Moving Up and Moving Apart

Matt and Sarah Hammett have been married for almost two decades now. And like every couple, they still have conflict. We have an amazing marriage. But when we hit conflict, it's terrible and it's toxic.

And in the earlier days, I would say the first 12 years, it was probably 10 days a month was toxic conflict. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Having conflict in marriage does not mean your marriage is bad or there's something wrong.

It means you need to learn how to resolve conflict, what the Bible says about that. We'll talk with Matt and Sarah Hammett about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today. Thanks for joining us. I don't know how many of our listeners realize this, but Dave and I have something in common. We have a lot of things.

This is going to be good. I don't know where you're going. We were both in high school in bands, weren't we? You were in a band in high school. Yeah, I was in the Daydreamers. And then we called ourselves the Four Man Midnight Band.

Hey, you guys are the coolest. Our band was called Ambrosia until there was an ambrosia. And then we had to pull off of that, right? So we were ambrosia, music like the food of the gods, because that's what ambrosia is, the food of the gods. And then we pivoted and we became Flat River Junction during the country rock years. You know, Flat River Junction was our band name. And then we started doing covers of 50s and 60s and we became the Echos. I wanted us to be the original artists because I wanted to put out a cover record by the original artists and have people think, you know, it was the original art.

Anyway, you get how old that goes. And you were, I'm guessing, the lead singer? I was the lead singer. You were the frontman.

And played guitar occasionally, but sometimes just went full Mick Jagger on the thing and just was there with my microphone. I'm just going to confess that Dave is three years older than me. And so his band played at my middle school, whatever it was, dance.

That might have been the highlight of our career right there, middle school dance. And I'm telling you, I thought he is the hottest, coolest guy I've ever seen in my life. I don't think I've ever told you that, actually, because you already knew it. That's the first I've ever heard that. I'm going to put on that jacket and see what happens.

You never know. My mom was like our manager or whatever, you know, and the guys wore whatever they wanted, but I had a Nehru jacket. Ooh, I wanted a Nehru jacket. What's a Nehru jacket? You know, with the high collar thing.

And my mom was like, no, you're not getting a... Those will be out of style in two years. But the cool thing is, we wanted to be rock stars. And we never were. And we have a real rock star in the studio today. That's right. It wasn't just a dream.

It's reality. A Grammy-nominated rock star. And a Dove Award-winning rock star.

Who cares about him? I'm just happy his wife is here. Me too.

I thought maybe you were talking about me. Now we do have Matt Hammond and Sarah in the studio today. Welcome. Thank you. Really glad you're here. And if you don't know, we do know, Sanctus Reel, Toledo, Ohio. Ann and I are from Findlay, Ohio, so Sanctus Reel was a band we knew back in the mid-90s when you guys started in 96. Everybody knew Sanctus Reel.

You were from Ohio, so we were proud of that. But let me just give you a proper introduction. 20 years leading Sanctus Reel. Yeah, 20 years.

It was good. Good 20 years. Now you're married. You've got four kids living in Nashville, still writing songs and doing music, still touring. Yeah.

And wrote a book called Lead Me. And we should mention that the two of you speak at our Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaways. And we're glad to have you guys as part of that team. Yeah, it's awesome to be part of that team. One of the things I didn't realize until I read the book, which, by the way, great book. It's like a memoir of your life. It's so good, you guys. And it's very real and authentic, so thank you.

Thank you. And how you started sort of early in the band days on the road, and it was interesting to read. Well, let me ask you this. Is the lifestyle of being a rock star all that it's, you know, that Bob and I dreamed it would be?

Since we never got there. Well, I don't know if it's exactly ambrosia, but I will tell you, it is a pretty good feeling to have anybody and then sing your song. You know, and then you have hundreds of people or thousands of people that makes you feel like the thing that you created, that God put in your heart, you know, that he created through you, that you got to sing meant something to somebody.

And so that part of it really is exciting. It's fun to perform with a band. But those behind-the-scenes moments, you know, when you're not on the stage, when you're not singing those songs or writing those songs come with a lot of sacrifice and some very difficult trials of just what life on the road is really like, especially when you're married.

Let me ask you, Sarah, what's it like to be married to the rock star? In the beginning, we were just kids and we were having fun. And it was fun to travel, and I went on the road with him for how many years?

Full-time for five years with me. And it was fun. We had a great adventure together, and I think I put all of my dreams on hold and just chased his with him. So it was fun. It was difficult getting married and getting straight on the road because we didn't have a normal marriage.

We had to... Weren't you living and kind of sleeping in a van at times? It was hot. Yeah, and one of the things I love about your book is, even when you talk about those days, you're very honest.

You know, we love honesty. And you're so real that, I mean, it was pretty cool, not for you, but to read about fights, conflicts, even intense on, you know, you're walking off the stage and you guys are yelling at each other. Talk about that, because that's real life, whether you're a rock star or not. But how'd you manage that? It was difficult because we would just, I'd literally go from being on stage performing to all of a sudden the reality of like, you know, my wife has needs. It's not just about me being on the road and performing. It's about me doing life with my wife.

And I have to find a way to learn how to not just focus on my career, but how do I focus on this new marriage that God's given me? And at times, to be totally honest, you know, you can read about it in the book, of course, that I didn't know, I wasn't focused all the time. There's a story in the book where, you know, I'm just like off wandering around, Sarah's been working merchandise all day for pretty much free, like five bucks or something, whatever we could afford to give her at the time. And, you know, I come by- Hey, she's holding up a five-figure set. Five dollars. It was five bucks.

It was nothing, but I was just, it was fun. She was part of the team, right? Yeah. And so, you know, but I'd come by see her and I'd have a, let's say I have like a coffee in my hand and she'd be like, well, did you bring me one? You know, did you think of me? Did you say, wait, do you know who I am?

I'm the lead singer of Satan's Real. So it was hard for me definitely to try to like, try to pull my head out of the career dream and then pull it into this marriage dream. Well, and you went straight from your mom's house to my house, meaning like you didn't have any transition time.

It was straight from there. And we were young. We were so young. We met when we were 19, married when we were 21. And I think, yeah, we were just figuring it out, but fighting on the road was complicated. I'm not one to really hide how I feel. And so if I needed to say, hey, you're kind of being selfish and you're not thinking about me. I think too, it was hard for him because he didn't conflict that way. That wasn't the way his family did it.

They sort of hit it or brushed it in the rug and let it go. Whereas I'm like, I can't live with this wedge. I need to feel known and loved. Here it is. Now let's talk about it. But for him, he wanted to escape from it and it would just escalate and it would just explode.

Yeah. So I moved from a bedroom in my mom's house to a bucket seat in a van that I was sharing with a woman who, you know, was conflict is part of life. Before that, for me, all conflict was bad. And so if we couldn't fight, imagine even intimacy.

There's no intimacy either because there's nowhere. Dave speaks around. He's a pastor. And so there was a night that my car broke down and I couldn't get to this big fundraiser he was speaking at. And I finally got there after I had walked a mile and I was all muddy in my shoes.

And she's being nice. The reason the car broke down was my fault. He had fixed the car by putting a C-clamp on this very important part. Of vice grips. Oh, that's what it was. Yeah. Honey, come on. Elevated up to where it really was.

Of vice grips. So long story short. And so I got to the event late and Dave was frustrated because I wasn't there. And as I walked in disheveled, angry, upset because he wasn't taking care of me and I felt like the world was all about him. This woman came up to me and she said, are you Dave Wilson's wife? And I said, yeah, I am. And she said, oh, it must be something to be married to him. And I said, oh, it is something.

I know. Did you feel that? All the time. Even with this song, people will come up to me and say, what a beautiful song. Your husband wrote that for you. And I'm like, I'm not shed a tear. Like this song came out of my heart's cry.

And even after the song, it's still my heart's cry. I think everyone thought it was a magic wand. And I was like, no. It came after a heated fight where I still felt misunderstood.

Like these words were awesome, but it was like, I needed it to be reality. Do you know what I mean? Wait, you mean that song didn't fix everything, sweetheart? No. And the song we're referring to is Lead Me. Yes. Yes, the song Lead Me.

Exactly. And this song happened 15 years into your time on the road with Sanctus Real. This was a long process of frustration and feeling alienated and feeling abandoned and being at home, taking care of kids and having to take somebody to the emergency room while your husband's on the road, all of that stuff. I mean, I can even remember I was pregnant for Bowen. We have a son who's really sick and you will read about that in the book, but pregnant for Bowen, I think I'm like eight months pregnant. There's a tornado coming. He's on the road. I'm down in the basement with my two other kids, pregnant with this sick baby that could come any minute. Tornado comes by, floods the basement while I'm in it. And I'm just like, what in the world? And I have no, you know, Matt's gone.

He's not there. And it was time after time, our pipes would break. And it just, it was years and years and years of feeling that loneliness of doing it myself. And then when he would come home, he was tired. And I think, you know, when you do what he does, sometimes there's veils over your eyes that you can't see things in a certain way. He couldn't understand and he couldn't connect with me and what I needed.

And I think a lot of that had to do with the position. We were living two different lives, really. You know, I'm showing up at a church and it's like, everybody makes food for us. And I mean, it's hard work.

I don't want to stand up when you're done at the night and just go, you're wonderful. Yeah. And like, so there's a lot of reward for the work. Now, granted, we were, you know, a lot, all those years driving vans, literally through the night ourselves, loading all our own gear, setting up stages, meeting and greeting. So it was like, I was working very hard, but there also was a lot of reward where Sarah was at home working very hard for very little to no reward.

Yeah. So I'm walking in the door thinking, I need to just rest at home. And I walk into a pile of laundry, you know, and I'm thinking, what is going on here?

What has happened? You know, the house is blown up. I just didn't have that empathy to walk in the door and say, what do you need from me? How can I give?

How can I serve? I'm thinking I'm going to walk in and plop on the couch and it's just going to be marital bliss. She's like, no, the diapers hit your chest, you know, at the door, your turn. It's like you have that moment where you're like, well, this isn't what I imagined, right? And it's totally selfish.

We're selfish as people. And so getting to a place where I could see my selfishness and learn how to put her first without her having to be her wounds to show me that, of course it says that's a lifelong process, but it had to start somewhere. And I think that lead me was the response to one of those moments where I first was able to say, hey, how do I take my first real major steps?

You had not arrived when you wrote lead me. You were at the beginning of what has been an ongoing journey to try to embody what that song is all about. Exactly. A daily journey to try, really try my best to own up to the reality of who I am versus who I want to be. In a lot of ways, it really is similar to a pastor's life because it's public. For Anne and I, as we worked with the Detroit Lions for 33 seasons as their chaplain, it's really similar to a pro athlete's life.

As an athlete, your life is public. The public loves you. Well, not in Detroit, but they love you, most places.

And I can remember coming home from road games with the Lions feeling exactly that. I walk in the, again, I'm only gone the weekend, but many of the same things Matt was experiencing. People take care of you. Everybody's catering to you on the plane and the hotel and the stadium.

You get on the plane, you come home. But I walk in the house, when you said that, Matt, I thought I felt the same thing. And when she's angry that I'm gone and all these things are going on and there's sometimes handing me a baby, I'm mad. I'm like, my life is important and everything you've got here, I provided because all those people out there think I'm something and you don't appreciate me. So I know Matt, I'm guessing you felt many things I did, but I'd love to hear, Sarah, you're at home dealing with this. Yeah.

How'd you deal with it? I mean, I'm kind of sassy, and I'm not going to hide who I am. I have always said to Matthew, I don't want to walk through life with you. I'm sorry, I'm not going to settle for that. I want to dance. I want to feel cohesive and I don't feel cohesive, I feel the opposite. I'm very stubborn and I persevere and I will push and push to get to a place of feeling like we're dancing. And I think- But it sounds like you were pushing for quite a while without him hearing.

Yes. How did you get him to hear? Well, I think it's all in him, to be honest, because I don't think it's the way I have said it because I've tried it every which way. I try it nice. I try it aggressive. I try it all the different ways. Every time it was not understood.

And so I think for me, that day he wrote that song and we did find a level of understanding, I feel like it was just something that God lifted and gave him. And I remember, it's funny, I was thinking back, I used to cry and cry and cry and say, why did you give me this hard, hard marriage? It's so difficult. You have to use this. If we're going to go through all this pain, please use it because I'm not leaving him.

So what are you going to do with it? I would just be like, do something. Because I would say outside of conflict, we have an amazing marriage. But when we hit conflict, it's terrible and it's toxic.

And in the earlier days, I would say the first 12 years, it was probably 10 days a month was toxic conflict, which were probably the days he was home. But we would fight and he was on the road and we'd be on the phone and it was intense and that feeling. I think slowly, we still have moments where we get stuck and we say the things we wish we would have never said. It's still as a 40-year-old after we've walked it all, but it becomes further and farther between. And we hang on to that. So it comes back to you, Matt, that God, it sounds like really got a hold of your heart.

Yeah. I think it's the willingness to step outside of your own reality and embrace your spouse's reality as your own. And that's a really difficult thing to do, but I think that's what ultimately we're called to do for our spouse, right?

So lay down our lives for our wives. And I think part of learning to be a man is actually being willing to not only... I would say denying yourself means also denying your own reality in a way because we all see things so differently and we all want to hold on to the way we see conflict, how it should be resolved, how we should communicate, how she wants me to dance through life, but what if I'm not the kind of dancer she wants? It's like, can she accept me that way? Or can I say her reality of how she wants me to dance, how she wants me to communicate, how she desires for me to mend her wounds in conflict even when I don't understand completely why she's hurt when she's hurt or how she responds to me.

Can I embrace that reality as my own because I love her reality and who she is more than I love myself. Talk about the first time you saw her because as she's describing what she wants, I'm thinking, bro, you should have seen that. The first time you saw her. The first time you saw her. Right?

Yes, exactly. So, yeah, so the very first time I saw Sarah, it was at this festival. We were a new up and coming band and we played early in the day and that night, third day's on stage doing the headlining set and the lights are shining out into the audience and I see this girl in bare feet and overalls just dancing, smiling, and I literally thought to myself, I need that in my life. This is carefree, this carefree woman and I always think, you know, like I was always kind of this uptight people pleaser. I gravitate towards kind of shame and like in, you know, I go inward with my feelings and she just like all out there, you know, and I'm like, man, that's amazing. I just, I want to let go. I loved how carefree she was before we got married, but then after we got married, she'd come into her bed with like black feet, you know, from like being outside barefoot and rub them on my legs, you know, and I'm like a little OCD and I'm just trying to be loving and like this letter, you know, and she actually used to, this is funny, I'm going to give you away on this one. She used to chew gum and actually take it at night and stick it on the bed frame, you know. I was 21!

21! That's too far. She's free.

She is free. And so, yeah, it's just so funny because yeah, when you see that thing, you're like, that's what I need in my life. Is that really what you want? You know, and it's like sometimes it's not what you want.

It's what you need. And now of course, sticking gum on, you know, frames and all the weird things that I do, you know, those things, of course, over time we grow up, we change and my feet are clean now too. Your feet are much cleaner. It's interesting. I mean, yeah, absolutely. And you don't stick gum on our bed anymore. But it's interesting because still it's like we say I do to this thing, do we really say I do? Do we, well, when we say I do, do we keep doing and yeah, it's the whole I still do thing, right? There you go.

I still do. But this is so true for all of us. We see things, I saw things in Marianne that are different than me that I thought this will compliment me.

This will balance. I wasn't thinking it cognitively. I was thinking that's missing, that will complete me. And then you marry and all of a sudden what you appreciated in small doses is there all the time. And now it's like I liked a little of that, but I don't know that I want it all the time and with full force like it's coming right now. And I think a lot of couples when they face that, they go, what, what did I miss or what? I thought we were going to have this and now it's what was attractive is now annoying.

And we're surprised by that. So given the way conflict has happened for you guys, when you're speaking at a weekend to remember marriage getaway and you're talking about how to resolve conflict in your marriage, are you speaking and going, oh yeah, I need to do this too. Oh yeah. Every time. We had a fight this morning. We definitely did have a fight this morning. So if you had a fight this morning out there, you're not alone.

And um, yeah, and I did some repenting on the way here, Dave, so you know, it's fresh. It's so funny cause we always joke through the weekend to remember that every couple always seems to have that fight like right before they're supposed to speak right before they get there. But you know, you can take that, you know what I actually did say to Sarah, I said, it's amazing that we get to go and I would say this about weekend remember as well, um, and being here today. I said, how amazing is it that we get to take this pain that we have in our lives and that God gives it purpose.

It's incredible. And every time I speak at weekend, remember, especially on conflict, I like, that's my favorite one. Uh, and we, the, we fight too because I get the opportunity to not only share a, you're not alone.

We fight too, to show our scars, but to also give those practical little things that we're learning along the way that have helped us so much. And how did you get to the point, cause every couple has to get there, where you actually love those things that drove you crazy. It is funny cause those things after, well, 19 years of marriage now, those things, I did look at her the other day and I said, you know what? It's so interesting because there are some of those things about her, her carefreeness that just like, they be, even if they drive you crazy, they become home. You know, it's like the thing that time does, it's like, it's kind of endearing that it drives you crazy now. So you go through like at first it was really endearing, just romantically, nothing negative.

And then all of a sudden it's like all negative. And now we're at that phase where it's home to me and I wouldn't want anything else. And but we had to push through some massively hard times to get to that place where it feels like home. And I think we got to a place where we felt like we might not push towards feeling like home. Yeah, there are always moments, right, where we think, do we want to keep pushing? Can we keep climbing? Do we give up?

Do we throw in the towel? And I think like the beauty that I see now, I do think, man, oh, that feeling, just that deep feeling of when I put my head in her neck and I smell her hair or just, you know, like that that's only one person in my life that could give me that sense of just being my home no matter where we are. And I think, man, what would I do without that? What if I wouldn't have pushed through? What if there were moments I could have never imagined feeling that beauty ever again? And now it's like because of those moments when I thought I'd never feel it again, feeling it again is even more powerful. Even today, though, I'm still struggling as a man to let go of my own reality and desire of how I want her to be, her to speak to me, her to have conflict with me. It's like how the way I think things should go.

We still battle those things. And every day I still have to make a decision. Am I going to be willing to lay my own comforts, my own realities, my own ideals down to embrace, you know, what it is that she needs for me and to serve her? And I got to tell you, hearing you describe home, which, by the way, is the song lyric.

I mean, you said that, you know, we want to throw away the crazy, but it's home. Made me think of the couples listening right now who are ready to give up. Don't give up. Just hearing you describe that, I mean, you can feel and you can read it in your book, the pain and the struggle and the work you've gone through. It didn't happen in a day or a year.

It was years, maybe decades. And now you can look and go, I'm so glad I held on. I literally thought of my mom and dad who quit and thought, oh, I mean, I'm 60. I don't want to say how old, but over 60 and still feel that angst in my soul. I wish mom and dad would have fought for home because my home broke.

And that's why I have a passion to help homes and family life is that's what we want to do. Give hope and help. But I just want to say that couple don't quit. I know it's hard. I know right now it's so dark. You just want to walk out. Don't walk out. There's a child like me hoping mom and dad make it. You can make it.

Jesus can resurrect a dead marriage. You just heard their story. Yours is the next one.

Hang on. This is a book. What you've written is a book that will encourage couples. So good.

You can persevere, hang in there, work through it, press in. We've got copies of Matt's book in our Family Life Today Resource Center. It's called Lead Me. And I want to encourage listeners, get a copy of this book. Go to familylifetoday.com to order a copy for yourself, maybe a couple of copies so you can share it with other people you know.

Again the book is called Lead Me. It's a compelling story of their life, their marriage. Order from us at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get a copy.

And the phone number 1-800-358-6329, that's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And I'll just say we would encourage every couple to get together with other couples and spend some time talking about your marriage. Don't try to do this on your own, but have a team approach to building a strong marriage. We've got resources, Dave and Ann, you guys have got the Vertical Marriage Video Series. We've got the Love Like You Mean It Video Series, the Art of Marriage Video Series. These are tools designed to help promote conversation between you and other couples to help strengthen your marriage and help you work through the issues that inevitably come up in a marriage. You can find out more about the Art of Marriage Video Series, the Vertical Marriage Video Series, the Love Like You Mean It Series.

Go to our website, familylifetoday.com to find information about resources we have available to help you strengthen your marriage in community. And I hope you can join us again tomorrow. We're going to continue our conversation with Matt and Sarah Hammett, talking about the realities of their marriage, some of the challenges they've faced and how God has met them in the midst of those challenges. Hope you can tune in for that. We may even get Matt to pick up the guitar, sing a song for us tomorrow, so hope you can join us. We want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, got some extra help this week from Bruce Goff and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann 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. Hope for today, hope for tomorrow.