In this episode, Dale and Veronica share the story of how they met, how they became a family, and the lessons they've learned about hypocrisy and schedules in their home. This episode is broken down into two parts. In part one, you'll get to know Dale and his wife, Veronica, and learn about how they came to be a family. In part two, they'll share the three greatest lessons they have learned in our home about hypocrisy, schedules, and order.
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00:01:12.180So in part one of today's episode, we're going to be sharing the story of our home.
00:01:17.900And in part two, we're going to be sharing the three greatest lessons that we've learned
00:01:23.040in our home lessons about order hypocrisy and schedules so on that note let's open up with
00:01:30.560part one and i'm going to have veronica open up because i'm going to we're going to just
00:01:35.420essentially share our story around how our home and family came to be and so when you think of
00:01:42.800our home babe uh let's start with our marriage how do we meet how do we meet oh man well if you
00:01:50.580guys have been longtime listeners of the, of, I guess you're our old podcast. This is
00:01:54.960a separate one, right? So of our old podcast, I used to podcast with Dale three, four years
00:02:00.940ago. I'm in our very first episode. We actually shared that. So if you're a long time listener,
00:02:06.200you'll already know, but if not, um, technically I met Dale when I was 14 and he was 18, 19.
00:02:17.460he was dating my sister and i was just you know the tag along little sister um that would just
00:02:25.380hang out with him whenever i could or my sister picked me up from school and go to the rock
00:02:30.340climbing gym and dale would be there um so that's how we met i don't necessarily remember the day we
00:02:35.380met i mean it was so long ago but um we do have pictures of us here and there somewhere of you
00:02:41.940know us at my sister's party or things like that and i'm 14 and or us rock climbing as a kid you're
00:02:50.340gonna make me sound like a like uh oh yeah so there was no interest at this time yeah i said
00:02:56.100tag along little sister um yeah no there was no romantic interest at that time i was very much
00:03:02.660just the tag along sister yeah and dale was dating my sister at the time and then i'm not a predator
00:03:09.540and then um let's see fast forward when i was 19 i mean you and my sister had broken up you know
00:03:17.820it wasn't ever anything like super serious but you guys had broken up and then when i was 19 we ran
00:03:23.860into each other um again and um the first words dale said to me was wow veronica you're old and
00:03:32.420hot now this is true this is true that's your pickup line gentlemen that's what you get to use0.57
00:03:37.320you want to find a wife and yeah we we had a uh i tried to convince veronica to go on a date with
00:03:43.080me for several months and she would not um until i my persistence continued until he bugged me
00:03:50.600enough where i was like i just need to say yes so he'd stop bugging me we went on a date and i
00:03:58.280had victory and won her heart and slowly but surely we went through the steps of
00:04:03.400of dating and within nine months we were engaged it wasn't that slow but yeah anyway uh yeah i mean
00:04:11.560we're dating we started in february by november we were engaged and we were married the following
00:04:17.560february yeah so this upcoming february what a month and a half from now we will be married for
00:04:24.20014 years and together 15 years yep and so that's kind of the founding of the partridge home and we
00:04:33.080went from there we had uh our children we have four children now ranging from about to be 10
00:04:43.000and all the way down to six months old and so we had aria in 2014 we had um honor in 2016 valor
00:04:52.520in 2017 and then we took a break to the long break and then we just had deacon yeah this
00:04:58.840or i guess this is going to be coming out in january probably so we had him in 2023 yeah june
00:05:05.160of 20 june july july july sorry we have another son whose birthday is in june and then deacon is
00:05:11.240in july and so uh that's kind of the story of our children which we'll kind of reconnect here in a
00:05:17.960second um one of the founding features of our marriage is i think veronica's marriage to me
00:05:25.720um if you've heard of jonathan edwards wife's book she didn't write it it's actually someone
00:05:31.080else writing it for her but it's called marriage to a difficult man it's probably similar to being
00:05:35.800married to me and so you know we talked about this last night that you know while i was not
00:05:41.400in ministry when we first got married it was you did understand that you were marrying someone
00:05:49.640that is it was just very intense yeah you were not in ministry when i got married you were in
00:05:53.560in business and the business world. Um, but I knew that marrying you was never going to
00:06:00.240be a dull moment. I knew that marrying you meant that you're yeah, intense, I guess you
00:06:07.800could say in a way, um, go, go, go. You always had some type of project, always something
00:06:12.800that you were working on that you're passionate about. Um, so I knew going into it, that,
00:06:18.000that there was always going to be something happening. Amen. So yes, when we got married,
00:06:21.560I was already an entrepreneur. I had started several businesses already and we met at one
00:06:26.440of the businesses. Well, we remet one of the businesses that I started, uh, the rock climbing
00:06:30.660gym in Riverside, California. Yeah. I guess when we were, when we were first married,
00:06:34.720you were 24, I was 20 by that time. And so I was like, you know, fresh out of my parents'
00:06:39.380house. You'd moved out of your parents' house when you were like 17 or 18. So you'd already
00:06:43.460been on your own and established on your own for a while. You had your own apartment and
00:06:47.660own car and ran a business and i just kind of married into that um it wasn't necessarily like
00:06:53.580i like we were starting from scratch you had already been established and i was coming under
00:07:00.300your headship we were christian i i don't think i was regenerate i don't think i was born again at
00:07:05.980the time we would call ourselves christians you were uh i was a christian i i became um the lord
00:07:13.820saved me when i was 18 and so so not long before we started dating actually yeah and so i i was
00:07:20.540uh thought i was a christian and that's a story for another episode but actually you can even read
00:07:27.580my testimony if you wanted to i think if you go to relearn.org forward slash testimony or if you
00:07:31.580just google dale partridge's testimony you'll be able to read my testimony there on our website
00:07:36.620um but we did have uh at the time we got married um 2011 we started we got married 2010 2011 we
00:07:44.740started a company called sevenly and that was a whirlwind of an experience because a lot of people
00:07:52.260don't realize that historically before i was in ministry i've only been in ministry full-time
00:07:57.180since 2017 but i was a businessman and you know i would say a well-known businessman i had a public
00:08:05.280platform i had written several books uh that were published by harper collins um doing lots of
00:08:13.280speaking events lots of speaking conferences uh you know our company was a multi-million
00:08:18.560dollar company with you know almost 50 employees and was yeah require me to talk to investors and
00:08:26.640deal with different realities that were going on in the company and we had a headquarters in orange
00:08:30.880county and yeah we're in southern california at that time and you do you know day trips flying
00:08:36.000up to san francisco be back by dinner yeah and so we we did a lot of that it was fast-paced but in
00:08:42.240the business world fast-paced in the business world and a totally different world than we live
00:08:47.440in now and so by god's grace we had a season that we were able to um make money we didn't we weren't
00:08:54.000as great with our money back then but we were still able to didn't have children at that time
00:08:58.480We were able to make the Lord by his grace, put us in a situation where we could go into ministry in a financially secure position, which is quite rare. And we recognize that, that we have, we were able to pay off our house, you know, several years ago, I don't know, we were able to, you know, have a small investment property.
00:09:26.380um you know we weren't making millions and millions of dollars but we were making enough
00:09:30.760money that allowed us to essentially have no debt um to be in a position where we could serve the
00:09:36.320lord and money not really be a motivating factor um i think there's a i don't know who originally
00:09:41.740said the quote but once you get to the top you realize you're there's nothing there and i think
00:09:46.220that god allowed us to have that sense where we we made enough money we we experienced wealth we
00:09:52.480we understood even a sense of fame and um notoriety around the business world
00:10:00.560and once you get to the top you realize that there's nothing there and i think that was
00:10:04.780really what catapulted us uh including the calling to ministry um into or i should say
00:10:12.380out of the business world and into ministry and so that happened in 2016 there was more of a
00:10:19.220conflict we were in another church in oregon we moved to oregon we had this beautiful home in
00:10:24.020oregon yeah we lived there for seven years lived on a farm we had like didn't think we'd ever leave
00:10:28.820yeah it was probably like the picture-esque like instagram life you know we had the seven acres
00:10:39.220our best friends had the 20 acres next to us our other great friends lived in our back house on
00:10:44.680property we had a film studio on our property we had a gym and a sauna and we had animals animals
00:10:51.800and a garden beds and and you know privacy and overlooking the mountains and it was just a
00:10:57.640wonderful situation it was very uh i guess what is it millennial modern day storybook yes modern
00:11:06.600the modern day storybook of what a lot of people are chasing after and we're blessed to have that
00:11:11.400that season we had that season and um we went into ministry 2017 uh after really just having a
00:11:20.640continued um calling from the Lord but also recognition from people in our lives that I
00:11:29.340was called to preach or called to teach I was feeling a draw to seminary I was studying more
00:11:37.500and more involved in our church at the time and we went into ministry 2017 and then all of a sudden
00:11:44.460uh maybe in 2018 i started to get sick 2019 for sure um and that was a season where
00:11:54.580it started off with me it's so many different symptoms that you don't really know
00:12:02.200probably i would think maybe start off with like the food stuff where you like have some gi issues
00:12:08.720after you'd eat and your stomach would hurt or then you'd have like acid reflux i'd acid reflux
00:12:14.240for a long time yeah so we had we had all these symptoms that that didn't seem to be correlated
00:12:19.660with one another so you it's hard to determine a diagnosis when you can't put your thumb on what's
00:12:27.660causing everything and i was having you know dizziness and you know air hunger and breathing
00:12:35.100issues and pain in my liver and um you know sleeplessness and twitching muscle twitching
00:12:43.740and all over just the map or body temperature regulation body temperature regulation and and
00:12:50.940so um we finally i got to the point where i was very ill this is like a couple year journey several
00:12:58.220year journey yeah we're going past the story like a couple weeks or months here this is
00:13:03.740several year journey and we we made the decision to um relocate the cold was hard on me we found
00:13:11.660out eventually that the central culprit for causing my immune system to falter and me being sick was
00:13:20.940our our house had mold or or or i was in mold at some other time um but essentially my my mycotoxin
00:13:30.440levels were off the chart so i had really high mycotoxin levels it could have been as simple
00:13:36.020as like the washing machine had mold in it um basically my body doesn't detox well and so
00:13:43.980you know while i was really sick and my son was sick um veronica was mostly fine you know our
00:13:51.820other kids were were okay yeah we had weird little symptoms here and there but it was never like a
00:13:58.400huge deal it was just like oh i don't know i guess valor can't have dairy because he has an upset
00:14:03.040stomach or something which that that is true but there was just like little things like that and
00:14:07.420then we didn't realize until after we moved out that these other random symptoms like i had this
00:14:12.600like chronic sore throat had a sore throat all the time and I just you know attributed
00:14:17.160it to having Lyme disease and just thinking that was just one of my symptoms and then
00:14:21.540we moved out of the house and my sore throat went away and then now you know if I go into
00:14:26.080a place that I know is moldy that's like one of the symptoms that'll start to creep up
00:14:30.460is I'll start to get a sore throat again yeah and we didn't even know this stuff really
00:14:33.880until after we had moved because we were essentially um we we didn't understand any
00:14:43.640of this until so we don't really know the the the where it could have been my office it could have
00:14:51.080been a place where i was living before we we think that i was having mold toxicity issues in the house
00:14:58.280when we lived in california when we lived in california now that we looked back and so it's
00:15:03.680really um and some people have no yeah we never got the actual home tested itself we just got you
00:15:10.960tested your body yeah um while we were in texas yeah and it's the we could just see that you had
00:15:17.860mycotoxins but then you know it wasn't just necessarily the house that was making you sick
00:15:21.780it was in the summertime in central oregon where we used to live there's really bad forest fires
00:15:27.100every year it's basically like fire season and the air outside is hazardous
00:15:31.660and so that would you know prevent you from having clean air and your body was
00:15:37.660just so sensitive at that time that you weren't able to heal because it was like
00:15:41.740and then you know you'd be then the winter would come and you'd be so cold
00:15:45.280and everything you would get inflamed because you're cold and so you wouldn't
00:15:48.100be able to heal because of the cold and so we were trying to figure out ways that
00:15:51.520we could stay there because we didn't want to necessarily leave Oregon we
00:15:56.800loved we loved our community we loved our house um but it just kind of became evident that the
00:16:04.560environment there was not conducive to your healing yeah um so i made the decision to move
00:16:11.200to arizona and this is kind of a a backdrop for this whole podcast is that we essentially
00:16:19.120lost our sense of home for a bit um and i would even say we're still trying to recalibrate that
00:16:27.760now we know home is where your people are um but we moved into a fifth wheel and then we moved
00:16:34.780into a rental no we moved into a fifth one we had to get rid of all of our stuff yeah that was a big
00:16:40.500thing we did when you when you when you live on a property for five years you know that seven acres
00:16:45.200and you have outbuildings on it and you know your house itself is pretty large on the larger side
00:16:50.160and a garage and you accumulate stuff it's just it just happens and once we found out that it was
00:16:57.520potentially mold we had we got rid of everything everything the only things you can keep is
00:17:02.560basically steel like metal and glass and we didn't know what was
00:17:09.040keepable or not keepable because i was so sick i was just like let's just get rid of everything
00:17:15.100oh yeah he was so sick at that time he could barely make any decision
00:17:18.960so we had to get rid of we just thought well you know what if mold is causing this
00:17:24.060let's start our whole new life fresh and i mean this mean we got so that means when we moved we
00:17:31.160couldn't just like pick a random house to move into because we didn't know if it was going to
00:17:34.220have mold so that's why we lived in the fifth wheel yeah we lived in the fifth wheel and then
00:17:37.600we had to get a new rental which we paid more for because it was brand new and you know new doesn't
00:17:43.280necessarily mean mold free so you're constantly looking around and that's why we also didn't just
00:17:47.700buy a house that was already existing because of the mold so there were so many factors that
00:17:53.480you know we're still even making sense of it all um and we we've we've been in rentals uh until
00:18:02.340recently we finally bought a little house um and you know lord willing we will build a house on some
00:18:08.600land one day again in the future uh we we own some land that we'd like to build on um but we're
00:18:15.640we're still in the middle of all those factors and so it's been a um a hard journey to home life for
00:18:26.060us and we've we've really wanted to make a consistent place for home for our children
00:18:33.260for our schedules for our um sense of consistency um to just stability yeah yeah to build a culture
00:18:43.100and civilization in in our home for our children that gives them um structure and traditions and
00:18:53.900and um vision and um so we we've been a bit in survival mode um making things work and i i'm
00:19:04.040still now i'm significantly better yeah but i'm still sick um so i've yeah used dale still has
00:19:12.900issues at some point every day every day something that comes up every day so it's still very much
00:19:19.940our life is very much revolved around that yeah um like just how we operate in our house not
00:19:27.440necessarily like we're it's us we're a slave to it but in a way we kind of are you know it's a
00:19:33.080very weird lifestyle because i'll go you know if you're following us on social media on instagram
00:19:40.180i've been recently posting that i've been skateboarding with the kids you know so i'll
00:19:42.880have days where i can go and and skateboard with the kids at the skate park um or go play pickleball
00:19:48.960and feel totally fine um but then sometimes you have to stop and come home early because you like
00:19:54.640start struggling to breathe while you're doing those things or later that night or the next day
00:19:58.960you have a really off day because you play pickleball too hard or skateboarding too hard or
00:20:03.760something yeah you know um detoxing for some some effect from those activities so it's been truly
00:20:11.840our kids have grown up in a home with a sick dad which is a very unexpected narrative for our home
00:20:22.480we didn't expect that we've we've had people that have tried to say like oh you should hide
00:20:27.360those things you should have those things you know to essentially appear to be it's a reality
00:20:34.720though yeah it's a reality it's something we have to deal with every day and you should be able to