Kingdom Partners Pt. 1: When God Writes Your Love Story with Jeremey and Michelle King
“I didn’t know that I could fully let something go and that He would continue to move and have something better”
This week on Beyond the Bar, Abby interviews couple Jeremey and Michelle King as they share their testimonies and how God brought them together, as well as their thoughts on:
- God's purposes for marriage
- the power of grace and truth for healing and refining
- why God's stories are always better
“Keep saying “yes” to Jesus because His pathway for us is always going to be the best.”
About Jeremey
Jeremey is the Lead Pastor at Shepherd of the Valley Church in Afton, MN as well as the President of The Master’s Institute Seminary in White Bear Lake, MN. He recently completed his doctorate writing his dissertation on Relational Discipleship: an Attachment Theory Approach to Creating Community Within the Church. In his career Jeremey has planted a church, helped launch two nonprofits, and been a barista. In his spare time, Jeremey loves to hunt, play guitar, and roast coffee.
About Michelle
Michelle is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, who owns a solo practice called Live Restoried. She has been a partner with her husband Jeremey in ministry for 20 years. They have two teenagers, Gabriel & Neriyah. Michelle’s therapy focus has been through an attachment lens and includes EFT (emotionally focused therapy for couples and individuals). She is currently finishing a certification in attachment-focused EMDR (eye movement desensitization reprocessing—a form of trauma therapy). For work or play she loves to travel, find fabulous food, explore delightful coffee shops and go on beautiful hikes.
Read the Podcast
Intro: Welcome to Beyond the Bar, the podcast where coffee and conversation are a catalyst for growth. If you’ve been searching for that coffee-with-a-friend experience that leaves you feeling seen, met, and encouraged, you’ve come to the right place. So grab your cup, listen up, and together we’re going Beyond the Bar.
Abby: Hey friends, welcome to Beyond the Bar! I’m your host, Abby. I’m so looking forward to today’s episode. I think it is going to be an incredible one for you guys. So we are going to jump right in and I’m going to introduce my guests. They are some customers at Redemption-turned-podcast guests. So this is a true “Beyond the Bar” episode for you. So I’m going to introduce them. We have Michelle and Jeremey King. I’m going to give a little brief about their backgrounds, but we’ll let them share all of the details. But Michelle is a licensed marriage and family therapist and Jeremey is a lead pastor at Shepherd of the Valley Church in Minnesota. And then you’re also the president of the Masters Institute Seminary, correct?
Jeremey: Yeah, that is correct.
Abby: So that’s their professional bios, but I will let them share the details on kind of the personal ones. So thanks guys for being here!
Jeremey: Yeah, thanks for having us!
Michelle: Yeah, we’re super grateful, thank you for asking us!
Abby: Yes! This is like the epitome of what this podcast was supposed to be about because you guys have been customers at Redemption for years, actually…
Jeremey: Yeah, yeah, we, we started coming to Redemption, we, after my mom passed, we used the resource and bought a little cabin on Spooner Lake and we just wanted a place of retreat and rest and then we found Redemption. We were immediately drawn to it and we can tell why now.
Abby: And it’s funny because you guys have been customers for years, but it was just recently that we started chatting a little bit more interpersonally over the bar, and that was, I think that day I pitched you guys, like, “Hey, would you ever be podcast episodes?” And you graciously said yes, and here we are. So we’re finally getting in the studio, so thanks. Do you guys want to start and I’ll let you toss that out however you want to. But do you guys want to start with just giving a little bit of background about your guys’ stories? What led you here today?
Jeremey: Yeah! As we were talking before, just chatting about this podcast, one of the things that really attracted us to Redemption is, A, I’m a coffee- it’s not a good coffee- I roast my own coffee.
Abby: Which I just found out, which I think is the coolest thing.
Jeremey: Yep, yep. In fact, I was a barista during my seminary days for Starbucks. Don’t, you know, don’t hold that against me.
Abby: You know, there’s grace.
Jeremey: That’s right. But, is the idea behind your whole organization, this idea of Redemption and your core values were super attractive to us because of our story and because of how we met and our stories leading up to that is a story of Redemption. A story where God takes really messy things and creates something beautiful out of them, like in picking up their pieces, so yeah.
Michelle: Yeah, yeah, we um, we lived in California for, I lived there for almost 17 years.
Jeremey: She was going to move out there for one year, and then I convinced her to stay.
Michelle: That’s right. And Jeremey grew up in Southern California. I really arrived in California after I had gotten married young. I was 21 when I got married. And at the time I was 25, my husband had decided he no longer wanted to be married. And specifically, he really did not want to be married to a Christian. And so my life had in every way fallen apart. I was actually working at a church in Minnesota, I had to leave that job. And my friend who had actually invited me to that job in the first place had moved to California and taken on a church, and he and his wife said, “What if you were to come to California for just one year?” Because, “You can do anything for a year!” was his motto.
Abby: I like that motto.
Michelle: “One year, you lived with Jen and I, and you just healed. You just had space to heal. You can work part-time, and you can live with us, and then in your spare time you can go to the beach and you can journal and you can read and you can do whatever it takes to heal from this divorce.” And I was like, “Maybe.” And so I thought about it for the summer, and then just shortly after Thanksgiving of that year, I moved out to California. And at the same time…
Jeremey: Yeah, so at the same time, so while her life was melting down, my life was melting down. I was in youth ministry in California. I had a really large youth ministry. And the church I grew up in, all the pastors had left. It was in a season of turmoil. And so I was kind of on my own in a larger youth ministry that really, like, I was too young and too inexperienced to really manage. And at the same time I was in a relationship that looked like it was going towards marriage but it was pretty unhealthy. The relational dynamics were such that I was kind of a “rescuer” in that, and like, with those kind of relationships I hit a breaking point where I was just burnt out. And I remember the interim pastor, who has become a dear friend and a mentor, this old retired Canadian Lutheran pastor, Glenn, I sat in the church sanctuary, just he and I, and I just sobbed and I was like, “I’m done with ministry,” I’m like, “I’m leaving this relationship, I’m toast,” and Glenn just literally held me and just put his hand on me and just held me and like, they he began to put me back together and he took me to the brand new lead pastor who had just come in and started, and he’s, they decided that it would be best for me to have a sabbatical. And so they sent me with Glenn to Africa, to, he was going on to Africa for a month, and, and so I spent two weeks at his house in Canada and then a month on the road in Africa, and it was just super healing. And in that time, God really affirmed my call to a lifelong ministry. And when I got back, the pastor, the lead pastor said, “Hey,” you know, “I’ve thought about what to do with you and I think you aren’t a flash in the pan in youth ministry. I actually think you’re called to a lifelong journey of ministry. And so you’ve stalled out in your school, you need to go back to school, and so we’re going to take your full-time job and carve it into three pieces nd you’re just going to keep college ministry and you’re going to go back and finish school,” and then he brought in this pastor of a local smaller church. It was a much larger church that I was part of. And this pastor, this young pastor of a smaller church came in and oversaw all the elements, junior high, high school, college, and my two interns became the high school and junior high directors. And they took my salary and cut it in half and, which at the time I thought it was the end of the world, but I survived, and they then gave that money to that pastor, and that pastor happened to be the pastor of Michelle’s church. And Ryan and I got to know each other in that context. And instead of keeping that money for himself, that pastor decided, “Well, my church needs a position called ‘ministry coordinator’,” and so he used that money to create the position that brought Michelle out into California.
Abby: Ah, I could cry!
Jeremey: Michelle and I never knew this until, like, right before we got married. And so that, if you think about this, like, her meltdown and the trajectory of her life, my meltdown, all were the pieces that God picked up and put together to utilize, to bring us together.
Abby: Yeah.
Jeremey: So like, our fundamental belief about marriage is that marriage has a couple of purposes in God’s eyes, and that He does this to, in marriage He teaches us what grace actually looks like. That we see each other in all our messiness. Two, that He calls people together for Kingdom purposes, and then, three, He uses marriage to shape us to be more like Jesus in our character. And so taking our messiness and like flipping it on its end and making an example of grace. And for us, we have this Kingdom partnership now of like, we know the hard roads. We know what it is to feel like we’re at the end of our rope and not be in a great place. And so Michelle came out and then, why don’t you tell the story of how we met because you’re a little bit better at that one for sure.
Michelle: We were working at separate churches and I had been invited to come over to this pastor’s gathering to share my story. And I didn’t know anyone other than my friend Ryan who had invited me to come to this, it was a, um, California Orange County kind of pastors’ gathering, so.
Jeremey: It sounds way cooler that way, um, it was Lutheran pastors. They were like, all 60 and 75 years old.
Abby: I mean the cool version sounded fun too. Like the Orange County pastors get together.
Jeremey: It was all Lutheran pastors.
Michelle: Exactly. Um, and so I, I didn’t know anybody, and so the invitation is for me to share this, like, you know, vulnerable, broken-down story with these people that I don’t know, so I’m like, “Okay, I’ll do that,” um, so I walk into that space and I, um, I share my story, and people are amazing and, and gracious with me. And, you know, the room, as he said, was filled with people who, you know, the median age was probably 60.
Jeremey: I mean, we brought that median age down, though.
Michelle: Absolutely. We were there.
Abby: You were the outliers.
Michelle: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so after we were, you know, done having that conversation, we ended up connecting. You were, you were hanging out and you began to have a conversation.
Jeremey: Yeah, with you, yeah. So in that, you know, I see her across the room, I’m like, “Oh, she’s cute,” and then, um, and then, um-
Abby: She was also not a 60-year-old.
Jeremey: That’s all also true. So then, um, she begins to share her story, I was like, “Oh, right, okay, we’re, I’m a mess too and she’s a mess, so actually, I’m just not even going to entertain this.” So I introduced myself to her at that point, but there was no, like, no sparks flying or anything like that. But then what happened is, Ryan, who was the pastor that invited her out, and there’s- Ryan and Jen are some of our best friends today, though it wasn’t always that way between he and I- and Jen started inviting me over to their church fairly frequently to do, I’m a musician, too, so to lead worship and to do some of that stuff. And so I’d go over to the church, I’d see Michelle, like, I, you know, we’d have our youth groups do things over there and we’d run into each other. And one night, we were having a youth group event and she’s like, “Yeah, I don’t really get to do much around here because Ryan and Jen go to bed at like eight.” And like, you know, I was like, “Well, you can hang out with me and my friends,” you know, and so, and so I’m going to shows and music and things like that. And so I’m going to shows and music and things like that. And so we both scheduled a time to get together, but then both mutually canceled.
Abby: Okay.
Jeremey: Because, you know, I think it’s probably because I was nervous or afraid or whatever. But I really had homework to do because it’s back in school now, you know, trying to finish school. And then she had a friend who lived in LA who wanted her to spend the weekend with her. So mutually canceled. I had another friend who sat with me the next day, and he said, “Oh, you were going to go hang out with that Michelle girl.” We’re eating lunch and I’m eating like, potato salad and hanging out. And I’m like, “Yeah, no,” I’m like, mouthful of potato salad, I’m like, “I’ve sworn off girls. Like, I’m done with girls. Like I, you know, we can’t, I canceled and she canceled too.” And by this time, Abby, like, my hair is down to here, like, I look like Jesus, like, I have a beard, like, I’m literally trying to ward off, you know, girls. Although maybe that’s why you liked me- my long flowing locks. But I said to him, “God would have to, like, sky-write it. He would have to, like, it would have to b so clear that I was supposed to hang out,” like, and then all of the sudden my phone, which is on the table between us starts buzzing, “Bzzzz, bzzzz….” And he looks over and h sees the screen, you know, he’s like, “Who is it?” I’m like, “Shut up.” It was Michelle calling to reschedule. Yeah, so. But that’s how first met. And then we undated for a while.
Michelle: Yeah.
Abby: Okay, meaning?
Michelle: Well, we didn’t really know, I didn’t know, he didn’t know that we were dating. So we continued to, like…
Jeremey: Everyone but us knew that we were dating.
Michelle: Yeah, so…
Abby: (Laughs) Okay…
Michelle: …even like our first actual hangout, I just thought we were going to go see a band, and, you know, go to dinner, have a little conversation. But it never occurred to me that we were on a date. And I think as we looked back on these interactions, because we did that one and then we did a hockey game-
Jeremey: Well, with my college group, which is funny, because my college students. Now, at this time I’m barely a couple years older than my college students, you know, I’m in my mid-20’s or whatever. And so we go to this hockey game, the Ducks, Anaheim Ducks, and as we go to the game we had seats all together, but then we had a couple seats further off, and, just because of the way the tickets worked out. And my student wo arranged the event was like, “Oh, we’re going to put Jeremey and Michelle there. So they put us together, but they’re in a row, like five rows behind us. So it’s like they’re like watching us the whole time. So they knew we were, people knew we were a thing before we knew we were a thing. And possibly, probably because both of us had some wounds. And we didn’t know what we know now about how God was weaving together these fractured pieces into something far more beautiful and for Kingdom purposes and things that we wouldn’t have had the maturity to know then. And, just, like, we’re in the middle of that story. So sometimes you’re in the middle of a story and you can’t possibly se how it’s going to end for the good or for the future, right? And you get hesitant, but yet in the middle of it, like, when we look back, we’re like, “Oh, God was there the whole time doing something.”
Michelle: Well, and I think a big part of my journey through my divorce was really coming to terms with the image that I had lost, that there was this brokenness, that I didn’t have a framework, as Jeremey was saying, for what God could do. I really lived in a paradigm where you just are perfect. You just do it right the first time and we keep it going in that direction, and, and I remember, um, so many times looking at how my first wedding picture, and people often would say of that picture, “You guys are just… so perfect.” And really, when I looked at the picture, that was accurate. Like, that’s what I mean, that’s what the picture looked like, and we had built a house and we had done all these things really quickly in our young life and it all looked so perfect and it all felt like it was going so well, and so when he walked away and all of that fell apart, I had no idea that there could be something coming that was so much greater. It felt like all I could do was try to go back and make that story, the story. And so as we, as we then, you know, discovered that God in, in His grace was putting us together, that He would take the resources of both of our breakdowns and that He would begin even in that to say, you know, “Here’s an opportunity for the two of you to have a new story, to have something that- I’m going to take these ashes and redeem it and put something as beautiful or maybe more beautiful than what you were trying to put together for yourself.” Because I look back at my first marriage and I see how much of that was me constructing that relationship, wanting it to be what it was, versus really being invested in paying attention to what God was up to or even just having the sense internal that it would be okay, because I think there was indicators early on that I shouldn’t have married him and I had a hard time after we got engaged thinking about walking away because, again, I was stuck inside that, that paradigm of what is, what is perfect. “What is the right ting to do?” Well, the right thing to do is not disappoint anybody and just go ahead and get married even though I don’t know that this is the right end. And I didn’t trust that in myself or in my relationship with God at that time. I didn’t know that I could fully let something go and that He would continue to move and have something better. And so, you know, as our story unfolded, and that really became my experience that something better came, it actually strengthened my sense that I can trust now when God invites me to something and allow Him to take me the next and the next and the next and the next and, and not have to continue to live in this, “What is perfect?” and what is, “What is what I think is best?”
Jeremey: He also moved you in that story from like, external to internal. Um, like I think you, you said to me jokingly, but on, in your first marriage, you married your dad on the externals. Like, hunting, fishing, like, Minnesota, you know, and um, just things that were kind of expected of you in some ways. Like, um, but then the second time, like, when we married, you said, you said you married your dad on the internals. Which, her dad is like the most loyal, like, faithful, he’s, he’s one of my best friends now, and then she jokes that “My dad took you from a California boy and made you into a Minnesota man in like five minutes,” so, um, but yeah.
Abby: I relate so much to your story, so much to your story. Um, and even recognizing that there we moments, even in my own story of getting married and walking through that, where I thought I handed over the pen for a bit and then realized that I would let Him write a couple of lines and then I would take it back.
Jeremey: Sure.
Abby: And so walking through divorce and having that picture of what you think life is supposed to look like, or even marrying your dad externally, I relate to that too. Like, I married the things that were expected and I thought I wanted because it was what my culture around me and my community around me had, and paid far less attention to things that actually mattered and I didn’t realize it at the time, and then as you’re walking through, “Well, everything shattered, my frame has been busted, everything is on the floor,” realizing, “Yeah, God can take those things.” There’s song I like and it talks about, “You’re perfectly broken for me.” About how your pieces fit mine, which essentially the story you guys are saying is, in both of your lives shattering in different ways, it was like the perfect pieces for each other, so that, the mosaic the Lord made would tell Kingdom story better.
Jeremey: Yeah. And to prep us for that, there was a lot of intermediary pieces that needed to happen. So like, I did a lot of therapy myself, actually. One of my best friends, Tim, he’s like, “Dude, you need a therapist.” He’s Californian. “Dude, you need a therapist. Like, we need to get you to someone.” And actually, he funded, um, my first five sessions of therapy, um, and I continued that journey for several years, and it was a Christian therapist, um, a guy named Sean who really helped me, and partly through the process- I was about two years in and I said to Sean, “Sean, it feels like all we’re doing is taking out my messed up wiring and laying it on the table. Like, if that’s all we do, where is the end of my messed-up-ness?” you know, “When do w start rewiring?” And he paused and it felt like forever. And then he said, “Jeremey, who’s to say that the Lord hasn’t been rewiring you this whole time?”
And so, yes, we’re for sure, like, our broken pieces, our stories of brokenness are similar, but at the same time, there was a refining that had to happen. A healing, so that I would be ready when it was time to meet Michelle in the right context, so that it isn’t out of my, my brokenness, but out of the Lord’s healing that brings us together, right? Because otherwise then we just repeat. It’s like a pendulum swinging. We repeat the same story, just on the other side of it. And so, like, the Lord, there has to be room for the Lord to, like, in John’s introduction of Jesus, in John 1, it says that Jesus came full of grace and truth, and those two things have to be inextricably bound together. Grace without truth isn’t grace, and truth without grace is a hammer, not a balm for healing. So the Lord has to do something in us with that grace and truth to prep us for whatever the next thing is.
Abby: Oh, I love that. There’s a different book, and it’s about marriage, The Sacred Search, and they talk about, you are not looking for someone who completes you. You’re looking to be a completed person with Christ already, who He partners you with to go do Kingdom work.
Jeremey: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Abby: That’s kind of the story there, but neither of your guys’ brokenness disqualified you from a life-giving abundant marriage, which is just like, incredibly incredibly cool, so I’m excited for us to get into some of that more. So going from that, you guys met…
Jeremey: Yep.
Abby: You didn’t know you were dating, but everybody else did.
Jeremey: Yep.
Abby: And you said you found out that story about like half of your income actually being… I just think that’s like the coolest detail ever.
Jeremey: Yeah, yeah. Well, and the other detail that goes with it, so, that is interesting, is that Ryan and I had somewhat of a contentious relationship a little bit when Michelle and I started dating. So she got here in like November. We started un-dating maybe around March. And then it started to get a little bit more, like, “Oh, this is a thing.” And Ryan’s “Big Brother Mode” triggered. So Ryan was like, “No,” like, “you cannot date,” like, “She needs more space,” then, you know later Ryan and I had a very long conversation about this. But at one point, Ryan said to me, “If you were a man of honor, you would not pursue Michelle.” And by this time, I had actually switched. I had started really attending their church and like, helping out on a Sunday basis. I was like, “I can’t believe he’s questioning my honor right now.” And so I called Glenn. Glenn had since long moved back to Canada. I’m like, “Glenn, I’m leaving this little church. I’m going to…” you know, “I’m done.” And Glenn, in a way only Glenn can do, he’s like, “Do you serve Ryan or do you serve Jesus? Do you believe Jesus has called you to help this church in this season?” I’m like, “Yes.” And so he’s like, “Stay. Stay, and the Lord will sort out this thing with Ryan. He’s just in ‘Big Brother Mode’. He’ll figure it out.” And so I stayed, and Ryan and I were pretty, and Michelle and Ryan were pretty tense for a while, just because we felt like, “Oh, this is the right move.” And what it did serve to do, actually though, is slow us down and give us a good check. Like, there’s lots of sub-stories there, but give us a good check in our spirit, like, to pause and to like really take stock and make sure that we weren’t rushing into anything.
But Ryan, on the night before we got married- so we had still asked Ryan to like serve communion at the wedding even though we had this tension because he is the pastor of our church, so Glenn flew down to do the wedding, so we had a groom’s dinner. Another friend of ours had cleared out the whole first floor of her house and put a giant, like, table that went all the way around, like a connection of those folding tables so everyone could see each other. And we’re all having this meal and people are standing up and kind of giving us blessing, and Ryan stands up and I’m like, “Oh, what’s he going to say?” And Ryan basically proceeds to say, “Jeremey, you’re the man with the most honor that I’ve ever met. You’ve stuck with me in friendship in this process. You’ve asked us to help lead your wedding.” And so it was like this circle back around of like, and acknowledging that. So this, the way that God used relationship to go through the fire. And the next day at the wedding, Ryan’s there, and so we’re on the beach, we got married on the beach, and Ryan’s like, “Hey, could I talk to you for a minute?” I’m like, “Ryan, it’s like 3:55 and I’m getting married at 4:00.” He’s like, “It’ll just take a second, could you walk with me?” And so I walk with him on the beach and he hands me this letter. And the letter is from he and Jen to us about how much they believe in our marriage and what God’s doing and kind of articulating some of the brokenness that has been woven back together. And then he commits, because I had since left my ministry job completely, I started to be a barista and then I was a substitute teacher during the day all so I could go to seminary. So I was in seminary, so Jen and I would, his wife was also in seminary. So we commute up to seminary and like, all throughout this time. And so I’m in this place where we have no money, we’re rubbing two pennies together to hopefully pay for rent somewhere, and he and Jen commit to sponsoring us, supporting us monthly to subsidize our life because they believe in us so much. nd they did that for the first year of marriage.
Abby: I could just cry.
Jeremey: And so Ryan, even today, he pastors a church in Minnesota, another large church, and so he and I are like really tight, especially because our friendship has been through the fire. And so we’ve had disagreement and come circle back around. Not unlike your last episode that you talked about with Maryn, right? Like, that, those friendships that go through the fire and are honest, then, have grit to them. And so not only was God building a kingdom partnership between Michelle and I, but God was building a Kingdom partnership between Ryan, Jen, Michelle and I.
Michelle: And that gift laid a foundation in us where we then began to look at our resources as something that could be used to lift someone else. And so as we had opportunity, as we had just a little bit more resource, we, at one point we’re living on a college campus, Jeremey was serving as a resident director, and we had opportunities to keep kids at Vanguard with our resources.
Jeremey: Vanguard University.
Michelle: Yeah, university, yeah. To be able to give them just enough resource so that they wouldn’t have to quit school. And there were things like that over the years where we would just kind of pay attention to where might we be invited to join someone else’s story, where they may just need something to get them to the next place, where they could either stay in school or they could have some kind of an opportunity to see that God hadn’t forgotten them. And that for us has really been woven now into the fabric, because someone believed in us so much that now we actually just feel it from a soul level that this is what, what God can do now through us as well.
Jeremey: Yeah, it’s like, as we pay attention to the grace that we receive, then that multiplies in us and becomes the foundation for what we can give. But like, so with Ryan and Jen, it was a, same with Tim, but the grace that I experienced with Glenn, that just, my life was falling apart and he just listened, and then he, you know, he didn’t say, “Ah, Jeremey, you’re, you’re done now.” He didn’t cast me off, he invited me deeper in. So it’s like, all of these things that have shaped who Michelle and I are becoming. We’re still on that journey, obviously, but we’re now 20 years past that point, you know, and that- who we are becoming is based on the seeds of grace that are planted in times that we don’t even know at that moment.
Abby: Well, I think that’s the part that is so encouraging and like a helpful reminder, is, it’s easy to be in the moment and not see any of those things because it wasn’t like you guys were seeing how all of those were going to play into your story when you were there in those chapters. You were, you were living them, and you were probably asking the questions and wondering, like, when your salary got cut in half, you were like, “Excuse me?” like, “How am I supposed to live?”
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: Little did you know, like, that was such beautiful grace for your future wife who was coming.
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: And that was the way she was going to get there.
Jeremey: Yep.
Abby: And so what felt like, horrible, was like, God’s vehicle and tool of grace that was going to pave the way for something like holy and blessing-filled in your life, and that reminder I feel like everybody needs because you can be in seasons of life where you’re looking around and you’re going, “God, none of this seems good and none of this seems abundant and I don’t know how you’re weaving this story together,” and long periods, like sometimes those aren’t sort, and so long periods in that losing the hope is very, very, like, it happens. It’s very common where you just get so bogged down by viewing your circumstances that you forget to hold on to promises. You forget to lift your eyes and walk onstage and go, “I know the truth, and I know how you work and move,” but it’s so easy to lose sight of that in the moment, particularly if you don’t have people in your life, like a Glenn or like a Tim, or you know, like, Ryan and Jen, like if you don’t have community and relationships in your life who are believing for you when you can’t, good luck. I don’t know how people make it.
Jeremey: Yeah, they don’t. We don’t. We’re designed that way. We’re designed for community, and that’s the thing about the Christian community is, we are, we embody the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so, hopefully, as we relate to one another, we can carry both grace and truth. So that even in the really hard conversations, there’s a “for you” posture as a whole. Like even Ryan, as he was probably a little more “for Michelle” than he was for me. (All laugh)
Michelle: Accurate.
Jeremey: But it embodies the truth and grace bound together. Yeah. And God uses those things in really powerful ways.
Abby: And I love that, because I think people who have been hurt by people who call themselves believers, and it’s typically in something where you would go, well, either there was a lot of truth without grace, and man, like you said, that’s just a hammer and not what our Lord does, or there was a lot of grace and there wasn’t truth, and that’s not love either. And so a lot of times I think people have offenses with the church, or they’ve got offenses with people who’ve claimed to be followers of Christ, where you would go, “You were hurt by imperfect people,” and “You were hurt by brokenness and sin,” um, ‘cause like, a perfect Heavenly Father, it’s both.
Michelle: Mm-hmm.
Jeremey: Yep.
Abby: And so I love that, and it’s a good reminder for all of us, like when I’ve approached a conversation, am I doing well? Is that how I show up to relationships? Is that how I show up to conversations? Because if I don’t, maybe I’m being more harmful than I’m being helpful.
Jeremey: Yeah, absolutely. And then the posture in it too is this posture of humility, like, because as we go to, so, like, Paul says, like, “Hey, when you go to,” um, “When you go to correct someone who’s in sand or who’s broken,” right, like, “do so with humility because you might find yourself in the same,” you know, “position.” So we posture ourselves in these conversations of grace and truth of like, “Alright, Holy Spirit, not only does this person not know the end of the story, but I don’t know the end of the story. In fact, I have just this little window. But how can I today escribe unsurpassable worth that You escribe to the person I’m about to talk to? How can I represent that, right now, right here?”
Abby: I like that idea of being where your feet are at, because it’s really easy to not. And wen you don’t, you can just miss some of those opportunities because it takes, like you said, it takes paying attention. And if you’re not paying attention, you can either completely miss opportunities or sometimes you can brush past them in ways where you go, “Man, that was pretty ineffective,” because you just, like, you weren’t where you were at and you weren’t being attuned to that and paying attention. And to try to tune into, like, “How do I be a vessel of grace and not like the fountain of grace?” …are two different things.
Jeremey: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Michelle is really good at this. That, I mean. I think some of it is your training, but, but it’s also who you are, who God made you to be. Like, you, even last week, we were- and I move super fast, I’m like a 7 on the enneagram, if you know what that is, like, I’m all fun all the time, my friends call me a golden retriever, I move a million miles an hour, and Michelle’s really good at slowing down and paying attention and being where she’s at. And so even last week, we were with friends in California. I had a concert, and she had to slow me down and help remind me, “Hey, be here. Be here with us.” That’s kind of her skillset.
Abby: I just love that, how it comes up in couples too, like, a balance. Like, the Lord doesn’t waste anything. So even, like, personality-wise, just that balance there, the idea of Kingdom couples where you go, like, “Ah, no, God did that on purpose.” Because you guys make each other more effective then. And you bring that rubbing still nd that correction, so that hopefully you’re just continuing that growth journey or continuing that sanctification, which is really cool.
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: Love that. So cool. So how, taking some of that, did God get you where you guys are now? Because you graduated seminary…
Jeremey: Yeah, that’s right. And then another degree after that, yeah. Well, so I knew I was supposed to be a pastor. So I was in seminary. I just started seminary when we met. Or, I was going into, no, I was just finishing college. Yeah. I crammed a four-year degree into eight years. So, you know, I was wondering, doing my thing. And so then as we were really getting serious, it was like, “Oh, it’s time,” like, “I think I’m called to seminary,” and at the same time, God was bringing you this desire to become a marriage and family therapist. Why don’t you talk a little bit about that?
Michelle: Yeah. I grew up in a family where the struggle with mental health was kind of all over the place, and I often was trying to put language to that, trying to put some kind of framework around it, like, “What is happening here?” I want to be able to get, I think, a grounded sense, you know, of, “Is this about me? Is this about these other folks that are in the picture?” And in my family, they just didn’t have the ability to talk honestly about it. And so when I would bring up, like, “This doesn’t feel good. This happened. This trauma happened,” and, you know, “I want to, I want to be able to say what this is,” there wasn’t language for it. And in fact, a lot of times there was more of a denying of experience to kind of keep the family together, to make things work-
Jeremey: At least in their perspective at that time.
Michelle: Yeah.
Jeremey: That’s what would keep the family to them.
Michelle: That’s what they thought.
Jeremey: That, we don’t talk about it. We shove it under the rug and we just move, move on.
Abby: Well, that’s pretty common of a family dynamic.
Michelle: Yeah, and so I grew up in that. And so I think that was my first sense, because even when I was married the first time, I wanted to be marriage and family therapist, and I think much of what drew me to that was actually trying to make sense of my story growing up, trying to figure out what is that, what language to it. And then, of course, went through my divorce, and I think it really became clear at that point that I wanted to be part of helping heal stories, like, understand what, not only what had happened, but help people find a path forward. And, and so that was kind of my step into that world, you know, and I think for myself, noticing as I did different jobs in ministry, that my, my real heart when I would do my job, because I did youth ministry and I did this ministry coordination job which was really to help people kind of find their fit in the church- where are they going to plug in and what are they going to, what are they going to do in the church- and, when I’d sit with, with people, I was most interested in their stories. I was most interested in, like, “Who are you?” and as I got to learn about them, I think I’d recognize that there would come a point where I didn’t have actually the tools to take them any further. And so that desire continued to grow to become a therapist.
Jeremey: You should also talk about your assignment to create the grief group from Ryan wen you got there, because I think that was a huge move for you to become a marriage and family therapist.
Michelle: Yeah, yes. Ryan, who, you know, the “You can do anything for a year,” kind of a guy. He just really believed that I was much more confident and flexible than what I maybe was. I’m like, “Dude.” So, you know, come out to California. And the first thing that he assigns me to is three women who had all lost their husbands in different ways to death. And he’s like, “You should start a grief group!” And I’m like, “That sounds like a terrible idea.” Like, “I have no idea how to do this. Like, zero.”
Abby: Well, you hadn’t actually lost your spouse to death. So it’s like a different…
Michelle: It was a different…
Jeremey: Different kind of loss.
Michelle: Yeah. And so I remember going to a bookstore and finding a book on grief, and it was, like, you know me, scrambling to read this brief workbook and figure out what do I even do with these people, and so I remember gathering them and sitting down, and I actually go back to that as like, one of the most, like, sacred and kind of holy times of my life, because when you don’t know how to do something, your dependence on the Holy Spirit to actually move you instead of your own knowledge was like no other time in my life. And I remember sitting in these sessions, and I would pray in my spirit and just say, like, you know, “Lord, what question would you have me ask?” And I would ask a question and there was so much space because I didn’t know what to do necessarily next, but I was really staying close and paying attention to what Holy Spirit was kind of inviting as the next. And that group, not only for my own healing, but as I watched them, became this sweet space, not only of community, but really opened up this idea that, like, you can sit with people. Like, you could do something like this. And of course, it also brought up for me that sense of, like, “I would like a little more training,” you know, like, I’d like to actually have the skillset to be able to do this, and so that was a big piece of…
Jeremey: …fun bonus, like, information, um, so that group became a core community for Michelle, inspired her to really take the step out and get the training, but also, um, they, they became, uh, cheerleaders for us, in a way, when we got married. So you know, like I said, we were rubbing two pennies together. Most people measure their wedding and like how much it was per plate. Like, “It was $10 per plate for our wedding.'“ We were negative ten dollars per plate because the church ladies, like, ran the whole reception for us, and one of them, like, paid for the cake for us. A whole crew of them. And many of them were in this grief group, actually made the food for our wedding. Like, they made a Thai cuisine for everyone. And the little church that we were part of at the time, like, painted the whole hall for us. Like, wouldn’t let us go in for a couple weeks, even though Michelle worked there, because they wanted to surprise us. But it was because of these relational, like, connections and these moves that Michelle found her true calling. And we had these, like support, this launching pad that sent us out.
Michelle: Mm-hmm.
Abby: It’s so fun hearing your guys’ story from the point, like, the vantage point of perspective, but being that I’m at, I’m 25 right now, so I was right around your guys’ age when this was kind of playing out-
Jeremey: Yep.
Abby: -and so putting, it’s easy for me to put myself in the boots of your story a little bit more and go, “How encouraging that you guys didn’t know.” You didn’t have the vantage point perspective at that point. And so it’s easy for me to sit at this table and go, like, “Oh, cool,” like, “You guys just knew, and you,” like, “knew where you’re going and what God was going to do.” Like, “You knew how you were going to get 20 years and be here.” But like, you didn’t.
Jeremey: No, not at all.
Abby: Like, you didn’t know the degrees you were going to accomplish and finish. You didn’t know what the Lord was going to do with those. The, the impact you’re going to have. So it was this heart condition in both of you, like, a willingness.
Jeremey: Yeah.
Abby: And that’s so encouraging because it can be really easy for you to look at the stuff you got and the tools in your tool bag and go like, “I don’t have the tools to build this thing.” And not that there isn’t time to go get the tools, because both of you guys have done that, and my God continues to do that, but to not disqualify yourself because you don’t feel like your tool bag is kind of light. It’s just so… like, I love that about your story.
Jeremey: Well and one of our prayers has always been, “Lord, give us a job that we can’t do without you,” like, that we need, we need to rely on Him moment by moment, because we’ve learned through that hard, the hard seasons, like, “Hey, actually, when we have to be fully reliant on Holy Spirit, then we actually are more in alignment with kind of God’s Kingdom and what he wants to do,” so part of what draws us to you and what you do is like, we look back and we’re like, “Oh, yeah,” like, “I know what it was like to be there 20 years go,” and like, we so, we see this 20 years from now and the impact that it’ll happen. And we’re like, “Ah, this is going to be awesome.” This is cool.
Abby: I could cry. But no, I mean, that’s kind of the hope. nd I think it’s easy to get in the daily grind of things and go, “I don’t know what you’re doing.” Because yeah, you’re looking at your bank account or you’re looking at things and you’re working and you’re like, “God, I don’t see any fruit, or like, little bits of fruit,” but you’re like, “It’s tiny. It’s like, tiny little.” Um, so yeah, like, your story’s just been really encouraging. I’m like, “Okay, you don’t have to know the whole picture. You don’t know, you don’t have to know the whole story. You don’t have to know what God is writing. You just have to know He’s a good author.”
Jeremey: Yep. Yeah, and what Glenn said to me is, “Just keep saying ‘yes’ to Jesus.” And that advice has never failed me. I just keep saying it. Now, now we’ve got to learn how to hear if it’s Jesus, or you know, the bad pizza I had the night before, whatever it is. But like, we have to discern that voice in community. But keep saying “yes” to Jesus because His pathway for us is always going to be the best.
Abby: I love that. Well we’re already decided that we were breaking this up into a two-part episode, so we are going to tease our whole community with dropping a bunch of good stuff, and then in the following Tuesday, when we drop an episode, getting into tactically, “What does this look like?” and diving into more of your guys’ you’ve got some tools in your tool belt now, and so we’re going to unpack that in episode two here, of, “What does this look like for us? What are some ways that we can embrace the journey of growth and what does that kind of look like?” So we’re going to save that for part two!
