When the Kids Leave | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Foreign.

Hello, everybody, it's Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real raw and relevant. And we are so glad that you are here today, Ronald Wayne. How you feeling over there?

You missed last week.

Yeah, I did do it by myself. I did. I was busy working for the Lord.

Ratings went down.

Sorry, I was doing come higher.

I don't know that ratings went down. I'm supposing.

Oh, okay. How are you feeling? You hadn't been feeling good, you've been sick. They didn't know that Ronaldo has an ear infection.

We didn't know I had an ear infection because I had. My tonsils were swollen. It was hard to preach Sunday, especially to exert myself. So I thought, like I had something with tonsils. I said, no, your ear's infected and it's draining.

And let me tell y', all, he is a horrible patient when it comes to putting drops in the ear. I mean, acting like a three year old baby.

Baby. Oh, man, I have my knee operated on and didn't even use a crutch.

Ron, why are you jerking and crying and complaining?

I come back from, I don't eat when I get sick. I don't even go home, Ron. I don't even miss days.

Let's talk about the ear drops.

Let's just look at you might have said a big thing. Context. I plow through everything, every operation I've ever had, bam, right back. But I told you, when she gave me ear drops, I said, God, I hate that feeling. She told me, I said, I don't want that. She wanted to give me antibiotic ear drops. She's never done that before. She always gave me oral and she gave me. I'm like, I don't want drops. She's like, yep, twice a day, three drops at a time. So I handed you the drops and what did I look at and said? I said, I hate the feeling of something going down my ear. And I do. But I was upfront about it because I knew it. I can't stand it.

And still acting like people putting a.

Q tip in there. I can't.

Acting like I had done something this morning.

No, it's not pain. It just wigs me out. I don't like the feeling of something in my ear.

Okay.

I don't like that. Like people like, well, let's just pray.

That he's on the mend. All that so that we don't have to deal with it anymore.

Did it first time last night. But it was swollen. I mean, it was. You can sit down there. Said Lymph node was swollen because of it, so. Anyway. But I do. I can't stand that feeling. Like when they get waxed and they shoot that water in your ear. Feels like it's running through your whole brain.

Okay.

I can't stand that feeling anyway. But I am feeling better. And last week, I did a little teaching when you weren't here.

I watched it, actually.

Was it all right?

Yeah, it was good. I watched it. Me and the other ladies. Yep. We were in Pigeon Forge, and we finished a session and we sat down that night. Yeah, it was great. There was no laughter in the room because I'm not funny like we normally have. There was no laughter. It's very serious.

Well, we'll have both today.

Okay.

Here's what me and Hope want to talk about. We got our. The only child left in our house unmarried is Chaz, our middle child, and he's getting married. When this. Two days. No, when this drops.

It'll be one day. Yeah.

And we'll be. We are emptying Esther's because Chaz, a year and a half ago, moved out, got his own place. So we had a kid in our house for total. I counted up with 28 years. And so, you know, there's some people. Let's talk about this before we go into the phases of. Of raising kids. There's some people that I have heard. I've heard stories, you know, that when all the kids left, they almost didn't know how to relate to one another without the kids being a part of it.

They had no life together outside of their children.

And, I mean, I've heard some stories where people come up on some really marital hard times.

Yeah, a lot of people divorce when.

The kids move out, and that's that late forties divorce rate and thing where sometime it spikes right in there. I think that is not all of it, but I think it has a part to do with it because they only knew how to relate as a family reunion. Then when you back to a couple like you originally were, they realize the lack of investment they've had in each other. And that's not downing anybody. That can happen subconsciously just by sheer trying to keep up with everything. School, homework, ball games, PTA meetings. He works, she works, church volunteer. I mean, you know, it's just life. And there probably wasn't a whole lot of time to stare into one another's eyes, you know, like you did when you were dating and before you started having kids. So me and Hope have never tried to do parenting classes. Let other People do that because we're probably still learning a lot on how to parent. But the fact is, I think we can speak into several phases. And watching this podcast, there are people here with no kids, never had them, probably want to one day. There are people here with maybe babies and young kids. Then you have the adolescent teen when you start losing control, and then you have. How do you relate to a child as an adult? I think you and I, by trial and error and out of pain and some successes, can speak into some of those phases with something that may help somebody say, man, I needed to hear that. Man, I needed to hear that. Let's go to babies. How did babies change things? I'm going to ask you. Because it don't affect anybody like a mother.

I wanted babies more than I wanted breath.

You did. You wanted a child. He was almost like Hannah in the Bible.

Yes, I wanted children.

And you told me that from the time we were dating. You let me know that.

And.

You had a couple miscarriages. That was really rough.

But I think even, you know, every child's different. Everybody who's had any knows that. But in our first one was very difficult. He didn't sleep well. But even at that, I'll leave that alone.

But sleep well was being generous.

He did not sleep hardly at all. Amped from birth. But even at that, it is 100% 24. 7 job. I don't know how single moms do it.

I've always said they need a medal.

I don't know how they get it done. I don't. I just don't know.

Because you depended heavily on me and I depended heavily on you.

Yes. We were both all in.

We did it together. All in. And so when I see, you know, this. This single momma to raise two or three kids, I'm like, man, give her a shirt with an S on the cape and give her a gold medal. And a single father, although they're fewer in number.

I remember the one time it was like the realization hit me. This sounds terrible, but it was like I was so tired. The laundry doesn't stop. The kids are hungry. Somebody's got to feed y', all, change, y' all clean the house, do the things. And most people at that stage in life don't have much money, you know, so you don't have the extra help and you don't have the date nights. And I remember the realization, like. Like a panic hit me one day. I was by myself at home with them when they were little, and I'm like, this is Never going to go away. This is always going to be like this until they get out of my house. And I almost panicked because it is a sense of overwhelming desperation at times. It is.

As a mother, let me ask you a question. Is it. I've heard mamas make strong statements like, once you have babies, it ain't about you no more.

It's not.

I've probably heard that statement.

Yeah, your life is over.

Do you think you totally lose yourself in motherhood, or do you think there's a danger if you totally lose yourself in motherhood? Is it the pleasure of motherhood to lose yourself and now your legacy is all these little ones running around you, or is it you have to hold on to some sense of you?

I think that this is hard to describe. I think you have to be all in at I'm losing myself for them. Because in your mind, you will always be trying to get away, to get something, to recapture something, to regain something. But I don't think you can lose yourself 100% totally if you're not 100% totally secure in yourself. I think it's always a struggle and always that battle. So you gotta be secure in yourself, in who you are, in Christ, and that this is your calling. That yes, you have callings and giftings and anointings outside of being a mama, but that you don't ever let go of that one. That one is 100% yours all the time.

I made a statement in the last meeting we were in about the sword falls both ways. I've seen mothers who live, eat, drink, get up and exist to be a mom. And then when that motherhood stage is over, they're lost.

That's why I said what I just said.

They're lost.

You have to be 100% all in that my life's over, Lord, I'm putting them in my family first. But you have to be 100% okay, knowing who you are in Christ and. And you know that this is temporary.

And then for those who, you know, who kind of maybe still were oriented in some other area and wanted to kind of do mama on the side, the sword follows another way that can be negative.

It does.

So it's hard. It's hard to hit it down the middle.

I didn't ever want to work full time, and I'm so thankful to God that I didn't have to. I don't know. I know a lot of people don't have that option.

Well, it wasn't because we rolling in money is because we decided to live within our means.

We did. And we knew, I mean we were on welfare for a long time.

First one we were, yeah. We just struggled toward channel and it started changing. But we had Chase. I mean there's no doubt.

But I wanted to work, I wanted to stay home with them, but I also wanted to work a little bit.

I call it cherry pick.

Yes. So I would go into the office two days a week and then the rest of the time I stayed home.

So yeah, I want to do this. I want to do this.

And that was very fulfilling to me.

Up to that point. It was me and you doing everything.

Yeah. I didn't have babysitters then. I didn't have any of that.

Time you had a baby, it was you cherry picking. So let me give you best case scenario something I think aha. Ron and Hope did. Right. That worked for us. It did. Now if you are grinding it out as a dual income family to survive, you know, I heard Dave Ramsey say there's only one of two things. You either got to increase your income with a change of career or something. Change of job, change of trade or decrease. Either you got to decrease your expenses. There's no other way around it. But what Hope and I did when we had Chase, we had an itty bitty, teeny, tiny. I mean, absolutely.

It was a cracker box tiny house.

And you know what? Hope had two degrees. Now, Hope could have went and got her a big time job and we did, you know, childcare. Nothing wrong with childcare if you do it. Nothing wrong. But we chose. This car's four years old. We're going to drive it. This car's got 100,000 miles. We're going to drive it. And this house is 1080 is what I think, or 1180. It's like 1080 square feet.

It's tiny, tiny home.

I remember the bedroom Chase was in. You walked sideways because there was not even room for like a bed. And so we chose to live until our life could afford us to move somewhere else. Because you were a dedicated mother. You pulled away from the ministry and then you got to cherry pick. I think you did things for women. I can't remember what else you did.

I didn't even start that run until after Chaz was born.

Didn't.

No.

So I run for Chase. I can't.

No. I stayed home. Stayed home every single day.

It was just a choice we made. I think that is the ideal situation. If you can do it, you know, don't fire off in the comment section on YouTube. Well, y' all had. No, we didn't. No, we didn't. The first Chase, we had no insurance and we was cutting government cheese. And we lived very frugally. And we chose to do that because Hope could have gone easily and outdone my income easily. But that wasn't what we did. We chose to do it another way. I think Hope, that's something we did right. Because Chase needed all that and more. Chase needed all that parenting and more.

Great memories. Such great memories of all three of them being little. And you remember when Chaz would put that bucket on his head and it would make his ears do like that. And Chase would run around, Chaz would have pacing his mouth. They both would have drumsticks while we played Toto. Yes. And Chandler was a baby. She was just a little baby, just toddled, you know, crawling around. But they loved 80s music and they'd play the drums and sing and run around. I mean we'd. You remember that motorcycle? We got them those little electric battery powered motorcycles. And they would fly down that Chase.

And throw them things.

And Chandler would cry because she wanted one.

She wanted to do it. We have great memories because I think we invested heavily in that time and we only increased our lifestyle when the money afforded itself. I only know one time and we laugh about it. A certain car that I bought where we really kind of overextended ourselves every other time we stayed within the confines of where we were financially. And to me, I wouldn't take nothing for the fact that you have all those moments in your heart with our little babies. Yeah. Now I came home at the end of the day and you were.

I was fried. I was fried. I will have to admit, I was fried. Ron would come home, I'd hand one of them to him. I'd say, here's they in the swing. I'm going to Target, you know. And he would let me. Cause he got. I'll never forget, I used to say you get to leave and go be around adults.

I don't. I used to go do all the church visitation and all. So I wore suits even during the week. Or tie at least. I go to hospitals. And I remember one day when I did everything. I came home, seemed like it was about 5:30 and you were in the driveway with Chase. You had him straight. He had. You were done.

That's when Chaz was a baby and.

Chaz was a baby. And you stood there, you didn't even say anything. I didn't have to. I ride the car with my tie still on. You handed him to me. And you just got in the car and drove off. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, she's fried. Whatever's happened today, she's fried. And I get in there, start, start from ground zero and wear them out, you know, because I was excited to be home. You were excited to have a home. Well, it worked well.

It worked well.

So we, we gonna spend all our time on that.

We don't watch out school age kids.

So let me go, let me skip a little bit. Let me skip primary elementary. Let me skip.

I think though, that's hard. I mean, that's hard as a parent because you got homework for the first time, you got projects for the first time. You got ball lessons, dance lessons, gymnastics, horseback riding. You got all these moving parts and that's a whole nother juggle.

We could probably do four or five podcasts on this. We're trying to do all these seasons, but we're leading up to the fact Chaz is getting married this week and we want to kind of the season of junior high, middle school and senior high school is rough because you don't.

Want to admit it.

You really don't want to admit it. But you are less of an authority and you're more of an influencer because the fact is that's where they are. What's that word Denise used to call it? They are individuate.

Individuating.

Letting them individuate while still being under the authority of your household is awful.

It is. And trying to protect them in that.

Because they have to develop a sense of person. A person that is not led by their dad's boundaries, but they are led by internal boundaries.

But they haven't had time to develop those. Nor do they have the brain skills to even appropriate things.

Here's what's hard. They kick against your and my boundaries.

Right.

But they won't. But they don't develop their own.

Nor do they have the capability.

That is a difficult season. Because they're individuating. They're not mature enough to know where danger lies. And even sometimes the true essence of right and wrong.

Yeah.

I don't mean right and wrong as a moral code. A right and wrong is.

Should I do this? Yeah.

I don't need to be here. This is not going to end well. They don't have those instincts.

They hadn't had time to develop a relationship with God to even lead them. They still to hear the Holy Spirit. They don't understand all that.

They rebel against you out of their individuation which is a normal process, but you had such a short amount of time. They don't have all of your boundaries yet. And that. That is one of the most difficult stages, because some of where our children came off the rails to me was that stage. I got some things I would do differently.

Absolutely.

I got some things I would do differently.

A lot of things I'd do differently.

There were regrettably, Regrettably. There were things that I felt so ganged up on by my children. I love them enough to let them be mad at me. And I think I told them that I love you enough for you to be mad at me. I can handle that. I love you that much. But they get to a place, they beat you down so much with something that you give leash that was to their detriment. I know you. And I also made a decision that no matter how much we had to sacrifice, we wanted our kids to as much as possible go to a Christian school. And I let my kid. Our kids hammered us and hammered us and hammered us and hammered us because we had about 1,000 junior high and teenagers at our church that all went public school to public school. So all of their church friends and one of the most happening youth groups to this day I've ever seen all went to public school and they hammered us. And I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be the hated dad. I didn't want to be that. And I remember I made that decision and it was.