the mix and life gets more complicated. But I I'm so grateful. I just want to say that I'm grateful for you and your strength and your faith. And your ability to to handle conflict in the way that you don't shy away from a fight, you don't uh you don't let something go. There's some principles that we've tried to live by is don't let the sun go down on your wrath. When you're angry, you got issues, don't go to bed angry. You know, try to work it out. Maybe you don't solve the whole problem, but you can at least seek forgiveness or you know, seek God's heart on something. And I think that's been something that I think has been very helpful. But I think too, I think if we can one thing that I think that when we in our marriage, now I think we can be grateful, gratitude, not only for what we have, the opportunity to work through things, but even grateful for some of the things in our childhood. There's a lot of great things too. We've talked about the negative things, but you mentioned faith growing up, and there's uh a lot of love and encouragement. My mom was a great source of encouragement. She was a great role model for me in a lot of areas, very positively affected the direction of my life toward health, you know, health and uh being in healthcare, wanting to help and serve people. Uh my family was, I feel very generous with their time and encouragement. Uh my sisters were always like little moms, you know, trying to they were they helped me out, encouraged me, and very generous with their resources with me growing up. Grateful for the sacrifices. I mean, it was a sacrifice for single parents, for my mom, your mom to do what they did all those years, taught hard work, and still finding peace and joy and and being very loving in the middle of all that. I think there's so many valuable things that we bring with us too. And I think the big part of I think of what I want to the big take-home point for for this discussion for me is the fact that we all have agency. We all have a capacity to be resilient, a capacity to be able to change our stars. That we can actually, yes, we may have come from one situation, but look at the countless stories throughout history. People may be born into a bad situation, whatever it might be, whatever condition they found themselves in, and were able to actually say, No, you know what, I'm not gonna be a victim of this. I'm gonna actually choose a different path and have great success. Not only did it affect that moment for that person. And their trajectory. But the thing that really is sobering to me that brings tears to my eyes is the thought of we're impacting generations. Our children and their children. And their children. To me that's that's sobering. And it it makes me want to try hard every day. When I mess up, to own it, fess up, say I'm sorry, screwed up. Sorry, son. Sorry, sweetie. Daddy'd mess that up. I'm sorry. To keep pointing them back to the standard, you know. Now the the the biggest you know thing that our kids are gonna get biggest lessons is not so much the things that are taught as much as the things that are caught, things that they see and live before them. And so that's that's heavy. But it's also a privilege and a beautiful responsibility that as parents, I think that we have to take our backgrounds, take everything we've been through, and even where we're at now and where we're going forward. Because we're still in process, let's be honest. I mean, I I know I'm I'm not where I want to be. Uh, I feel like I have more to offer you and the kids, and and I'm trying and I'm working toward that. And by God's grace, I believe that He's He's working in me. But I think that's the that's the beauty of this journey, is that we don't have to just accept our genetics. We don't have to accept our past. We don't have to accept the things that have been done to us. We can say, you know what, here I am now, and I know where I want to go. And we can also say, you know, maybe I'm not where I'm supposed to be. Thank God, though, I'm not where I used to be. And I think that's something that's that helps me, that gets me through.

SPEAKER_00: 32:53

Well, we weren't promised that we wouldn't face adversity or face issues or have this perfect life, but we were promised that we would be able to get through them. Like you walk through the valley, um, you don't camp out there. Eventually, you're gonna, you know, it's like it says in the Bible, you're if you walk through the valley, you're eventually gonna get yourself, you're gonna find yourself out of that, as long as you don't camp out in the in the broken places because God is with you. And I think that is huge because even in adversity, I think that that seems to be like a really bad word a lot of times, because it's a lot of times the adversity that we face is devastating in one way or another, or just difficult. And there's so much growth though that happens during that time if you will let it. And it's kind of like you say, you own it and you are responsible now for how you respond, how you grow, and how you can move forward better than you were before.

SPEAKER_01: 34:00

Well said. I think that's that's the progression I think that we're all after in this human experience is to, you know, leave life better, leave this world better, leave our family better than the way we found it, so to speak, you know, the than the things we've experienced. And so I think this is a good place to kind of land and to encourage our our listeners, those who are watching, that your family of origin does affect your dynamics today in your family, how you show up. So just take inventory. Find out maybe how you are being experienced. And if you see that maybe things aren't going the direction you want them to in your relationships, in your family, in your home, you can do something about it. You can change the course of your life. You can change your stars, you can change your future. But the beautiful thing is you have an opportunity to change the future of your children and your grandchildren. That's where legacy really is all about. It's not just the inheritance that we leave financially, but we can leave so much more. Legacy is so much more than giving people a financial inheritance or stuff or homes or properties. It's a legacy that you can leave of love, of encouragement, of grace, and faith. So, friends, thanks so much for taking time today to join us in this little conversation. We hope you enjoyed the show. If this resonates with you, or if you feel that this would resonate with someone that you care about, please share this episode with somebody. Thanks again for tuning in to your health, your way. See you next time.