When stress and pressure go up in a family, so does marital tension and conflict. That's what Jeff and Sarah Walton experienced. Jeff had a high demand job providing medical supplies for surgeons. He had to be available on a moment's notice to supply what those surgeons needed.
Meanwhile, Sarah was home with kids, including a special needs child who was acting out, and she needed her husband's help. I mean, there was really no easy solution in those moments. He knew that if he didn't show up at that surgery, he could lose that doctor's business. And I knew that. So I really did try to be understanding to that and tell myself, I know he'd be here if he could.
I do believe he'd want to be he'd be here if he could. But I felt like I needed him more than any other time. And I remember saying to him, I'm waving the white flag. This is a time when I need you. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are David and Wilson.
I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. What happens during stressful times in your marriage will either drive you apart, or can bring you closer together as a couple. We'll talk more about that today with Jeff and Sarah Walton. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.
Thanks for joining us. So when was the last time you read Job chapter one? I read it every day, Bob. I'm going to admit. My favorite chapter in the Bible. That I read the Bible through every year.
Yeah. And when I get to Job, I'm always like, oh, no. You don't want to read it. I don't, because it makes me sad and scared. Chapter one is this chapter where Satan comes before the Lord and says, you know, these people who are following you, Job and his family, they're just following you because you bless them. And God says, okay, you have permission to take them through and see what happens. That's the part I don't like. Here's my question, Bob, as you get ready to introduce them. Have you ever thought about writing a marriage book based on the book of Job?
Never had the idea. No. In fact, I'm not sure how many people like Ann would want to buy that book, right? Except that it's a powerful and profound book. It is. And we all suffer and go through times of suffering.
We do. Jeff and Sarah Walton joining us on Family Life Today. Guys, welcome. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. And Jeff and Sarah live in suburban Chicago. They are graduates of Taylor University.
They are the parents of four kids and have written a book called Together Through the Storm. And it's been a storm. It's been 16 years of marriage, right?
And it's not been 16 uneventful years for you. How long after you were married did you experience your first, oh, we have a major bump in the road here. Do you remember?
Yeah. We had just moved. He had just gotten this job. He had been working at a station hotel and he had just gotten hired as a medical sales trauma consultant. So he was going to start being on call.
Okay. So we had just moved to be closer to the territory that he would be in. And I found out I was pregnant. It was about two years after our marriage. And after I had our oldest, I think he was seven weeks old and he suddenly spiked a fever. And anybody who knows when a baby that young spikes a fever, and it was like 102.5 fever, it was pretty high. We were rushed to the hospital with him and they did a spinal tap. They did all sorts of things and they informed us something very, very serious was going on, but they didn't know exactly what. So we were told this could be meningitis. This could be leukemia.
This could be this option, this option. Each one was kind of worse than the last. We ended up being there for five days. He was pretty much lethargic the whole time. He was on very heavy doses of antibiotics and we had no answers. Every day was new options of what this could be.
They had taken sample after sample. His white blood cells were skyrocketing. His red were dropping.
It didn't look good at all. Were you stoic or were you fearful? I think we were a little in shock. I had just had a baby seven weeks ago and it was all new and this was just thrown at us. And actually remember it was our anniversary when we were in the hospital. I think it was our third year anniversary.
Yeah. For me, I was really fearful. And I think when you head into being a parent for the first time and just like marriage, you think everything is going to go well and there's not going to be the bump initially. But when we came into that and had the bump in our road within the first two months, I remember even calling my parents from the hospital and trying to get out over the phone what they were starting to look at. My voice was just gone and I was just in tears. So overwhelmed by a ton of emotion and just everything flashing before our eyes of what is going on.
Our life is about to change and just the unexpected before us. So anyway, after five days, they basically said nothing has come back. We can't find what's wrong. We can tell he has a severe infection, but we don't know what. And so at that, I think it was the fifth day, his numbers stabilized. They didn't really improve, but they stopped going in the wrong direction and they sent us home. And they said, we are sending you home with an unknown infection and we will monitor and if anything else comes back, we will immediately get in touch with you. So that was kind of it after we went home and I think we were a little in shock. Like what just happened? You weren't like feeling relief.
You were like, well... It was such a sudden up and down and we still didn't have answers. So it wasn't like it was nice closure.
Like now we know what happened. He was healed. Each day he got better and he was seeming like he was back to normal. But the rest of that year, he seemed susceptible to infections.
He got a really bad flu and lost a lot of weight. But overall, we thought that was a testing ground for us. God really, that was kind of our first real major test as a couple. And I think I thought like, okay, we've made it through that.
Like we survived that. We really did lean into the Lord. We were terrified, of course, but I did see us cling to the Lord in that, that we had to come to grips with God has given us this child. If he takes him from us, can we trust him? It was really hard to wrestle with, but I think it forced us to ask that question.
Yeah. And the ironic thing is one of the verses that we dedicated our son to was that he was lent from the Lord. And so that put into clarity really soon of, are we really holding loosely to a son?
And he is a gift from God. And now we have the choice of fully trusting in God, or are we going to try and grip and just do it on our own strength? So facing that reality within the first couple months, I think has really been a launching point then for what we've faced in the 12 years since and just with parenthood in general. His first year, you continued to have health up and down, still no diagnosis of what's going on with him. Did you ever get a diagnosis?
No. And it's been 12 years of several different doctors. It started out as the health scare. It was, I think we just assumed that life was going on as normal other than certain, you know, getting sick a little bit easier, things like that.
But by the time he was able to crawl, I think it was about 18 months as he started crawling and walking, we noticed he just kept repetitively going back to things he shouldn't do, knocking things off of shelves, just had a little bit of a destructive type of nature. And we would try all sorts of little parenting techniques. You know, you're told all the different ways to do it, handle these situations, to redirect, give a little hand swat, say no, no. And we went from one to the next to the next. And it just seemed to get harder and harder and harder. And as he got older, it started to turn into severe tantrums and strange behaviors that we couldn't quite figure out what it meant. We tried all sorts of parenting techniques to try to help train him to listen and all the things you're taught as a Christian parent. We took all these different Christian parenting. And at that point, were you thinking this had anything to do with that initial infection?
No, I don't think we had. Honestly, at that point, I think we just thought we have a really strong-willed kid. We just probably have the strongest-willed kid on the face of the planet. And you know, parents of strong-willed kids are just bad parents. Yes, that is the initial thought.
They really know what they're doing. That kid would be behaving right? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and it was starting to increase to the point where I had a hard time going to play dates. He would hurt kids. It was very impulsive behavior, stuff I couldn't see coming, so I was on alert every moment I was anywhere. And was he hitting his milestone markers in development? He was, other than talking.
He was a little delayed in speech, but otherwise, I think that's what was so confusing. He seemed to be developing relatively normally, but there were these behaviors that we couldn't make sense of. But because he was our first, we just didn't really know if there was anything wrong or is this just kind of the way he is and we have to adapt to that. So I would say it probably wasn't until he turned four and we had just moved and he actually got an infection.
I believe he got strep and he was put on antibiotics and something happened in him. And it became, he became erratic, just screaming, shrieking, banging into walls, hitting, doing anything, throwing everything within a matter of hours. And that's, I think, what finally made us realize something is not right. Something is going on. And that's what initially launched us into searching out for a doctor that could maybe just figure out, is this abnormal?
If so, what are we dealing with? And so that began our search with doctors. We just began with pediatrician. They didn't really know.
So we started with the lowest we could, just changing diets, vitamins, increasing nutrients that he was clearly depleted in. The internet had all the answers. It does. It does.
And you know you can believe everything you read on the internet. So at age four, he is, are you thinking autism? Are you thinking developmentally disabled in some way? Yeah, I think the closest we would have thought at that point was autism. But what was so confusing to us is he also could seem completely normal. So it wasn't consistent. There would be times where he was this sweet, bright, very engaging little boy.
He was funny. But every day, good portions of the day would be these things that would be triggered in him that would last two hours, three hours of screaming tantrums. You're a stay-at-home mom? Yeah. Were you just exhausted? All the time.
All the time. And I had no, I mean, nobody knew. I didn't know what to tell anybody. So taking him to a store, I would leave with him screaming and hitting me. And we'd be caught in really scary situations in the car that I couldn't control. And it got harder with other, once we had other kids as well. And were you wondering, what am I doing wrong?
All the time. I mean, you're just, you're doubting yourself every step of the way. And especially as a Christian parent, I'm reading these scriptures and trying to figure out how to raise and parent your kids. You're listening to family life today.
I'm listening to family life. And we were really seeking wisdom, and we would reach out to other Christian parents that we respected. And I remember we would take advice and we'd try to implement it, and it would make our situation worse.
And it was so, it would leave us feeling really, really kind of despairing. Like, what are we doing wrong? Jeff, how are you handling all of this? Yeah, I think the ironic thing was during this time, as Sarah had mentioned, so I was in medical device sales, and we are trying to figure this out on the fly. And so much of that with being a first-time parent, you don't know what you don't know. And you just kind of go from one day to the next and kind of plow through that. And so when I was in this role and on call 24-7, being called out at a moment's notice and not knowing what the next day will bring. Because you were bringing parts into surgery, medical devices into surgery, so you'd get called into a trauma case. I'm thinking of a guy in medical sales, and I'm thinking he goes to the doctor's office at 10 in the morning, and he's done at five. But yours was a unique kind of a situation.
It really was. So it was for orthopedic trauma, and knowing that those accidents happen around the clock, and I did not have normal hours, and so they don't take off for holidays and weekends and all those special events, which created a lot of tension, growing tension throughout the nine years that I was doing this. Probably one of the biggest challenges, really, where that was the difficulties at home and everything that we had, Sarah's world was in that 24 hours a day, and I was in and out, like a revolving door.
I could be gone for 12 hours, back home for an hour, and then get another call and have to rush out. And just probably my nature and like many guys in general, you can kind of turn the page, and now you're plugging into work. We call that compartmentalization. It's a wonderful thing. Not really.
Not is it, Sarah? Nope, drives me nuts. It is wonderful until you come back home and you feel like you've moved on from that situation and there it is. So this is all affecting your marriage? Yeah, it was a lot, especially because I would be walking through really a lot of very scary situations, and I was doing it on my own while having other kids that I needed to somehow care for, but I would have to be in a room restraining our son while the other kids had to take care of themselves. And I would come out from those physically, emotionally depleted, and then that would often happen several times a day. And so he would come home, and I didn't even know how to explain to him what had happened. I couldn't explain to him. I couldn't explain to him the terrifying moments or how it feels as a mom to have words and actions spoken and done to you from a child that you are called to love and care for and deep down knowing that he wants that, but he couldn't control it. So having to be that nurturer while at the same time feeling kind of like at the hand of an abuser in a sense at times because he couldn't help it.
You might be thinking, well, Jeff will be home, and I'll get a break, and then Jeff comes home, and he's got to go back out immediately, and what you were counting on, you're depleted, and now all of a sudden Jeff's the bad guy in all of this. Yeah, and it was hard. I mean, there was really no easy solution in those moments. He knew that if he didn't show up at that surgery, he could lose that doctor's business, and I knew that. So I really did try to be understanding to that and tell myself I know he'd be here if he could, but there became situations where I felt like I needed him more than any other time.
How did you handle? I remember saying to him, I'm waving the white flag. This is a time when I need you, and I know you have to go, and I support you as much as I can in that, but this is a moment that I need you.
And we had probably, on one hand, those white flags were waved. Jeff, let me ask you about those white flag moments, because I'm thinking as a guy who's going, this is my job, my responsibility, I've got to go do this, I'm providing for my family, I don't have an option here, my wife needs me. Is this the point where I call the doctor and say, I can't come because my wife needs me? I feel the tension you'd be in at that moment going, what's the right thing before the Lord to do here? Yeah, and I wrestled with that tremendously, and knowing that what I thought I was doing in that moment and those moments, I thought I was doing the honorable thing I was providing for my family, I was being loyal to the surgeons that I was calling on, and knowing that by not showing up, they were so easy to flip and go to a competitor. That fear was in me, the fear of man. And where that started to consume was, I didn't have a boundary or a line in the sand that said, if this happens, and if Sarah cries out to me, then I'm going to stay home. I think the biggest challenge was, all of this is often hidden. What was going on in our home?
No one knew on what was going on externally. And if I say to a doctor that my wife needs me at home, we're having an issue going on, that just doesn't resonate well. But if your son is in the ER because of an emergency, a broken bone or something, that might make more sense. We didn't have those, and so by not having a clear answer of why I could maybe get out of this and at least get an excuse, that presented a lot of problems because I chose work over being home, and I thought I was really trying to do what was best for our family. As you look back now, would you do it any different?
Or could you? Yeah, and that's something we have talked about a lot, and it's such a case by case and a tough situation. I think I would have needed to, and I think I should have. And like Sarah said, it's only a couple times throughout those nine years that she was crying out, and I walked out of the door, and again, went to turn that page and put my foot in the door in the hospital, and she was left home getting the brunt of everything. And so knowing what that did ultimately to our marriage and how that was a huge challenge and something that we've had to work greatly through, I should have made a different decision. And it's, again, a case by case, everyone's work and industry that they're in, there's always different challenges, but is it to the point where I put my work above my family?
And there has to be a line where family is going to come first, and certainly with our desperate situation, I did not show that. Sarah, there are some wives who are waving the white flag every day when their husband leaves, and the husband's in a no-win situation. It's like the wife is so needy and dependent. She's got no other support system. She's depending on him to be everything, including to be Jesus for her in that moment.
So you can see the tension. Some husbands feel like, if I said yes every time my wife waved the white flag, I'd be out of work. Yeah, no, that's definitely true. Were you feeling that tension that he might lose business?
You guys might not have income if you waved this white flag? Yeah, I mean, it was, like I said earlier, there was really no right decision in many ways. It was just a bad situation. What were the ages of your kids after your oldest was born? So I would say when these situations were happening more frequently as his business was getting increased and territory was growing, it was probably when our oldest was like eight, about. NHK was just over two years apart.
So about eight, six, four, and two. And that was really probably the most difficult time in our son's life. He was bigger, so it was more difficult for me to handle.
The other kids were sometimes hurt. And so I was trying to juggle all these things, and I also was dealing with chronic illness. So I was trying to do that while not feeling well. Wait, wait, wait, you just threw in another storm. I'll hold the storm off if you want to go into it. No, no, no. So you've got the kids thing, and now you're dealing with illness.
What's that? Well, I had been dealing with some illness stuff really since the beginning of our marriage. I'd been having just really random things, stomach issues overall, but nothing that was debilitating me.
But each child that I had, just the stress of the pregnancy revealed new symptoms that were coming out of me. And by the time I'd had my fourth, the best way I can describe it is I felt fluish all the time. I had these horrible aches all the time. And you know when you have the flu, you just want to do nothing but lay in bed and curl up and die. It's such an awful feeling. And I was having to somehow muster through that achiness, and it would often come with chills and with fatigue and stomach issues, and a lot of really random things like nerve pain or a joint would hurt or different things like that. And I just didn't have the option. I could not lay down.
I couldn't rest. I had to be on call myself 24-7 with, one, our son, but then typical kids, too. We had three others that had needs, and they needed Mom to take care of them, and they were also trying to deal with the aftereffects of the stuff that had gone on with our son, and they were trying to make sense of that.
So that also created behaviors in them that were also difficult. So it became where I was trying to constantly care for these really difficult situations, but I felt terrible doing it. And then he would walk in the door, and I'd be ready to just check out.
I almost needed to. My body finally had the second to let down, and often he'd walk right back out. And that struggle in me would create, well, when do I get the out? I know he doesn't want to leave. I know he wants to be here, but I can't go on like this forever. I can't keep doing this. So am I the sacrifice here?
Am I just going to be the one that is beaten to the ground? I saw that I couldn't keep going on like this because I was getting sicker and sicker by the day, and our situation was intensifying. I would have been raising several white flags by this point. Probably throwing a red flag.
Yeah, I think I would have been throwing many. And you stop and think, I mean, the early years of marriage are stressful for every couple. You're making adjustments. Having four kids. That's stressful. You throw on top of that these health challenges and these career issues. I'm guessing that there are more couples who can identify with your story, maybe not the specifics, but they can feel those stress moments of trying to figure out, how do we do this? How do we do this so that we can both not just survive, but so that we can build what we hoped to build when we first got married, a marriage and a family, and have all of that be good? We've just scratched the surface on the challenges you guys have faced.
Ultimately, your diagnosis was Lyme disease, right? And we're going to talk more about this this week, but you've talked about this in your book Together Through the Storms, Biblical Encouragement for Your Marriage When Life Hurts, and we want to make your book available to any Family Life Today listener who would like to get a copy of it. If you can support this ministry with a donation, we'd love to send you a copy of Jeff and Sarah's book.
Again, the title is Together Through the Storms. Go to familylifetoday.com, and there's information there about how you can make a donation, how you can receive a copy of the book. Family Life Today is listener-supported. You were able to listen to today's program because somebody cared enough about you to donate so that today's program could happen, and we're asking you to do the same for others. So, if you'd go to familylifetoday.com, make a donation. You can request your copy of Jeff and Sarah's book Together Through the Storms, or if it's easier, call us at 1-800-FL-TODAY, 1-800-358-6329.
That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Now, tomorrow, we want to continue to hear about the challenges Jeff and Sarah Walton faced in their marriage, and how they had to lean into God to find the strength to endure those challenges. I hope you can be back with us for that conversation. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back tomorrow 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.
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