Pressing Into God’s Word

Jeff Walton was facing a difficult dilemma. His job made it possible for he and Sarah to live a comfortable lifestyle, one they both enjoyed. And yet increasingly his job was taking him away from his wife and his family in times when she really needed him. Jeff found himself wondering if his job would somehow cost him his marriage and his family. We had been planning how to remodel our kitchen. You know, we had plans for renovating the basement in this home and growing old and seeing the kids grow up in this home. And then after four kind of short years in that, all of this came to a screeching halt.

And now it's a why in the road. Are we going to go left and try in our own strength or are we going to try and follow the path of Christ and save our family? This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at FamilyLifeToday.com. The dilemma Jeff Walton was facing is not uncommon. Many of us have to figure out how to balance work, life, marriage, and family. How do we do that? We'll talk more with Jeff and Sarah about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I remember a night, Marianne and I had been married for almost five years at this point, and it's the spring of 1984. And we were out walking our daughter, Amy, around the neighborhood. She was in a stroller, and the sun was setting. It was a beautiful spring evening, and we had just moved into a house that we had built.

You know, we worked with the builder and got in the house just the way we wanted to. And I remember as I'm walking around the neighborhood, and I'm thinking, life is pretty, pretty perfect. And I had this thought hit me. It doesn't last like this for people.

And that's an unusual thought for me to have because I'm an optimistic guy. This is how it's supposed to be. Life's supposed to go right.

And I remember it hitting me going, where did that come from? Well, within the next two weeks, I went in on a Monday morning, and my boss said, we're letting you go. Two weeks later, I was out to lunch with some friends, and Marianne calls and says, I just got back from the doctor.

I'm pregnant. And all of a sudden, I'm watching everything that had just seemed perfect start to, it was piling up on top of us, and it led us into the most stressful season we were in on our marriage. But it was almost like God had whispered ahead to me, everybody's going to have these seasons. Now, when the season becomes years upon years, that can get tiring, that can get exhausting. That's where you go, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever?

And start quoting Psalm 13 over and over to yourself. We've got a couple joining us on Family Life Today this week who have been through a prolonged season of one thing after another in their marriage and in their family. Jeff and Sarah Walton are here. Welcome, guys.

Thank you. Jeff and Sarah live in Chicago. They're the parents of four kids. We've been hearing their story this week and hearing about how marriage kind of started off in a semi-idyllic start, and then your son was born, and there were health challenges with him that doctors couldn't diagnose, but it was kind of regular acting out on his part. You didn't know what was going on physically or spiritually or emotionally with him, and then in the midst of this, you have additional kids. You've got a job, Jeff, where you're on call and having to be in and out of the family, and then, Sarah, you start to experience health issues that ultimately get diagnosed as Lyme disease.

You've written about this in a book called Together Through the Storms, and you've looked at the book of Job in Scripture and said, we see some parallels with what he went through and what we've gone through. Take us to the point that your sickness, what you were feeling, Sarah, was ultimately diagnosed, and you realized you've got a progressive illness that there's no cure for. Yeah, it was after my fourth had been born, and I had seen several doctors at that point, and I had gotten various diagnoses, but then none of them really seemed to do much. I tried treatments that they suggested, and it didn't really help that much. And at the time, I met a girl who had just been diagnosed with Lyme disease, and she was actually the one I co-authored Hope When It Hurts With at that time, and she was the one that suggested I go see her Lyme doctors. And I said, I don't have Lyme disease.

It doesn't sound like it fits what I have. So she said, just go anyway. They look at everything. They'll be able to tell you kind of what's going on. So I ended up doing that because, honestly, I just didn't have any options.

I didn't know what to do. And the first day I got there, they looked at my symptoms. They did a bunch of tests, and they said, well, we can't give you a diagnosis on paper right now because we don't have test results, but clinically you have every symptom. So I left that day really a mixture of glad that I had some kind of answer maybe, but terrified that I don't have no idea what this means, and from what I've learned and what I see, it doesn't exactly seem like something I should be happy about because there isn't any clear answer as to what will get rid of it, if it can be healed or cured, or how to manage it best.

So I really didn't know a lot about it other than knowing that it can affect all sorts of parts of your body, and it will probably stay with you for all of your life. How long ago was this diagnosis? That was probably maybe five years ago, and that was at the time that was really probably the pinnacle of our trials going on. There was the intensity with our son reached a point where we were having to seek wisdom about whether we would admit him to the hospital because... Had been acting out with behavior issues and had had physiological issues along with that and still undiagnosed at this point, right? Yeah, we had seen several different doctors and really it got to the point where for the safety of him and our family, we just didn't know if we were able to keep him in the home, which if you're a parent you'll know how heart-wrenching that is to even think about. It felt like we were giving up on him in many ways. It felt like, at what point do you feel like that's the right decision?

I mean, there is no real clear answer to that. So we sought the counsel of some pastors, and at the same time, things had gotten so bad with his job where he was gone so much and he wasn't actually really being compensated for how much he was working. So it was stressful for him as well. And I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And at the same time, our medical bills started to skyrocket because a lot of the doctors we were seeing didn't take insurance and so we'd pay a lot out of pocket.

My son's doctors that we were seeing, we were trying all sorts of supplements and things like that that you would have to pay out of pocket for. So those started to increase and the pressure just started to build and build and build. And we had some of the elders from our church come over just to pray with us and to give us counsel. And I think before that, God had already began to work in our hearts on, are we willing to walk away from the comfort we have for the sake of our family? And we had already been starting to feel some of that leading. Didn't know what that would look like, but I think God had already been somewhat bringing that to our attention. And interestingly, at that meeting, we decided, well, let's wait on admitting right now.

We decided instead to start trying some medication to see if that would alleviate anything. But the main takeaway was, I think one of our pastors looked at Jeff and said, I think I would rather flip hamburgers than to lose my family right now. Basically making the point that whatever you lose financially, it will never be worth the cost of losing your marriage and your family and spiritually honoring the Lord in this situation. And I think that's what we needed. So he was saying continuing in the job you were in, was that dangerous? I think they saw from the outside perspective how dire of a situation we were in. We were so backed up against a wall that we knew it, we knew it. I mean, we were hanging on by a thread on every level you possibly, my mental health, my physical health, my emotional health, and our marriage. And even our kids, I mean, they were suffering at this point with everything that was happening in our home. And I think a lot of what was going on also is for so long we had been kind of that team that was just addressing and focusing on our kids' challenges. And now we were at a stage where that was starting to bubble up to the top and tensions that had been moved on from one day to the next and the challenges of being able to communicate that because I was in and out of the home so often.

We didn't really have the time or energy to really walk through that appropriately. And so now that was the stuff that was really swept underneath the rug. We lifted up the rug and that was seen now and all the ugliness and all of the hurt and things that had transpired over the last decade, we were now wrestling with in front of us of how do we move forward. When a pastor says, I think I'd rather flip burgers than to lose my family, were you at a point in your marriage where losing the marriage was something on the table? No, not from a standpoint of walking away from each other.

And by God's grace, that did not ever come to our minds in the form of acting on it. During this time, it was the first time that I think we both saw, wow, this is where couples get to where they truly can walk away. And I think individually we both felt that and we've talked about that since that, that with all the pressure we were facing and needs were not being met, you know, and the level of what we were expecting, communication broken, hurt and trust and all those things that were broken down. I saw clearly the path that I could take to walk out of this. It was too hard.

You know the stats of someone that has a child with special needs and chronic illness and all those things layered up on top and financial loss. And by God's grace, now we're here to say that it was only Him that kept us together. And I think a lot of that comes back to while we didn't have maybe the best of relationship, we were constantly in God's Word and pressing into His Word and trusting solely on Him. So, there was never a time you thought about walking away from God or faith or, you know, how was that? Was the faith a struggle?

I think from the standpoint of wrestling with God and not to the point of denying who God was. So, I think one of the biggest things that, you know, we address this in the book of really getting into lamenting and something that I've not until recently really understood what that truly means. And when you look at Job and when you look at certainly the Psalms and Lamentations and throughout the Bible of what does that really mean to bring your pain and your confusion.

And appropriately asked the why questions and the how long and Job does this incredibly throughout much of the book. And I think that was very eye-opening for us because it's put together kind of a format that has helped me voice just the frustrations and confusion, but it doesn't stop there. Lament truly has to bring you to the point where it's coming full circle back to the trust and what do I believe about God and the promises of God. And so, to answer your question, Dave, I don't think it was ever a point where I was ready to pack it up on God, not go to church, never open my Bible again. And only by his grace and mercy did he give me the strength to wake up and to open his Word. So, I thank him for that. You had a sentence in your book that I read last night that kind of stopped me for a second. And you say, Satan's mission remains the same, he wants to convince you to turn against God. His pathway to that can subtly lie in persuading you to turn against your spouse. And you guys were at that point where you had a decision to make whether you're going to turn against one another or turn to God.

Yeah, yeah. And you want to know what's really interesting. Throughout those years that we were struggling with our son, there was clearly a very spiritual dynamic to it, which was very confusing to us. He would say things that no four or five-year-olds should know how to say. We would start praying and he would start screaming at us and we would try to bring up conversations and he'd get angrier and he'd throw things at us. And we went through a period of time of just praying, Lord, we have to trust that you are in control of this boy's life, that you are greater than any enemy.

And it was clear he had a neurological disorder. We weren't questioning that by any means, but it was clear the enemy was also taking advantage of it. And when we would have times that we were struggling, we would see that intensify and there was clearly a spiritual dynamic that was going on.

And so we have seen that clearly over the years. There were times when he would be gone more is when I would feel a lot more of that battle go on, things would get harder at home. While I would say I agree that I didn't ever think of walking away from the Lord, I have certainly come to points where I have really struggled with wondering, then God, I have no idea who you are.

If you would let this happen, I want to say I trust you, but I don't even know who I'm trusting anymore. Like, for example, after, so what we had done is after that pastor's conversation, we ended up deciding that it was the best decision was to have him find a new job that would allow him to be home because I needed the help. I think we both knew that was clear. The Lord put us in a position where there was really no ignoring it anymore. We couldn't find our way around it. And so he ended up searching for jobs.

After a few months, he found a job, and not long after that, well, what they had told us he would be taking as a pay cut would be like about 40% pay cut, which we knew would be substantial. We'd have to sell our home. At this time, we were in our dream home, which we thought we'd be in forever. And so I think that challenge of really dying to self and something that we had been planning how to remodel our kitchen. You know, we had plans for renovating the basement in this home and growing old and seeing the kids grow up in this home. And then after four kind of short years in that, all of this came to a screeching halt.

And now it's a why in the road. Are we going to try and muster our own strength and do things on our own condition, or are we going to follow where we see wise counsel and seek God and change jobs, which I think that had to be done in order to restore our marriage relationship, take the steps back to putting family first and not let that even go on one step further. And the physical challenges, I don't want to minimize those at all, but the reality of selling the dream home, changing to a new job. There's an emotional toll for a husband and a dad who's thinking, this is what I wanted to do for my wife and my kids. And now we're going to a rental house and I got a new job and it's maybe not as prestigious a job and it's certainly not the income that I'm capable of making, but I need to be here to take care of my family.

I can see where I would in that situation start to go, what's going on here with me, right? Did you feel some of that? I certainly did. And that even got greater by about a year and a half into the job. So transition into a new job, take a pay cut, swallow my pride, and then the company went through a huge reorganization and I was laid off.

And so at that point, you know, all the questions of why God, you know, we have sought your purpose and your will, prayed through this fervently, thought it was good and we had your blessing going to a new job. And then just a year and a half later, the rug gets pulled out underneath us. And so that hit us both really hard. The reality of what that meant for our family, again, is just a guy and now the sole provider of our family. We had no income. We had rising medical bills. Kids' challenges were still there. Sarah's health problems were still there.

And now where I could kind of escape and go to my job, I didn't have that anymore. And if I jump in too, throughout that year, prior year, was when we started seeing increasing symptoms in our kids of other ailments. Our girl behind our oldest started having joint pain consistently. Our daughter below her was too tired to even go for a ride or bike around the block. Her legs couldn't keep up with it. She was showing signs of fatigue.

She was losing her hair. There were all sorts of things going on. And so throughout that year, we eventually, each child was diagnosed with Lyme as well.

We found out that I could pass it gestationally. So suddenly we were hit with this. Oh no, it's not just me anymore.

Our entire family is now battling this, which means our entire family has to do these costly treatments that insurance doesn't cover. And it was really not long after that that he lost his job. And to go back to what I was saying earlier, that is the point that I think I hit rock bottom. You said, okay, God. Yeah, I was like, I didn't sign up for this. Yeah, right.

Oh yeah, I can, I don't know if I've lasted as long as you did, but I could just be screaming at the ceiling. Yeah. And did you do that?

What are you doing? That was probably the point where I dealt with the most anger. It was a combination of things.

It was once we were out of the intensity of the situation, meaning he was home more, so I at least had his help for some of the basic, the physical demands at home. As that had happened, I was starting to have emotion surface that I was like, where are these coming from? All of a sudden, resentment started to come up and anger started to come up. It's like all of a sudden I had enough of a break to start to feel what I hadn't been able to feel for years prior.

And I didn't know what was going on. I was like, why do I feel so resentful towards Jeff all of a sudden? Why am I feeling anger towards the Lord over all that he's allowed over these years? I kept having flashbacks of really bad moments with my son that I just couldn't shake.

I would think about them all the time and they'd reignite those scary feelings. And that came to the point then where he lost his job. And I honestly, I felt like the Lord was cruel. That's really what I struggled with. I believed he was in control. I really did. And that's where it caused me to struggle with his goodness because I knew you could have stopped this. I know we saw you clearly leading us and yet you lead us, led us to a worse situation.

And that I struggled to wrestle with. Is it still going on at some level? Well, I think to some degree, yeah. Because we've continued to have layered trials that keep seeming to happen.

But as I look back, I can definitely see how the Lord has carried me gradually to trusting him at a deeper level, not by what I can see, but what I know is true in Scripture. So, you're crying out to God. You're telling him. You're angry. You're praying.

And basically, I would be yelling at that point. Did you hear anything? Did you feel anything?

Did he meet you at that point? Yeah. And I won't say, it certainly wasn't overnight. I felt it was very cyclical. I tend to be a stuffer of feelings. And so, I would hold on to these things just mainly also because my situation in life, I have to hold it together so much for the kids and I'm having to deal with their challenges. And so, I found I would hold on to my own struggles.

And then, you know, we all know it comes to a point where you can't hold on to that any longer. And so, I was digging into the Word more and more. I realized it became more of my lifeline. I needed to be in Scripture every day.

It wasn't just to grow in knowledge. It was purely because I needed to remind myself every day that the Lord was seeing me. Was there any Scripture that really hit you or comforted you?

Well, there were several of them. A couple that come to mind are hearing Paul talk about his losses and his gains in Philippians. Thinking about how Paul had had all these incredible qualifications. You know, he had been revered.

He had been so high up. And when Christ met him on that road and changed his life, he ended up getting to the point where he was saying, all of that I now consider as loss. And as I started to think about that in light of he saw Christ as gain and, you know, you can read through the Scriptures and see, Paul had a really hard life.

I mean, he suffered constantly, yet you constantly hear him talking about the gain he had in Christ. And I could see that pattern happen in my life, the one loss after another. What it ended up doing is every time I lost something, I had to come back to that foundational question, is Christ enough if I lose this? And it seemed that the Lord allowed that in every different area of life.

It was my physical health. If this is the condition I'm going to be living in the rest of my life, do I believe that Christ will carry me through this? And do I believe that there's still goodness in this? And of course, on many days, I didn't see that. I didn't know how that could be true other than knowing God was telling me that.

Same with our son. If my son is never healed and this is what I have to endure and what I have to walk through with him, do I believe that somehow God has a purpose in his life through this and in my life? And each time I had to wrestle with that, I think it dug those faith roots just a little deeper. And I don't think you often feel it in the moment, you know? It's usually, I think, when you look back and you see, I don't know how I survived that. But now I can see that the Lord was holding me up. I have so many moments where I look back and I think, I can see how the Lord was with me in that room. He restrained me from reacting to something that I should have in all fleshly reasons should have reacted to or I was able to keep my composure in a really terrifying situation.

Or even situations between Jeff and I that we had to work through things, of course, and it was really ugly at times. But you can even see how the Lord preserved our friendship with each other. There were so many marks of his grace that we could go on and on and on about. But I think that has been a slow progression of that as I've gone back to these truths over and over.

And there's several more. And we've loved Job because he was in that for so long. I mean, it would be, we noted in the book that the book of Job would be much shorter if God had answered him quickly. And so, isn't that our lives?

Most of our life is waiting. Well, one of my favorite things about you guys is you've walked into the studio and the first thing you both did was you pulled out your Bibles. And I was teasing you, Jeff, because you have this giant study Bible, but it's really cool to me because it's very well used. And Sarah, you were wishing that you could bring your big study Bible, but you didn't have – Yes, kind of mad that he took his big one and I had to keep mine at home. It's my travel Bible. But it's evident, like as I look at it and it's all marked up and you have bookmarks in it, that that has been your lifeline. Yeah, and you hear your story.

Again, we're sitting on the outside looking in. You've lived it, you are living it. And I hear it, honestly, I've heard a lot of hard stories. This one just keeps going. You know, even when I started reading your book, I'm like, oh, that's horrible. Well, it's going to get better. Oh, it gets worse.

That's kind of how I felt, too. Oh, you guys lived it, and honestly, the passage that comes to me, because I think you guys are evidence of Psalm 34, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and those who are crushed in spirit. As we listen to your story, we know the depth of the crushing of your spirit. And yet, there's light here.

There's a Lord that is close. And that's the beauty of why you're letting people inside this story, because you're going to give them hope. And a lot of people are going to find that as they get a copy of the book. And in fact, we're making the book available this week to Family Life Today listeners. If you'd like a copy, you can go to our website, familylifetoday.com. And if you can make a donation to help support this ministry, the book is our gift to you, our way of saying thank you for your ongoing support of the work of this ministry.

In fact, you think about this, the conversation you've heard today happened because another listener said, this is important and I want other people to be able to hear this. So we're asking you to do the same for other listeners. If you would support the ministry of Family Life Today so that this kind of practical, biblical help and hope for marriages and families can be more readily accessible in more ways, more platforms, more channels for more people, we'd love to send you as a thank you gift your copy of Jeff and Sarah's book, Together Through the Storms, Biblical Encouragement for Your Marriage When Life Hurts. Go to familylifetoday.com to make a donation or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. You can make a donation over the phone.

Ask for your copy of Jeff and Sarah's book when you make that donation. And thank you for your support of the ministry of Family Life Today. We appreciate you. Now, tomorrow we want to talk more about how we can apply 1 Corinthians 1, how we can comfort others with the comfort we've received, how we can take the hard experiences of life and use those to be a help to others. Jeff and Sarah Walton will be back with us again tomorrow. We hope you can be back as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.