Episode 12 – I hate Lasagna (& Moving)

And now, like, I'm learning, or like you're cooking.

Like, when we were first married, I was like, eh, this wasn't great.

And you were like, ugh.

And like.

One time you hated something I made.

I said the word hate.

You hate, yeah, I don't think you said, yeah, I think you might have said hate.

Ooh.

I think I never made it again.

Welcome to Marriage Mixed with Spencer and Shirley.

Marriage Mixed is a resource that opens the door on interracial marriage.

We share real experiences from our interracial marriage, and let me tell you, it has not been easy, but it is rewarding.

We talk about our differences, what has worked for us, and what is still difficult.

We also share our views on important topics, like food, from a white guy's perspective, and from a Haitian girl's perspective.

What is our goal?

Our goal is to reach people like you, who may be struggling in an interracial marriage, and through the sharing of our own story, prove to you that you are not alone.

The battle for your marriage is real, and thankfully, you have reinforcements.

Our hope is that by using this resource, you will grow in love and grace for your spouse, and ultimately find hope, help, and healing for your marriage.

Sometimes it'll be tense, and other times you'll be laughing with us as we discover new things about each other.

Thank you for joining us, and enjoy this episode of Marriage Mixed.

Hello, everyone, welcome back from our long, unintentional break, but we will intentionally call it the start of season two.

Season two of Marriage Mixed.

So what have we been up to?

What has made us take this super long break?

A lot.

Our last episode came out in December.

I think probably the end of November.

Yeah, it was a November episode, but it posted in December, December 1st.

Since then, we've started, I've started a new job.

I went through training.

The training, a lot of the training, or a significant amount of the training was out of town where you had to leave home.

Yeah.

Which was hard on your very pregnant wife.

Yes.

And two young kids that you left at home.

It was.

And we were also in the middle of moving.

Well, trying to find a place.

Yeah, trying to find a place, and we found a place in San Elise during your training.

And then we started, I started mainly packing up to move while you're out for your training.

And then the week you finished with your training, there was like one or two days, and then we moved.

Yep.

We moved that weekend.

I think I came back on a Thursday.

We were already moving.

And then we had the baby like eight days later.

So our apologies for being hard to find, but we have had a lot going on, and we're happy to be back today.

We're still sleep deprived from having a newborn, but yeah, it's been, we've been, a lot has happened.

Even just in January of 2024, there was like significant things, like just in one month, like one month of the new year, you start a new job, we moved, and we almost had a baby.

Well, we didn't have the baby yet, but it was just like, man, we accomplished or did a lot in one month of the year.

Which some of that's actually the topic, one of the topics of our episode today, talking about moving a little bit and what that's like in a marriage, and in particular in a racial marriage, like ours.

What's your favorite part about moving?

My favorite part about moving?

We have to do the couple question first.

Maybe we should make that the couple question.

Your favorite part about moving?

That's such a silly question.

Nobody likes moving.

Well, my favorite part is my entire life being put into turmoil and not being able to find anything and not having a home in one place or another.

You get so hopeful when we move, though.

Hopeful?

Yes, by the time we're actually moving, you're so happy and I'm excited.

That's how you are, and I'm just dreading everything.

Oh, yeah, well, at that point, everything's set in stone.

So yeah, I guess for me, leading up to it is horrible, but yeah, once I know I have a place in the lease sign and have somewhere to live for the next 12 months, it's more bearable.

So you don't have a favorite part?

I can't, yeah, nothing jumps out to me.

What about you?

Do you have a favorite part of moving?

Definitely not.

Okay, let's do one of your other questions.

I like the first one you came up with.

All right, here it is, couple's question.

What's something you hated eating as a kid, but you like to eat now as an adult?

Why don't you go ahead and go first?

I hated onions growing up.

My mom would make spaghetti and have onions in there.

Those clear, crunchy, nasty little, man, I'd scoop every single one of those things out and eat all the spaghetti and meat sauce around it.

And if I got one, I'd hate it.

Just crunch on it and shiver.

So disgusting.

Now it's like, I love onions.

Literally, I could probably just take a bite out of an onion and be just fine.

I'll prove it to you.

Not a real, not a.

Yes.

You can't eat a raw onion.

Sure can.

Why would you?

I like extreme flavors.

Well, you'll be sleeping on a porch.

That we don't have.

I will not be testing a bite out of a real onion today.

Oh, man.

How about you?

I don't really have an answer to the question, even though I came up with it.

There's nothing that you didn't like as a kid that you can think of?

I feel like my family kind of ate a lot of savory foods, so there's nothing I really hated.

Wait, you didn't like the Haitian food saspoir, right?

Yeah, but I still don't love it.

Yeah, I don't know.

Did you like onions and stuff?

I didn't like milk growing up.

I still don't like milk, but I like milkshakes.

Okay, well, that's a sweet dessert.

It's kind of like liking ice cream, even though you don't want to drink milk.

That makes sense.

So ask your spouse, what's something you didn't like eating growing up, but you like eating now as an adult?

Like one of the answers I got for myself kind of was Brussels sprouts, even though I never ate that growing up.

But I don't think I liked it, or maybe I don't know.

I don't know how I arrived at not liking it.

And then I started to like it kind of, but it's always like a love hate relationship with Brussels sprouts.

I can never make them right.

I always burn them or something.

Do you really like them, or was that just a pregnant craving?

It's a love hate.

You haven't made them since.

Yeah, I still have a bag in the freezer.

Okay, so this is actually a pregnant craving.

It has absolutely nothing to do with what you liked as a child.

If it's made well, then I probably would like it, but I've never been able to make it well.

Didn't stop you from eating them when you were pregnant.

My body needed it.

You're eating them like strawberries, just suckin them in.

During my last pregnancy, I wasn't addicted to Brussels sprouts.

You still made a lot of Brussels sprouts, honey.

No, I made a lot of broccoli.

You made Brussels too.

And you did have a lot of broccoli, but you definitely made some Brussels.

I made a crazy amount of broccoli for our third child.

You did make-

But for our second child, I was eating a lot of Brussels, like a lot of Brussels sprouts.

A lot of Brussels sprouts.

But for this pregnancy, I didn't eat that many Brussels sprouts.

I ate a lot of-

Your Brussels sprout consumption increased by 100% at least, but it wasn't to the 300% level that it was with our second child.

I ate so much broccoli.

You did eat more broccoli this time.

You don't even know how much broccoli I ate because you weren't home.

I would eat at breakfast, lunch.

The baby needed it and she's healthy.

Oh my gosh.

She's a precious little thing.

I guess I needed iron and vitamin C and whatever other stuff.

Because I don't eat as many vegetables, not that I'm not pregnant, but man, I was eating so much frozen vegetables.

You were just, you despised them.

I don't know, this is at a certain point, you know.

The baby needed it.

Well, this is not related to the question really.

Anyway.

That's fine.

So let's talk a little more about moving.

What was this move like in one sentence, this move that we did?

It was hard.

Hard.

I think it was, I don't know, every move is stressful.

I think it was dreadful leading up to it.

This is probably not the most hopeful podcast, but it was dreadful because moving in the past was hard for us.

Moving is just hard.

It's like having two kids now and being super pregnant, and I had to pack up and you were out of town.

And I did not know when I was gonna have the baby, and I was close to having the baby.

It was just like very hard.

Even like, well, we did move.

We did move, and then it was time to start unpacking.

And I was super pregnant, and I didn't know when I was gonna have the baby, and everyone was like, take your time.

Let me not mock them.

Everybody was like, cut that part out.

Everybody was like, take your time.

You don't have to rush.

But it's like, I need pants for the child.

Where are the pants?

Or, you know, whatever.

It's like, how can you take your time when everything is in a box?

And when you're about to have a kid, and is it gonna be easier to unpack after you have the kid?

Most certainly not.

So you need to unpack now.

And my back was hurting so much, and I could barely bend over.

My stomach was huge, and it was just very hard.

It was hard.

Yeah.

I think that you definitely...

Well, yeah, you got a big portion of the hardness on your side, having to deal with all that, because you were managing so much of it yourself, the packing and the unpacking.

You did help a lot that the day we moved in and the day after, we did a lot.

But man, there was so much left to do.

And I did stop for probably three weeks after the baby was born, and just left that huge pile in the living room, and I didn't keep tackling it.

So I guess I got kind of a break, but not exactly.

My body physically probably couldn't even unpack right after having a baby.

And yeah.

So hard.

I was thinking, as you were talking about, how children affect moving.

They just make it way harder when you have kids.

Because like you said, like, wear the pants for the baby.

If it's me and you, we can set aside two or three pairs of clothes, and you know that we can keep using those when we unpack the rest.

But when you have a bunch of little kids, and they blow out of their diaper or whatever, and you have to have more clothes, it's like you don't really have the option to delay.

You have to know where everything is and to get to it.

Not to mention when you're actually moving, what do you do with them?

Yeah, like how do you entertain them?

How do you keep track of them?

How do you make sure they don't walk out the door?

Our previous move with our old eldest on...

The third floor.

Yeah, from the third floor.

And she was just chilling in the crib, even though she was too big for it, like on wheels, we were like rolling her from room to room.

I don't even think she was chilling.

No, she wasn't.

She was passing out.

Yeah, she was screaming or not happy about being in there.

Yeah, it's just...

And then when you have a whole bunch of stuff open, they want to touch everything, which makes it harder too.

So I think going into it, knowing that it's hard with one kid, it's going to be harder with two kids.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

It's definitely hard.

I would probably say the same thing, that it's just really not fun.

There's not really a way to sugar coat that.

I think it's definitely easier if you don't have kids, but it's still really hard.

For me, one of the biggest things I think of is like, the process itself is hard, but what really sucks is like, just making a decision together, especially when, like in our case, we're both super different.

You would never be like, oh, you just make the decision.

And I would never be like, oh, you just go find something.

We're both like super-

You wouldn't trust me with the decision making?

We're both extremely strong.

Don't try to make this about me.

You wouldn't trust me.

We're both extremely opinionated and have different value systems around homes and where we live completely.

And that makes it super hard.

So Shirley really values the aesthetic of things and things being clean and nice and beautiful.

I don't really care as long as I have certain baseline things that I want or need.

I'm just totally different.

So that's really hard for us because I'll find a place to be like, hey, the rent here is great.

It's got decent ratings.

It's in a good location.

And then we drive up and you're like, there's a dumpster in the road.

I'm like, yeah, but the apartment is a great location.

So it's like, it's just super hard to come to a decision together.

And I feel like that's an aspect that is unique to couples like us.

Or, I mean, I guess-

I don't think so.

I think, yeah, just the, maybe the strength of our opinions or just how we value things completely different with that.

But yeah, I think like home buying and stuff like that is stressful for pretty much every couple to come up with.

I know this isn't home buying because we're still renting.

But yeah, that was something that I was thinking about and that makes it really difficult.

Did you want to go through some of your tips?

I don't know.

I thought of a phrase, but I don't remember exactly.

I love seeing the church be the church because I think people had really blessed us and helped us so much during our move.

And I just loved seeing that.

They were literally doing that to us because during our move, so many people, and not even during our move, but while Spencer was away for training, so many people were like, how can I help?

How can we help you?

And they just really showed up and just helped us so much and been like Jesus to us.

They brought us meals, like me and the girls, they'll bring us meals.

Spencer's mother-in-law came over.

I mean, not Spencer's mother-in-law, my mother-in-law came over more than once to randomly bring me and the girls food and helped us pack some.

And people offered to help us pack.

People offered to help us pack up the moving truck and move over here.

People would ask, how can you help?

And I made a whole huge list because sometimes when people ask, how can you help?

It feels like a little overwhelming because it's like, I don't know what to tell you to do.

So I made a list for people and I was like, oh, how can you help?

Here's a list, if you want to do anything on that list, feel free, which Spencer may not have completely agreed with, but when so many people are like, oh, how can I help you?

And it's hard to say, you can help me like this.

So it was easier for me to say, okay, here are things that will be helpful to me.

You can do any of them if you want to, and you don't have to do any of them if you don't want to.

But yeah, back to people being in the church, people have really blessed us.

My dad and one of my brothers and my sister came from, like drove hours away to come help us move, which I didn't even ask them to do really.

They just wanted to do it.

My sister entertained the kids during the move.

Spencer's family always shows up and helps.

They bought lunch for the people that was helping during the move.

People from my women's group gave me plates and napkins, and stuff like that.

They helped us clean up our whole old place, because that's exhausting.

After a move, and just hard for me, after a move to then have to go back to your old place and make it completely clean in order to turn in the keys.

So we had two ladies from my women's group bless us like that and clean up our whole old apartment for us.

Yeah, so people gave us meals, because when you're moving, like your house, your place is in disarray.

Like while you're packing everything up, you're in disarray when you get to your new place and you're in disarray as you're unpacking.

So it's really a blessing to have meals ready, because who has the time or the energy or like, you know, the brain power to even like sort through everything being everywhere to be able to feed yourself and your family and then do dishes and stuff like that after that.

So.

How did people help you?

I mean, by doing all that stuff, I was away for so much of it because I was in training.

So it was really cool to see people I know step in and help take care of my family and my wife for me, which I really appreciated.

Really appreciated your women's group because I had the only car, too.

So our water got turned off because of water leak issues multiple times right before we moved.

And people would, like my family came and picked up Shirley and brought her to their home so that she could have water.

That sort of thing happened multiple times.

And it was just really nice to know that they were looking out for you.

So if you don't have a church family, or hearing about this makes you curious about one, yeah, go out and find a good church and try it out and see.

Those people are willing to help you.

If they're a good church, then they'll be Christ to you.

And just like Christ, if you know much about him, reached out and ministered to the people around him and came to serve.

That's how the church is a good church.

You can certainly be that person for someone.

If you know someone who's moving, like giving them a gift card to like, if you're in the East Publix or something for them to like get a meal, super helpful.

Because not only, like I said, before you move, you're packing and you're in disarray.

During the move, whatever, after the move, you're exhausted.

So that's helpful.

Like you can offer specific ways to help or you can just do something that is helpful.

Oh yeah, people helped us with like boxes too, which is something you need to tape, mark like big Sharpies.

Yeah, with supplies that we needed too, which was good.

Moving blankets.

On the more practical side, what would you say are some moving tips or some things that we've learned that might be able to help other people who are about to move or know that they're going to need to move?

Okay, so some moving tips.

Don't take your clothes in the closet off of hangers.

You can just put them in a box with them on hangers or put them in the suitcase or what I've seen on Pinterest and someone shared with me, is you can just put a garbage bag over sections of them.

You don't have to take them off with the hangers.

It's probably best to put almost everything in boxes when you're moving.

Don't leave them out because it's easier to move things from your home to the moving truck.

Moving truck, like if it's in a box.

Another thing is, don't get so many large boxes.

Large boxes get really heavy.

You should probably just get small and medium boxes.

Because if you get a large box, you're gonna try to put a whole bunch of stuff in it.

And then when you try to pick it up, it's gonna be way too heavy and it's gonna be hard to hold because it's so large.

So get a lot of small and medium boxes instead of large boxes.

Invest in big Sharpies.

They're not that expensive, but big Sharpies are nice to label every box.

It's not fun to have boxes and you don't know what's in it.

Before you move, if you're doing a local move, you can pre-prep your house, your new place, by putting toilet paper, soap in the bathroom, paper towels in the kitchen.

Also, you can help yourself or someone else by buying paper plates, paper cups, napkins, utensils.

For the first week here, so.

Yeah, it's really helpful.

Both for the place you're moving out of and the place you're moving to, just to help you not have to do so many dishes while you're doing such a big thing of packing and unpacking.

Another tip is if you're packing a bookshelf or organizer, and you already have an order of how you want, like how you have the stuff organized, you can get like a whole bunch of small boxes or medium boxes.

And like we have an eight shelf organizer, so like if you have get eight boxes and you put each shelf in that box and label it as organizer shelf number one, two, three, four, five, et cetera, so that you can, when you unpack it, you don't have to reorganize it.

It's already organized for you.

You can have somebody in charge of moving your fridge and freezer for you.

So if people wanna help you move, you can be like, hey, can you be the person in charge of taking everything out of the fridge and freezer of the old place and going straight to the new place and putting it in.

I got that idea because my sister-in-law during our first move, she did that for us, and I asked her if she can do it for us the next time because it was really helpful.

Yeah, and if someone asks if they can help you, you can just, sometimes the acts for help, it's hard to be vulnerable and say, oh, this is how you can help me.

And you don't know if the way that you say they can help you, if they're willing to do it, you can make a list and say, these are some things that will be helpful for me.

Feel free to do any of those things, or you can be like, hey, what would really be helpful is if you drop off a meal or give us a gift card for somewhere we can eat during this move, because eating is super important, but it's the last thing we're thinking about until we're super hungry and got carried away with moving.

So those are some of my tips.

Do you have any rapid fire tips?

Not really.

Like I hear the baby waking.

One other tip, let stuff go.

If you only see it when you move and it's not even sentimental, throw it away or give it away.

And sometimes you can just throw it away.

Feel free to throw stuff away.

You don't have to make it get to goodwill or something.

Like it's okay, you can be free.

You spent the, you use the value of the item, be free and just throw it away.

Don't add another burden to yourself.

Let it go.

If you only see it every three years when you move and you're like, oh, what should I do with this?

Throw it away.

Unless it's sentimental, then you can keep it.

All the landfills are frowning.

I mean, your house is frowning.

No, I know.

I agree.

It's sometimes, oh man, babies are waking up.

You can just give it to me.

I'll hold her.

Hold on, we got a guest joining us.

Listen to her.

This is the latest of our paneling.

What do you want to say?

What do you want to say?

All of two months old.

She say, I'm hungry.

Yeah, I don't know if I have any real tips to offer, but I do have a question that I would like you to read.

You want me to read it?

Yeah, I came up with a question, but I'd like you to read it.

Oh my, I haven't seen this question.

He wouldn't tell me in advance, but he chuckled.

It's not that, all right, yeah, I just sent it to you.

True or false, what you say about a man's house or his car, you are saying about him personally.

True or false, what you say about a woman's child or her cooking, you are saying about her personally.

I think the first one is false.

The second one is true and false.

You think the first one is false?

Yes, I think what you say about a man's car or house, you're not saying it about him personally, but he perceives it that way.

Like you think I'm talking about you personally.

No, that's what it's about, the perception.

Like you perceive it even though that person, like I'm not saying this is about you, but you're perceiving it about you.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I'm not saying like how you like perceive it in your own head, but how it actually works.

How the person is saying it.

They're not intending it to be taken, like I'm talking about you as a person, but the man is perceiving it as he's talking about.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Is it true or is it false?

Does that, is that actually how it works when you say that?

Is it taken personally?

That's what I'm saying.

Okay, well, we think differently.

We think differently.

Clearly.

Interesting.

So like if I said something about a man's car or house, I'm not talking about his personality, but he might perceive it as it's about him personally because he takes a lot of pride in those things.

Spencer nods.

What do you have to say?

I'm just trying to wrap my brain about how you approach that.

It's like so, like I can't even like, yeah, I can't even wrap my brain around how you think about this stuff.

Like if I think a man's car is ugly, I don't think it doesn't mean I think he's ugly.

Yeah, but I didn't even add, you added so much stuff to it that I didn't even have in there.

It's like, wow.

Anyways, so this is the difference, I guess, in how men and women's brains work.

But I can answer for sure that I would say there are exceptions, but in general, that first statement is absolutely true.

Why is that?

Because those are the things that a man takes most pride in.

You said it best, like how he's taking care of his family, whether the home that he has them in, the car that he's driving.

Those are historical things that are very closely related to how a man takes care of his family, which is his biggest priority, providing for them, and their safety.

And if you speak poorly about those things, you might as well just slap him in the face, because it's going directly to his ego and how he feels about himself and how he takes care of his family.

So as a woman, it's very clear to me that, yeah, you're just, wouldn't even, you would just shift everything out to him and then say that that's, yeah, that you're clean, but his brain is warped versus what I'm trying to say is like learning about how each other think and respecting how each other think.

I'm not the end all be all authority on this, but like I feel like I've learned from being married to you that that second statement, what you say about a woman's children or her cooking, you are saying about her personally.

Like I've noticed if people say anything about your kids or that it's taken very personally.

Yeah, because I don't talk about my children.

But that's not how I feel.

Like I don't feel like that if somebody talks about my kids like that.

There's a certain point where I'll be protective, but I'm not nurturing them to that level.

Whereas you've literally like your body has built them and sustain them up to a certain point in their life.

So you have a much, they're like part of you, like at a deeper level than they are of me.

They're my babies.

She's holding up the little baby.

They're my babies, right, girlie?

She's attacking the microphone right now with a big stretch.

The baby that is, not Shirley.

Gotta clarify.

But I think that that's really important to know, because I've said things before that you've gotten really offended at.

I've heard other people say things that you're telling me about and super upset about, and I'm kind of like, oh, that made you upset.

And now I'm learning, or you're cooking.

When we were first married, I was like, eh, this wasn't great.

And you were like, ugh.

One time you hated something I made.

I said the word hate.

Man, that was foolish.

I don't think you said, yeah, I think you might've said hate.

Oh.

I think I never made it again.

And it's not cause it was nasty.

You just, yeah.

Didn't like it.

So yeah, I think I've learned.

I got teary, I'm talking about it.

Just now?

I'm sorry, honey.

It's not cause it tasted bad.

It's just, you don't really, like that food just doesn't feel good in your body.

Was it the cream cheese and the?

The cream cheese salmon?

Yeah.

You know, you didn't say you hate it.

You just didn't like it.

Was that it?

And I never made that again, but no.

It was one time.

One time I made lasagna and I was like, hello.

And you're just like, I'm just thinking about how much I hate lasagna.

I was like trying to figure out why his face looked like that.

And you're just like, I'm just trying to, I'm just thinking about.

I was just like, what's going on with him?

And I almost never make lasagna or any type of pasta.

I'd make nothing but red sauce.

I make no, yeah.

I don't really make spaghetti, lasagna, anything.

Those pastas sit in our fridge.

Though I did buy lasagna pre-made yesterday.

So maybe there's been a bit of redemption.

I mean, I didn't make it.

I just bought it pre-made and it lasted one dinner and it wasn't quite enough, but you hate it.

I think.

And I love it.

But I don't ever make it.

You do love it.

I think learning those trigger things are really important to protect each other.

And the salmon with the cream cheese tasted good, but you didn't like it.

No.

But I think learning those trigger, what are they?

Children.

Just items.

Yeah, items that are really close to our hearts.

And then culturally too, something might be closer to someone's heart because it's a big deal in their culture.

And learning to respect that, and that if I say something about this, I can have the most innocent of intentions.

Like, I genuinely hate lasagna.

Like, I'm not, I don't like it.

But saying that to you when you made the lasagna and you take pride in your cooking and you want to be good at that and please your husband and your family, that's not very tactful or kind.

Like, I can keep that information to myself or share it in a different way that protects you and your heart.

Same with you, if you're like, I guess maybe I thought of this because of moving, where there's certain places that I can afford and places that I can't.

And there's been places we've moved where you would preface it with like, oh, it's really small when we'd share about the place with people.

And it was like, you were just taking a hammer to my pride and just shattering.

That was our first place and I had no idea that you were so hurt.

I know, but I'm just sharing that like, so that people have the opportunity not to make the same mistake.

Do not call somewhere small that your husband is paying for.

I mean, it's our money, honey.

Anyway, but do not call somewhere small.

I don't call places we live small anymore.

This have been literally our first place ever.

So at least I learned that lesson early on.

I think there's certain things that we just have to be careful to protect in each other.

I mean, we didn't really need a lot of space back then.

Wasn't like tiny, like looking back at it.

I don't know if I was malicious when I said small.

You were upset because you didn't want to be there.

And it was, that was another thing.

It's like, yeah, just finding somewhere that we could afford that also we both liked.

I didn't really feel like I got to choose either.

Because he found the place, signed the lease, moved in there before we were married, arranged it before we were married.

But we worked together.

It wasn't like I just made all those decisions.

Well, you looked around all the places on your own.

Yeah.

I mean, I was still in college too, so.

And I was hurt, cause I was like, you're here first, and you get to set up everything, and I'm not getting a chance to set stuff up how I want it.

Yeah.

It was hard.

And when I went to visit that place before we were married, he was there for like a month and a half before we were married, right?

Mm-hmm.

He made us have the door, front door open of our apartment with a water bottle and for what was opening the door.

Oh, cause we had the rule that we wouldn't be in a room alone together.

Yep.

Fun times.

I'm glad that those are over with.

Now we have three kids, and we're not alone very much still.

Now we wish we could be alone.

That's good.

Yeah, God's been good to us.

Well, thank you for reading it and going through it with me.

It was more intense than I thought it would be.

Just like even your perception of it, I thought it was like very clear, like how to perceive it, but you were like looking at it from a totally different angle.

So I'm sorry for getting frustrated.

I was looking at it in the angle of like history, like what you talked about it, what you talked about.

So there's a tidbit, your history can like influence how you perceive things.

Definitely.

Is there more that you wanted to cover on any of the subjects that we've crossed?

No.

Wanted to point out that if you've listened to our show and enjoyed it, you can find us on YouTube now.

So Google Podcasts is no more.

And before it ended, we migrated over to YouTube.

So now when you go on our website, you can scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see a link for YouTube, which is probably one of the easiest ways to watch us if you're not watching on the website or you're not familiar with using the podcasting platform.

So please check us out there and like and subscribe if you enjoy the show.

Also, if you want to leave us feedback or there's something that you would like us to talk about or are curious about or issues that you're having in your own marriage, we would love to hear about it.

And you can let us know by going to our contact page and filling that out.

That way we can actually get a message from you.

I feel like we're missing something.

What is Shirley's fun fact?

And we want to know some tips already, but do you have a fun fact?

I don't have a fun fact.

I have a baking tip, kind of.

One baking tip is like learning measurements.

So a cup is actually 16 tablespoons.

So one fourth of a cup is four tablespoons.

And if you just like kind of learn the measurements, like learning converting those measurements, it will help you to be able to divide recipes or double them or whatever easier.

Like just knowing, oh, a fourth of a cup is just actually four tablespoons.

So if I want to use half of a cup, I mean, half of a fourth of a cup, I could just do two tablespoons.

Shirley spends a lot of her time having recipes and stuff.

Yeah, I do have recipes a lot.

Sometimes it's not very successful to have a recipe.

I made half of a chocolate cake recipe recently, and it wasn't that great.

I don't know if it's because I have the recipe or not.

That's easy to miss stuff, like with cookies, missing flour and stuff like that.

It can get pretty confusing.

I know that because I made the same mistake when I used to bake, when I nabbed you with my baking skills.

And then never baked again.

Some skills you just gotta learn to win the fight.

Then once you're out of the race, you're out.

Like that guy we saw in the video, this Olympic runner.

They're showing his prime, and then they cut to him now, and it's like, oh my goodness, brother.

You put on some pounds.

He wasn't overweight.

He was just fuller.

He was a grown, like he was a man.

Just like you, like you through our marriage, I've noticed you've becoming more broad.

So you're saying I gained weight?

No, I'm saying you became like wider.

I feel like men get like sturdier or something as they get older.

He was probably like a very young man.

He was running like a million miles a week.

So he was like super skinny, and now he's done running.

You can't just laugh at his porkiness.

He wasn't overweight.

You think he was overweight?

He was not.

It just was such a dramatic difference from the video.

Yeah.

Where it was like long distance running, so they're already super thin.

Yeah, because they can't even keep a pound on them with how much they're running.

Yeah, 100%.

Well, thank you for that.

Anything that you want to share about the updates to our ministry and what we're doing?

No, I mean, if you think of us, you can pray for us.

Yeah, 100%.

Doing this is not easy, and I've heard so many creators talk about how hard it is and how long they had to fight and grind.

And I feel like that's where we're at right now, where we're in the grind, and just doing what we feel like God's called us to and hoping that it'll minister to people.

So if it has impacted you in any way, a huge way that you can encourage us is by letting us know that it's encouraged you, or by giving us feedback on stuff that we can do better, or like I said, stuff that you would like to hear more.

So please don't hesitate to reach out to us if that's the case.

On YouTube, we did disable comments.

You'll see that because the internet is super brutal and evil sometimes, and we're trying to curb that.

And people with the username EN03ZY will give you like a terrible comment.

Make a fake profile just to...

Yeah, mess with you.

Yeah, we didn't want to deal with that.

Something cool that you'll see on there, that I'm eventually gonna migrate over to the website, is some cool new art that we're putting up for each episode that we're making.

But you'll have a little bit more visuals to look at when you listen to us, which should be cool.

Well, thank you for tuning in to hear us today.

We hope and pray that you've been encouraged and know that you're not alone in your marriage and the struggles that you're having.

The pain won't last, but it will water the grass, as Shirley likes to say.

Can we pray?

Go for it.

Father, thank you so much for this time with my wife and my daughter.

Thank you for protecting us through that tumultuous transition from one year to the next with our move and the new job and the baby coming, and for doing all of that in your perfect timing.

We're super grateful.

We're grateful that you've given us this ministry and we want to honor it.

We want to honor the people who are listening and honor you most of all, so that please don't let anything that we'd say be untrue or against your character.

But I pray that it would be uplifting to those who know you and those who don't as well.