Have you ever felt the pressure of curating the perfect holiday gathering, only to feel stretched thin by trying to meet everybody's expectations? Ever wondered how to keep your marriage a priority amidst the holiday chaos? Join us, Jordan and Kristen, as we share personal stories and strategies for managing these seasonal stressors. We highlight the importance of presence over perfection, embracing traditions without losing sight of joy, and finding the balance through compromise.
Moving forward, we dissect the art of safeguarding your relationship during the holiday rush. We delve into the essence of compromise, the beauty of quality time over quantity, and the significance of placing God at the center of our decisions. We encourage you to see holidays as an opportunity to foster unity with a focus on Christ, rather than a stress-filled event. As we conclude, we underscore the transformative power of prayer for our families and loved ones during the festive season. With love and warmth, we wish you a joyous holiday rooted in God's love.
Have you ever felt the pressure of curating the perfect holiday gathering, only to feel stretched thin by trying to meet everybody's expectations? Ever wondered how to keep your marriage a priority amidst the holiday chaos? Join us, Jordan and Kristen, as we share personal stories and strategies for managing these seasonal stressors. We highlight the importance of presence over perfection, embracing traditions without losing sight of joy, and finding the balance through compromise.
Moving forward, we dissect the art of safeguarding your relationship during the holiday rush. We delve into the essence of compromise, the beauty of quality time over quantity, and the significance of placing God at the center of our decisions. We encourage you to see holidays as an opportunity to foster unity with a focus on Christ, rather than a stress-filled event. As we conclude, we underscore the transformative power of prayer for our families and loved ones during the festive season. With love and warmth, we wish you a joyous holiday rooted in God's love.
All right, good evening everybody. Thank you for joining us and welcome to another edition of the Jordan and Kristen record show. Tonight's topic man, I don't wanna do this, but it's navigating family dynamics during the holidays and I gotta tell you we've been rehearsing this and we're trying not to offend anybody, but the more we rehearse, the worse it's coming out. So, kristen, I need you to pray that we're not going to offend our own family members during this episode and that this is actually helpful to everybody and not hurtful to anybody. So, kristen, why don't you start by giving us one of your super prayers for this very, very difficult topic?
Speaker 2:Go right ahead.
Speaker 1:Can we do this after the holidays? Yeah, it's weird because we do all these heavy topics, I know right, like depression and we did one on suicide, all these other things, but the one that scares me the most is talking about how to deal with family dynamics during the holidays.
Speaker 2:I know, I know it's just for the record we love our family. All kidding aside, we do really love them. So well, lord. Thank you, god, thank you for family, thank you for unity. God, I do pray for those going through this holiday season. For someone who is grieving who this is maybe a first holiday without a loved one, lord, I pray, lord, you just wrap your arms around them, god and for those going through stressful situations or pain or having to see family members that are just difficult. To be honest, lord, I just pray that the focus of Christmas and this Christmas season would truly be you, god. We wouldn't get off on different things, but we would keep our eyes on you. The prize, the author, perfecter of our faith, and the whole reason for celebrating the season would be your love, your light, and that would draw us closer as a family together. In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:All right. So, as I mentioned, tonight's topic is navigating family dynamics during the holidays and you know, when we first pitched the idea for our show to Laura, she said that's such a great idea, you guys can do all these fun topics like navigating family dynamics during the holidays. I was like, well, you know, my advice actually to not have a disaster of a holiday would be to not talk about your family and its dynamics on the radio to all of New York City, which is exactly what we're doing. So here's what I'm not gonna do is I'm not gonna start this conversation, kristen, I'm gonna let you start.
Speaker 2:Oh, how generous of you You're such a gentleman. Well, it is true, it is a-.
Speaker 1:I won the coin toss and I like to kick off. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, as I mentioned before and I will mention again, we love our family dearly. But, you know, people are not perfect. You're not perfect. I mean you're very close to perfect, but I'm not perfect. Our family is not perfect, people are not perfect, but God is perfect and he works through that. He works through those situations and I was talking to some of the other day and she said how's the?
Speaker 2:radio show going and she said you should do an episode on family dynamics. She said the same thing Okay, god. She said I wish my family were that perfect hallmark image of the people sitting around the table and laughing and joking. And it's just not that way and I want that. And I thought to myself you know, I could kind of fall into that category of wanting things perfect, kind of a perfectionist. And the problem with that of seeing something in my head visually and then when that doesn't follow through after we got married and saying, oh, this is not exactly how I thought each holiday situation would be, then it makes me spiral downward kind of into the sad place and lose my focus and the beauty of now and robs my joy of what God wants to do, because I'm focused on this picture that it has to be in my head.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. What was the picture you had in your head?
Speaker 2:Okay. So I grew up where everyone who in my mom's family and my dad's family who was alive came to our house and everybody celebrated together and it was just such a wonderful thing. And I always said, when I get married someday I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna continue that legacy and both families are gonna come together and we're gonna be one big happy family. And so you know, I know that was something that definitely my parents wanted, but I know everybody is different. I didn't include your parents on that vision and you know I didn't think to think about, you know, their idea of things. They kind of wanted it separate your family and then my family. And so at first I couldn't get past that, like no, no, no, it's gotta be this way, we gotta all be together. And it kind of hurt my feelings, to be honest, and I can't stay in that place because that's gonna be a real source of bitterness and create conflict in everything that we're talking about instead of the joy and the beauty of enjoying our families and the holidays.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know it's funny because when I was growing up, every Christmas and Thanksgiving was just a nuclear family my mom, my dad, me and my two brothers, and then my uncle, who was a single man his whole life. From New York he would just come and hang out with us, and so it's just the same six people basically the whole time. And then one year my brother got up and got married and moved to Virginia, and so the idea of us always being together all the time was very difficult, because obviously my brother's wife's family wants to spend time with them also and nobody wants to give up the actual day. It's always well, you can spend Thanksgiving day with us, but you can spend the other day, some other day, the day before or after with the other people. Well, okay, that's my brother's family and my brother, and they're all the way, seven hours away from us. Then you have me and you. You and I get married. So now there's three families involved in this and, God willing, our siblings will get married too.
Speaker 1:The point is simply, if you focus on this picture you had, for what childhood was well, you're going to be disappointed, because people grow up. My uncle died, my brother got married. You and I got married. Okay, there are a lot more people involved now, so you can't really hold on to that and you're just going to have to accept that. There are going to be times where not everyone can be together.
Speaker 1:But you have to focus on who is there, not who isn't there. If you're focusing on the way things aren't perfect, the way things aren't the way you want them to be, yeah, you're going to be upset. Yeah, you're going to have a miserable time, no kidding, but that's a choice, right. You can't always choose. You can do your best. You can't always choose who you get to celebrate the holidays with. Okay, that's right, especially when someone passes away. But you can choose. You still can choose to focus on the people who were there and enjoy the holidays and make the most of them and establish new norms. You had a norm for a while. You can establish new norms going forward and just understand. You have to be flexible and change when it's necessary.
Speaker 2:That's right, because otherwise what will happen is then, when something else changes, you'll be like well, that really was a nice season.
Speaker 1:You're always chasing what was behind you.
Speaker 2:That's true and, going off of what you're saying, don't sweat the small stuff, because if you have especially family, get close to family, you're going to have little conflicts, little things, little offenses, and sometimes you need to work things out. I'm not saying that. But if you harbor those little things or you get in conflicts, just think about the fact Is this really worth this? If this was my last holiday with this person, if this was our last holiday together, what I care about this right now, in the grand scheme of things, because in the reality, that's what a lot of people are facing. And you mentioned about expectations, but also, what about your expectations of yourself, of other people's expectations during the holidays as well? That's another thing.
Speaker 1:Well, and especially for married couples like you and I. I mean one of the mistakes. I think and we've mentioned this before, back before we were on the radio, we were just doing the regular podcast One of the mistakes that you and I made early in our marriage is that you and I are both people pleasers first and foremost and, I will admit, sometimes the person I want to please the most is myself, but in general we are people pleasers and because of that, when we got married, we were putting everybody else first and we were saving ourselves to last. We were putting our marriage last, ok, and the holidays present a great opportunity to do exactly that, to make the mistake of not that you should be selfish, but you have to preserve your marriage first and foremost.
Speaker 1:You can't let other people's expectations of your marriage, other people's expectations of where you should spend Christmas, where you should spend Thanksgiving and how you should arrange your calendar OK. You can't let that tear your marriage apart In a weird way. You have got to allow this challenge to actually cause you guys to grow together. That, kristin, this isn't something that it's going to tear us apart because your parents want to do this and my parents want to do that Instead. This is something that's going to bring me and you together, because we've got this dynamic situation we have to deal with and you and I are going to together solve this problem and understanding it's going to require compromise. There's no circumstance under which none of this requires compromise.
Speaker 2:That's right but there is always.
Speaker 1:There is always a best answer. There is always a solution that God wants, and sometimes, honestly, sometimes you just have to make the best solution and other people have to be happy enough with it, and that's just how it has to be.
Speaker 2:That's good, like life advice, because what I'm realizing is there's not just black and white, there's gray areas and that's why it's we go to God for everything and say God, what's the right decision on this? Because it's not going to just be in terms of holiday time or whatever. It's not going to just be a balance of 50% this way, 50% that way. Sometimes life is about harmony.
Speaker 1:You don't want to do that either? Yeah, then, you start getting to these situations like I deal with my divorce clients where you have like schedules are to formalize and you're keep. Exactly okay, well, I'm exchange the kid at 6 am and then he gets it. You know you, marriage can't be like that.
Speaker 2:you have to please. You can't please. What is that saying? You can't please all the people all the time you definitely cannot. You've got to please God.
Speaker 1:If you're pleasing God, if you know what you're doing is godly, is what God wants you to do, then everything else will fall into place and and once everything else has fallen into place and you figured out the schedule and you figured out you know who you're gonna spend what portion of the time with and you've accepted that some people are just never gonna Be happy and some people you know just aren't gonna be there when you'd want them to be there. It's not gonna be a perfect picture. Once all of that has been put into place and you're ready to actually celebrate the holidays, my advice is it is better to be friends with these people than to be right all the time, because how many, how many families do we know? Right now? They're being torn apart by stupid, trivial things like politics or by these, these various culture wars, guys, that stuff is.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying politics isn't important in an abstract sense, but it is not more important than your family when you're you don't get listen. One of things I've learned, kristen when you're young, you take family time for granted. I saw some stat don't quote me in this, but it's something like you're gonna spend 75% of your time with your kids by the time they're age 12, right? Family time is precious guys. Don't blow up your family time Arguing about politics if you know you're gonna set somebody off or arguing about culture if you know you're gonna set somebody off.
Speaker 2:Or how a turkey's made even or how it?
Speaker 1:no, sir, that's a funny thing, though, right? Exactly who brings what there's? There's all kinds of opportunities during holidays for stupid, trivial arguments, and my recommendation is instead use the holidays as opportunities to bring people together.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing we're saying here, obviously keeping the focus on Jesus, but be present, the time you have with. It's not about Quantity of get, all of that is important, it's the quality. It's the quality. You could spend 10 hours with someone and not really spend the time with them, so that's a big biggest thing excellent point.
Speaker 1:Okay, kristen, I think we should cut ourselves short here before we do any more damage. So we got about 30 seconds of Kristen. Why don't you pray for all these people and pray for our families? I hope this episode.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, our family knows how much we love them, lord, thank you. Thank you, god, that, although we are in, perfect people, every single one of us, although we mess up, god, we make mistakes, god, you are there Filling in, filling in the gaps, god. Thank you, god, for loving us the way you do, and I pray that this season we focus on you above all, in Jesus name Amen all right guys.
Speaker 1:I know that you're probably gonna be hearing this after Thanksgiving, but we hope you have a great holiday season, have a great Christmas, have a great new year and we love you and God bless you and we just pray you have Amazing time with all your, your various family members. Amen, all right guys, take care. Happy holidays.