The John-Henry Westen Show - October 08, 2024


13 children including 2 Latin Mass priests - How did this Mom do it？

Topics
divine love in marriage
Hosted by
John-Henry Westen
Mentioned
Trisha Nolan Bishop Strickland Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Tipster Patricia Bishop Topol Janet Smith Dan Nolan Bob Nolan Bob Knoll Pius XII Dorewy
This is THE issue of the 2024 election After 25 years of marriage I regretted saying 'yes' but after 30 knew it was the greatest blessing

Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

181.87

Word count

6,343

Sentence count

528

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trisha Nolan is a woman who has 13 children, two of whom are priests in the Fraternal Order of St. Peter, a Latin Mass Fraternal order. She was born in a Catholic ghetto in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in a family of seven adults and ten children. She talks about the challenges of raising her 13 children and how she managed to raise them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Human love is never enough to sustain a long-term relationship.
00:00:05.080 You can't live out marriage with just human love.
00:00:10.040 More is needed.
00:00:11.260 It will always expend itself.
00:00:13.800 Human love is fickle.
00:00:15.780 Human love is changeable.
00:00:23.260 Hey, my friends.
00:00:24.400 I was at this conference in Denver or near Denver, Colorado,
00:00:28.180 and it was a traditional Catholic women's conference.
00:00:31.500 It was an incredible conference.
00:00:33.280 At the conference, there was an emcee, really lively guy.
00:00:36.900 He was a priest.
00:00:37.780 His name was Father Dan Nolan, and one of the speakers was actually his mother.
00:00:42.460 And I had the great grace to sit in the back room and talk with his mother for a long time
00:00:46.860 and then heard her talk.
00:00:48.720 She blew me away.
00:00:50.180 Her talk was supposed to be on raising saints.
00:00:53.520 Now, this woman has 13 children, two of whom are priests in the Fraternity of St. Peter,
00:01:01.360 Latin Mass priests.
00:01:02.940 And of course, like every dad or mom, I went up and said to her,
00:01:08.120 so about the how did you get the two priests, let alone the 13 children?
00:01:11.800 I've only got eight, but it's one of those questions you have to ask.
00:01:16.640 I wanted to share with you, Trisha Nolan,
00:01:18.800 because you are going to have your socks blown right off your feet.
00:01:22.340 Stay tuned for this episode of the John Hedder Western Show.
00:01:26.080 This October 17th and 18th, we are going to be running Rome Life Forum in Exile.
00:01:32.480 We're doing that in Kansas City, Missouri.
00:01:35.080 This fine bishop, Bishop Joseph Strickland, sort of in exile,
00:01:37.960 is going to be joining us there, as well as Dr. Janet Smith,
00:01:41.560 as well as prophecy expert Xavier Aral, and many more, including a special guest.
00:01:49.080 Hope to see you there.
00:01:50.120 Hope to see you there.
00:01:51.380 God bless you.
00:01:52.680 RomeLifeForum.com.
00:01:53.900 Sign up now.
00:01:56.380 Trisha, so good you could join us.
00:01:58.020 Thank you.
00:01:58.680 You're welcome.
00:01:59.360 I'm glad to be here.
00:02:00.560 So let's begin as you always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:02:02.700 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:02:08.280 Amen.
00:02:08.820 Trisha, first of all, if you could start, tell us a little bit about your background.
00:02:12.380 I mean, it was such a fascinating talk, and talking with you behind the scenes was also fascinating.
00:02:17.340 Tell us a little bit about yourself, so people get to know who you are.
00:02:19.540 I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington.
00:02:21.820 I was number five of ten children.
00:02:24.700 I was raised in a Catholic ghetto.
00:02:28.140 It was considered a neighborhood, although we weren't necessarily poor.
00:02:32.500 But like when I was growing up, there were 72 children on our block under the age of 12.
00:02:36.660 They were all Catholic families.
00:02:38.120 We lived about a block and a half or two blocks from the church, so I could walk.
00:02:42.480 Being Catholic, there was a lot of Catholicism that surrounded it.
00:02:46.980 My dad had issues.
00:02:48.880 He was very, very loving, but he had a bit of an anger issue.
00:02:53.340 And I had an older sister and three older brothers.
00:02:56.100 And my older brothers tended to bully me.
00:02:59.440 It was because as an infant, I'd spent about my first nine months in the hospital.
00:03:05.200 So there hadn't been proper bonding.
00:03:07.220 I think this is how I think of it.
00:03:08.980 Also, I think I had some abandonment issues.
00:03:11.620 And children that have abandonment issues, they're difficult to raise.
00:03:14.760 And they're more combative.
00:03:17.640 And if not properly approached, you know, can be pretty hard.
00:03:21.900 So I was not accepted by the family.
00:03:25.340 And they didn't make any bones about it.
00:03:27.180 I mean, I had a sibling once when I came home from camp said, you know, what are you doing here?
00:03:32.760 And I said, well, I just got home from two weeks of camp.
00:03:35.560 And he said, yeah, well, why don't you just go back?
00:03:37.200 Because nobody wants you here.
00:03:38.400 And even my dad, you know, one time I confronted him and he said, well, you know,
00:03:44.000 there's a reason why everybody in the family hates you.
00:03:47.680 I grew up with a feeling that, I mean, basically, I accepted the message my brothers told me. 1.00
00:03:54.280 You're ugly. 1.00
00:03:55.260 You have a lousy personality and nobody's ever going to marry you. 1.00
00:03:58.680 And so face it, you know.
00:04:00.780 So I grew up thinking that marriage was out of the question.
00:04:05.800 The truth of the matter is, I was very beautiful.
00:04:08.820 I had a very vibrant personality.
00:04:10.640 And there were probably tons of guys that would have been happy to marry me.
00:04:14.640 Only I had no clue.
00:04:17.300 But the day came when the Lord introduced me to my husband and we met at a prayer meeting.
00:04:24.700 Actually, actually, it was at a rehearsal for a prayer meeting.
00:04:27.960 My older sister was also involved in the charismatic renewal.
00:04:31.900 I'd gotten involved.
00:04:33.240 And one day when I was up in Spokane, I asked her, why wasn't she at the prayer meeting I was going to?
00:04:38.660 And she said, well, there's another one that I attend.
00:04:40.780 And then she said, yeah, you know, you might want to come.
00:04:42.940 There's a guy here that tunes guitars.
00:04:45.220 As soon as she said that, it was like every fiber of my body was alert.
00:04:51.360 My heart started pounding.
00:04:52.700 The adrenaline started flowing.
00:04:54.460 In a voice that I was having to control so that it didn't sound breathless, I said, oh, really?
00:05:01.180 What's his name?
00:05:02.920 And she said, Bob Nolan.
00:05:05.720 And it was like guitar string broke in my heart.
00:05:09.080 I just had to meet him.
00:05:10.580 I had to meet him.
00:05:11.240 I knew that he was going to become important in my life.
00:05:15.620 And I pictured him as this great, big, tall, six foot three bearded Santa Claus type because she said he's an older gentleman.
00:05:24.160 So I wasn't really thinking in terms of marriage.
00:05:26.260 I just knew I had to meet him.
00:05:27.400 I wrangled an invitation to the prayer meeting and I also played guitar.
00:05:32.380 And so I got a ride and got out there and I was waiting and he was a little bit late.
00:05:37.240 And we were sitting downstairs in the basement room at the retreat house and we were waiting for him to show up so we could start practice.
00:05:43.500 And then we hear his steps, you know, like that where somebody's running down the stairs and that's the second flight.
00:05:50.880 And then we hear a thump because he had just jumped over the ledge instead of finishing the stairs.
00:05:56.120 And then he shows up right in the middle of the doorway.
00:05:59.640 And like I mentioned to you, I'm not kidding.
00:06:02.940 It was just like the movies.
00:06:05.440 Everything stopped.
00:06:06.600 I only saw him.
00:06:08.100 He only saw me.
00:06:09.860 Everything faded away.
00:06:11.180 And our eyes were just locked.
00:06:14.500 And later I said, what were you thinking when you saw me?
00:06:19.460 And he said, oh, my gosh, there she is, my angel.
00:06:24.780 And I'm just not going to tell you what I thought, because mine was not nearly as as chased as that.
00:06:32.600 He was not a large man.
00:06:34.680 He was about 36 or 37 years old.
00:06:37.300 I was 24.
00:06:38.100 He was five foot, about five foot, four and a half, five foot five.
00:06:43.280 And he was built.
00:06:46.520 He had Popeye arms.
00:06:48.400 He could lift 300 pounds of an engine just doing, you know, a hand press thing.
00:06:53.560 And he was really cute.
00:06:55.160 Anyway, that was the beginning.
00:06:56.880 And it's interesting because it wasn't just our experience.
00:07:00.100 One of the people that were in the room came up to him afterwards and said,
00:07:03.060 have you ever had an experience where you see somebody and the world seems to fade away and all you can see is them?
00:07:12.460 And my husband said, oh, no, I've never had that kind of experience because he didn't want to admit the truth.
00:07:19.880 Anyway, so that was the beginning.
00:07:21.020 It was really the Lord who made clear that he wanted us together.
00:07:25.880 I think I told you the story that he was a very shy man.
00:07:30.300 He did not like being in front of people.
00:07:32.520 And so playing at the meeting was stressful for him.
00:07:35.680 When he would play, he'd get severe headaches and he had a tendency to get migraine headaches.
00:07:39.700 And so at the end of the meeting, someone said, how about someone, another single man was there with a date and said to Bob and I, how about we go and get something to eat?
00:07:50.080 And Bob said, no, I don't, I'm not going to be able to go.
00:07:53.620 I've got too bad of a headache.
00:07:54.980 I tend to get migraine headaches.
00:07:56.680 So I got to lie down so it can get worse.
00:07:58.440 And I said, what?
00:07:59.880 You get migraine headaches?
00:08:02.120 That didn't make any sense.
00:08:03.460 You're serving the Lord and you get migraine headaches?
00:08:06.300 All right, we got to take care of that.
00:08:07.520 So I called everybody around and said, come on, guys, we got to pray.
00:08:10.520 And so we put our hands on him like charismatics do to pray for him.
00:08:13.940 And as soon as my hands touched him, I had a vision.
00:08:19.060 And the vision was of the Lord standing there.
00:08:22.960 And he had his hands like this.
00:08:25.480 And in his hands were about that big.
00:08:28.560 It was a diamond, but it was all crusted over with dirt and barnacles.
00:08:32.460 And you couldn't really see and it couldn't shine its light.
00:08:35.640 And what I found amazing was the love that was coming from Christ for this thing.
00:08:41.380 And I compared it in my mind.
00:08:43.620 It struck me like a little five-year-old that has a treasure that he's never shown anyone.
00:08:48.180 His parents don't even know about it.
00:08:49.680 And he has it under his bed and he's finally found a friend and he's going to share it with
00:08:54.960 him.
00:08:55.480 And he takes it out, you know, and he holds it up and he's holding it so tenderly.
00:08:59.460 That's exactly how I felt about the Lord with this.
00:09:02.460 And I knew it was Bob.
00:09:05.060 I knew that's who it was.
00:09:07.240 And the Lord looked at me and he said, if I give this to you, will you treasure it like
00:09:13.060 I do?
00:09:14.160 And I said, I don't know, Lord, in as much as you give me love, then I suppose I can.
00:09:20.380 And he said, and if I give this to you, when your life ends, will you give it back to me
00:09:25.560 cleaned up and sharpened and it's light shining?
00:09:30.120 And I said, I don't know, but if you give me the grace, then I will do the best that I
00:09:35.320 can.
00:09:36.160 He said, oh, hold out your hands.
00:09:37.860 So in my mind's eye, I reach my hands out.
00:09:40.280 And with this motion of just love and tenderness, he puts it in my hands.
00:09:47.720 And he said, now he's entrusted to you.
00:09:51.240 And then the vision ended.
00:09:53.760 Now, a normal person might think, oh, I'm going to end up marrying this guy.
00:09:57.680 Not me.
00:09:58.760 I mean, marriage, after all, it was kind of out of the question.
00:10:01.660 I just thought, okay, we're going to be friends for the rest of our life.
00:10:05.560 For whatever reason, now this person's going to be important that I watch over him.
00:10:09.780 So I started praying for him and just thought, you know, but as it would have it, he did eventually
00:10:16.560 call me up and sort of, in the way that shy guys ask you out, he sort of asked me out.
00:10:24.460 Believe it or not, our very first date was to go to Archbishop Sheen's last public talk,
00:10:33.040 which was there.
00:10:33.840 And he was responsible for the amplifier equipment, all the sound equipment.
00:10:41.700 And he was responsible for picking it all up after the talk and taking it back to the
00:10:46.160 retreat house.
00:10:47.440 And so he wanted to know if I wanted to come with him and he was, you know, he had to wait
00:10:51.700 for a while because he had to set it up.
00:10:55.020 And I wasn't sure because I'd been accepted to the missionaries of charity and was trying
00:10:59.860 to get my debt paid off and wasn't really sure I should go out.
00:11:02.800 And he said, well, I mean, you know, we're just going to go maybe get something to eat
00:11:07.240 and go back and pick up the equipment.
00:11:08.780 I'll bring you back home.
00:11:09.620 And I said, all right, I'll tell you what I'll do.
00:11:11.480 Let's take the first hour and we'll go to the perpetual, the chapel of perpetual adoration
00:11:16.320 they had in Spokane.
00:11:17.440 They had chapel for 24 hour adoration.
00:11:19.480 I said, let's spend an hour in prayer and let me discern whether or not being with you
00:11:25.180 is something that the Lord would approve of.
00:11:27.680 And if the Lord tells me, yes, then I'll, I'll go with you.
00:11:31.320 But if he doesn't, then I want you to bring me right back home.
00:11:34.480 He said, okay, sure.
00:11:35.320 That's fine by me.
00:11:36.440 So we went to the chapel and we spent an hour in prayer and I had no sooner knelt down and
00:11:42.500 said, Lord, he said, my daughter, um, I, I do not want you to, to discourage a relationship
00:11:50.580 with this man for, I will be using this man to bring to fulfillment my plans for your life.
00:11:55.700 And then I said, okay.
00:11:58.460 And I kind of had a vision of him and he said, oh, by the way, and he went over and he turned
00:12:04.020 on a light switch.
00:12:05.800 Now that was very significant because three years earlier when I was struggling with my
00:12:13.960 past and I'd first come to the Lord, I said, Lord, look, you're going to have to do something
00:12:19.520 about these passions in me because at this point, my self-esteem is so low.
00:12:26.000 I let any man that comes along, take advantage of me and I can't handle it anymore.
00:12:30.460 You, if you don't do something about it, I'll lose you again.
00:12:33.820 And that'll be the end of my life.
00:12:35.760 As far as I'm concerned, I can't afford to lose you.
00:12:38.060 Please, please do something.
00:12:39.660 He said, oh, that's easy.
00:12:41.560 And he walked over to the wall and he, he said, see this, this is the switch to your
00:12:46.960 passions and he turned them off.
00:12:50.360 And I never had any interest in any man after that.
00:12:54.020 Guys could try all the tricks and it was like, ew, get away from me.
00:12:59.120 You know, not interested, talk to you.
00:13:02.100 Yeah, but that's it for the whole three years.
00:13:05.020 It was wonderful because I was free to just love the Lord and pray and whatnot.
00:13:09.660 So when he walked over and turned on the switch, my heart went, oh, you know, where's
00:13:16.100 this going to lead?
00:13:17.720 So anyway, and then time passed and, you know, we did get married on the 4th of July of 1974.
00:13:25.100 On the 4th of July.
00:13:26.380 Okay.
00:13:27.000 4th of July.
00:13:27.620 Yeah.
00:13:27.900 And it was so cute because the day before, or actually it was just hours, we were living
00:13:34.400 in Spokane and we were going to have to drive to Seattle to get married because that's
00:13:38.020 where my parish priest was.
00:13:39.660 You have to realize this.
00:13:41.680 These were the hippie days, the 74, right?
00:13:44.860 So getting married, I called the priest and this was the time of innovation.
00:13:49.400 I said, look, I didn't send out any invitations.
00:13:52.820 I don't really want anyone there.
00:13:54.160 I don't care who comes.
00:13:55.320 Um, I used to go to Davey mass there and I said, so the nine o'clock mass that I always
00:14:01.160 went to, we just want to sit in the pew.
00:14:05.040 And then when it's time to pronounce our vows, you call us up, we'll pronounce our vows, go
00:14:08.980 back and sit in the pew.
00:14:09.820 And he said, not even the priest said, I said, okay, fine.
00:14:15.440 I'll arrange it any way you want, but we're getting married the 4th of July.
00:14:18.080 Cause it's the only weekend we have.
00:14:19.920 I was back in school.
00:14:21.520 The only weekend we have all summer about three or four hours before we're going to leave
00:14:25.680 on Friday.
00:14:26.560 My husband calls me future husband and he goes, honey, honey.
00:14:30.540 I said, what?
00:14:31.220 He says, I can't go.
00:14:33.040 I said, what do you mean you can't go?
00:14:34.200 He said, I went to the doctor today and they said, they're going to have to do an operation
00:14:39.960 tomorrow.
00:14:40.880 I said, how do you care?
00:14:42.160 He said, I'm sorry.
00:14:43.980 I mean, it's just, just what he told me.
00:14:45.580 I said, what's wrong.
00:14:46.960 I'm going to have to have my independence removed instead of appendix.
00:14:53.500 He said, my independence, of course I held with laughter.
00:14:57.020 It's one of the things he's really funny and witty.
00:14:59.240 It's one of the things that's kept me loving him all these years, but anyway, so then we got
00:15:03.620 married.
00:15:05.200 And then our relationship, it was just hard from the beginning.
00:15:09.820 And his idea of a good husband was someone that had his wife under complete control. 0.59
00:15:17.100 And he said, jump.
00:15:18.660 And she said, how high?
00:15:20.440 I asked him one, what's your picture of a perfect woman?
00:15:24.640 And he described basically a Korean, you know, geisha, you know, whatever.
00:15:31.140 And I looked at him and I said, why did you ever marry me?
00:15:38.600 Are you kidding me?
00:15:40.920 You're looking for someone that's going to be obese and obey you and, and just, oh, you're
00:15:48.480 so wonderful and wise.
00:15:50.440 And you married me, especially back then.
00:15:53.600 I mean, I was wild and my whole life I'd survived by saying, I don't have to be the person you
00:16:03.920 tell me I have to be.
00:16:05.560 I'm okay as I am.
00:16:08.360 I mean, I had to fight just for my self-identity.
00:16:11.900 And here's this guy that thinks he's going to control me.
00:16:15.440 I don't think so.
00:16:16.660 So you can imagine the first few years were pretty wild.
00:16:21.860 And, and, uh, I think I told you this story that to give you an illustration of how much
00:16:27.980 we were not matched in our basic character, there are three things.
00:16:35.320 One, Bishop Topol, uh, was the Bishop of Spokane and he and Bob were pretty close and Bishop
00:16:42.500 Topol told him, he said, and it was after we were married and Bob was working in the
00:16:48.080 shop, in a shop, he was a mechanic and Bishop Topol came down to speak to him and Bob was
00:16:52.940 talking to him.
00:16:53.600 And then Bob fell apart, just fell into his arms, crying and weeping.
00:16:57.180 And Bishop Topol said, yes, marriage is very hard, isn't it?
00:17:01.240 You know, you have to let go of who you are in order to be able to become who God wants
00:17:08.560 you to be.
00:17:09.940 And that's what marriage is about.
00:17:11.520 Marriage is about death to self so that the saints that Christ wants to make you can rise
00:17:19.940 within you.
00:17:21.600 And then he said, I will tell you that if ever there was a marriage that I didn't think had
00:17:29.660 any chance of survival, it was yours.
00:17:32.860 And so I am devoting all of my suffering for the rest of my life to the success of your marriage.
00:17:41.520 Pope Pius XI said, men must look for the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ.
00:17:48.820 And he urged that the faithful give public honor to Christ the King so that individuals and states
00:17:53.780 would submit once more to the rule of their savior.
00:17:56.940 And that is why LifeSite News is raising up the image of Christ the King across the United States.
00:18:02.880 And you can help us reach millions more.
00:18:06.380 Please pledge your support today for these billboards at lifefunder.com slash Christ is King.
00:18:12.980 I knew this nun. 0.65
00:18:16.740 Her name was Sister Patricia, I think was her name, but I'm not sure.
00:18:20.660 Anyway, she was a nun that worked at the hospital there.
00:18:23.260 She was a mercy nun.
00:18:24.780 And she, one day I was talking to her and she said, honey, I want to give, and I was expressing
00:18:30.540 a little bit about how hard life it had been, you know, with him and this whole thing of
00:18:36.280 controlling me.
00:18:37.620 And, uh, and I didn't feel loved by him at all, really at all.
00:18:41.100 I didn't feel liked by him either.
00:18:42.680 She said, I'm going to tell you something.
00:18:45.100 And she said, first of all, don't listen to his words because he ain't going to say any.
00:18:50.120 You'll never hear him say kind words or nice words because he's not that kind.
00:18:55.300 Look to his actions.
00:18:56.720 You'll see his love in his actions.
00:18:59.460 And if you want to be able to know that you're loved, you look there to what he does.
00:19:04.340 And he said, but other, other thing I want to tell you is of all the marriages I've known,
00:19:10.400 as far as I'm concerned, yours has no hope of succeeding.
00:19:14.460 So every step I take is like a knife going through my foot.
00:19:18.780 And I, I'm on my feet 10 to 12 hours a day.
00:19:22.000 And I've offered all of the pain for the rest of my life for the success of this marriage.
00:19:27.740 Those are very powerful words.
00:19:29.980 I mean, that is really, first of all, it's a testimony to the fact that everybody saw how
00:19:34.480 ill, you know, what is the word, you know, ill matched.
00:19:38.840 We probably were.
00:19:39.560 But it was so clear that this was the match the Lord wanted.
00:19:44.220 The other thing is, is that for our own personal experience, I don't know how far, first of
00:19:48.180 all, we didn't take a very long honeymoon because we knew we'd be arguing before too long anyway.
00:19:53.180 And we were, by the time we came home and we'd been gone maybe three, four, five days, I don't
00:19:58.400 know how long we weren't talking to each other and, you know, we got mad and, uh, you know,
00:20:04.400 I just, uh, anyway.
00:20:06.440 And so it was about, I don't know, a month, two months into our marriage.
00:20:12.060 One night, Bob said, uh, come here.
00:20:14.380 I want to pray together.
00:20:15.780 And I said, okay, sure.
00:20:16.720 Fine.
00:20:17.600 Normally when we prayed together, we started fighting.
00:20:19.640 Okay.
00:20:20.780 He'd take rejection to something I prayed or I, and then we'd get into an argument.
00:20:25.240 Oh, we couldn't even pray the rosary together when we first got married.
00:20:28.180 It was awful.
00:20:29.220 So he'd go off his way and I'd go off my way.
00:20:31.820 Cause we both had our, our prayer times.
00:20:33.720 It wasn't that we weren't prayerful people.
00:20:35.720 We just couldn't pray together.
00:20:37.140 So he said, come on, just kneel down and hold hands.
00:20:39.480 So I knelt down when they hold hands.
00:20:40.700 And he said, dear Lord, while we're sleeping tonight, please take one of us because the other
00:20:46.440 one needs some relief.
00:20:49.640 And I was all happy.
00:20:50.960 I said, that's a great pair.
00:20:51.960 I love it.
00:20:52.780 Of course he didn't, but it was interesting because the prayer did not go unanswered.
00:20:58.300 Instead, when we woke up, we both immediately saw what the problem was.
00:21:03.120 We both immediately saw how to resolve the issue that had caused this prayer in the first
00:21:08.680 place.
00:21:09.140 Very interesting.
00:21:10.560 And so our life has unfolded where God has just, you know, we go along and we just feel
00:21:17.940 like we can't handle it anymore.
00:21:19.600 And then the Lord intervenes usually with me because it was usually me.
00:21:24.420 That was the one that felt that I couldn't handle it anymore.
00:21:27.240 And we both were very, very, very wounded.
00:21:29.840 And while Bob was a fabulous father, he had no clue what being a husband meant or how to
00:21:38.840 relate to women or the needs of women.
00:21:42.040 And he felt that if he gave in to me in any way, that was weak.
00:21:47.380 That was being a weak man.
00:21:49.100 So if he gave me a compliment, that was just being weak.
00:21:52.500 If he told me, well done, or if he conceded that I'd made some kind of a point.
00:21:57.780 So anyway, he's not that way now.
00:22:00.140 God's really worked miracles with him, but that's how it was at the beginning.
00:22:03.840 So it was very trying.
00:22:05.240 So our marriage would go.
00:22:06.500 And one of the first, well, I can't really say it's the first thing, because I remember
00:22:11.140 when I had two kids, I know I was driving home from a meeting I'd been to, kind of a prayer
00:22:16.160 meeting, but it was a Protestant prayer meeting.
00:22:17.640 And I said, Lord, what's so wrong with me?
00:22:20.960 What's so bad about me that I have to change and change and change for my husband's sake
00:22:27.500 and to hold this marriage together?
00:22:29.700 Isn't there in all this world, all the people that are out there, there wasn't one man that
00:22:37.220 might've loved me as I was, that could just love me for who I was.
00:22:42.540 I mean, really, this is the best that you were able to find out there.
00:22:47.640 And the Lord left and he said, yeah, there are men out there that would have loved you
00:22:53.120 right as you are, just as you are.
00:22:55.660 They would have given you the adoration that you'd love to have, but that wasn't the father's
00:23:01.040 plan.
00:23:01.820 The father's plan is that you're married to the man that you're married to.
00:23:05.160 And if you're going to stay married to him, you're going to have to do all the changing
00:23:08.100 because he has almost no capacity for change.
00:23:11.200 But that doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.
00:23:13.520 It means that this is what your marriage requires.
00:23:17.640 Your husband only has a certain capacity.
00:23:22.080 And if you're going to stay and make this marriage work, you're going to have to be
00:23:25.600 able to do most of the changing.
00:23:27.540 But the father gave you an abundant ability to change.
00:23:31.740 And I said, and Lord, he goes, well, if you don't like it, then tell me so.
00:23:37.440 And I said, well, I don't want to leave this marriage because then I know I won't have your
00:23:41.080 blessing and I don't want to live without your blessing.
00:23:42.860 He said, if you decide, you tell him you'd make a decision right now.
00:23:47.080 If you decide you don't want to do it, I'll bless you, whatever you choose.
00:23:51.200 But you will know that this is not the plan the father wanted for your life.
00:23:56.060 You'll be choosing a plan that was not ordained by him.
00:24:00.020 And of course, the Lord knows me.
00:24:01.300 And I said, well, of course, of course, of course, I'm going to choose this plan because
00:24:04.560 I'm not going to go against the will of the father.
00:24:06.700 He said, fine, then just resign yourself to the fact that the majority of change is going
00:24:12.220 to have to come from you.
00:24:13.300 Now, that was very important and significant.
00:24:15.520 I had a two-year-old and a one-year-old in the car and I was pregnant again.
00:24:18.680 And it was very important because it settled my spirit down.
00:24:22.320 It's like God, Christ had kind of outlined, OK, here's the parameters.
00:24:28.420 Here's what you're going to be living with.
00:24:30.220 And it was OK.
00:24:31.840 I did have a capacity to change that my husband didn't have.
00:24:35.180 And so that was, you know, important.
00:24:38.100 But the one the story I told you about was when it was about at this point, I had my oldest
00:24:44.360 was not yet three and a half.
00:24:46.500 My next one was two.
00:24:48.260 And I had just had a newborn and I was sitting at the kitchen table one day.
00:24:53.540 My human love, my love for Bob, I felt was just gone, gone.
00:25:00.440 It just was so hard.
00:25:02.720 Nothing I did mattered because I never got compliments.
00:25:07.540 He acted like he preferred to avoid me.
00:25:10.660 Oh, it's just really hard time.
00:25:12.600 I love being a mother, loved my kids.
00:25:15.780 And actually, you know, I had really loved my husband.
00:25:19.020 But now it was like he had done everything he could to destroy it.
00:25:24.020 You know, one time early on in our marriage, he said, I know you're going to leave me sometime.
00:25:29.000 I know you are.
00:25:31.060 Nobody is really going to be able to love me and stay with me.
00:25:34.800 You're going to leave me.
00:25:36.520 And I said, why do you say that?
00:25:39.820 Why are you setting yourself up for failure?
00:25:42.640 I love you.
00:25:43.980 I think there's a lot that's worth loving and I'm not going to leave you.
00:25:48.040 And when we get angry, he pushed me and say, I know you're going to leave me.
00:25:51.700 So just leave now.
00:25:52.700 Leave now and push me out the door. 0.94
00:25:54.420 You know, he didn't ever hit me or anything because I warned him if he ever hit me, you
00:25:58.400 ever punched me.
00:25:59.540 I said, that's it.
00:26:00.680 Don't do it.
00:26:01.900 I told him at the beginning, I said, there are two things you cannot do if you ever want
00:26:05.820 to see me again.
00:26:07.220 Don't ever punch me and don't ever be unfaithful.
00:26:11.060 You ever you ever mess around, honey, it's over.
00:26:14.620 I'm walking out the door and I'll probably if we have a bunch of kids, leave them all with
00:26:18.660 you and then you can mess with them.
00:26:21.820 I said, don't do it.
00:26:22.640 I didn't need to worry because that wasn't something that he'd be inclined to do.
00:26:26.080 He never hit me, but he would push me and he'd get angry, you know, he'd be frustrated.
00:26:31.180 And I'd say, stop pushing me.
00:26:33.460 I'm not going away.
00:26:35.120 I'm not leaving you.
00:26:36.080 I don't know what was in your past, but whatever it is, I'm not leaving.
00:26:39.080 I'm here.
00:26:40.500 But at this point, when I was sitting at the kitchen table, I was exhausted and I just
00:26:45.140 felt I didn't have anything left and I just wanted out and I wanted it to end.
00:26:50.640 And I was at the end of my rope and I said, Lord, I'm all done.
00:26:57.180 I'm finished.
00:26:58.820 My human, my love for Bob is gone.
00:27:02.920 I just, I don't feel anything anymore.
00:27:05.100 I don't even hate him anymore.
00:27:06.620 I just want out.
00:27:08.040 I just want to be done.
00:27:09.020 And I heard the voice of the Lord say, good.
00:27:14.900 And I said, what?
00:27:18.180 Good?
00:27:19.100 What do you mean good?
00:27:21.000 What's good about this?
00:27:22.960 And he said, I'm glad I've been waiting for this day.
00:27:28.220 I said, what do you mean waiting for this day?
00:27:31.040 I mean, and he said, human love is never enough to sustain a long-term relationship.
00:27:39.400 You can't live out marriage with just human love.
00:27:44.040 More is needed.
00:27:45.500 It will always expend itself.
00:27:48.120 Human love is fickle.
00:27:50.060 Human love is changeable.
00:27:51.580 It's a product and a result of sin.
00:27:53.820 And so you will never be able to love in the way that's needed to be able to make the marriage last.
00:28:00.560 It requires divine love.
00:28:02.700 He said, so I've been waiting for you to say this so that I could, I could move in.
00:28:09.160 You'd, you'd open your heart to me.
00:28:10.980 So here's what I want to do.
00:28:13.140 How about I take a flame of divine love, the love I have for Bob, for your husband,
00:28:19.260 and I'll put it in your heart.
00:28:21.100 And now I will be loving you.
00:28:25.300 I will be loving him through you.
00:28:28.360 Now the love that will burn in your heart will be my love.
00:28:31.440 And everything you do will be my love acting for your husband.
00:28:36.740 But it's just a small flame.
00:28:38.660 So you have to be careful to nourish it.
00:28:41.380 Note, let it extinguish.
00:28:43.340 And then in my mind, you know, I saw Christ reach over and he put in my heart, my chest,
00:28:49.100 this flame.
00:28:49.680 And let me tell you, it was a flicker.
00:28:52.140 It was really tiny.
00:28:53.780 You know, kind of one of those flames you see on those church candles, those little church
00:28:57.580 candles, you know, church, they're just barely, that's what it was.
00:29:01.640 But as soon as he inserted it, there was a difference.
00:29:05.060 Now with time, it grew.
00:29:07.780 And it grew into a very settled, hot, you know, fire of love for my husband.
00:29:18.240 And I'm not going to say passion in the human sense, but passion in the divine sense.
00:29:23.620 So I was thinking, I've been, I've had a chance to think more about your question.
00:29:27.720 You asked me, how did you feel after that?
00:29:30.840 And I thought, I don't know.
00:29:33.080 I don't know that I felt necessarily anything really hot immediately, but there was a change.
00:29:41.820 I could feel the spark.
00:29:43.540 I felt a new, a love arise.
00:29:45.820 But one of the things I did notice is I realized that from that moment, anywhere Bob was, I wanted
00:29:55.820 to know what he was doing.
00:29:57.400 If he was crying, I wanted to know.
00:29:59.740 If he was happy, I wanted to know.
00:30:02.080 If he was discouraged, I wanted to be there.
00:30:04.880 If he was worried about something, I wanted to share it with him.
00:30:08.440 It was like, now, instead of loving him for what he could do for me, or loving him because
00:30:15.360 it was nice to be able to love somebody, now it was all about him.
00:30:20.240 Now, I wanted to be able to love him as a companion, as, you know, for his sake.
00:30:30.980 Now, he, I knew from that moment, I knew no matter where he was in the world, I would want
00:30:36.680 to know about Bob Knoll.
00:30:38.440 And that was really important because, again, like the other one, where I get the parameters
00:30:44.060 of change, or that I'm going to have to do the changing, it was a recognition that, okay,
00:30:49.580 this is for the rest of his life, because now my passion was to see to his good.
00:30:55.560 And there wasn't really what was in it for myself.
00:30:57.820 But then that spark did grow.
00:31:01.360 And it grew a lot.
00:31:03.860 And it sustained me a lot through a whole lot, because we had a lot more hardships yet
00:31:09.480 ahead of us.
00:31:10.200 But it was very important.
00:31:12.520 And it was, and I meditated a lot on what Christ said, that marriage is a state.
00:31:17.960 You know, Fulton Sheen has a book that he wrote that said, Three to be Married.
00:31:21.680 And he says in there, you have to have Christ in your marriage.
00:31:26.200 Marriage is a commitment that natural, on the natural level, we wouldn't be able to do.
00:31:32.320 And so you have to have Christ.
00:31:33.860 You have to have the divine component.
00:31:36.220 And I think that's really true.
00:31:37.960 You have to have divine love for your spouse.
00:31:40.580 Christ, it's part of what he set up.
00:31:42.940 He wants to be able to love my husband through me.
00:31:47.200 And I'm certain that he gave, because I asked him to, to give my husband the same thing.
00:31:53.180 Okay, give my husband a share of yours.
00:31:55.400 Give him love for me.
00:31:56.420 And I'm sure that he did.
00:31:57.880 And maybe my husband had to come to a point where he asked for himself.
00:32:00.840 I don't know.
00:32:01.660 But I know that it's true, you know, now.
00:32:04.760 It's interesting that in spite of all the turmoil and the fighting and the disagreements
00:32:10.500 that we had, although we never fought over the children.
00:32:14.420 And a rule that we made early on is because we both hated this.
00:32:19.380 We hated it when spouses be mad at each other and then they take it out on their kids. 0.94
00:32:24.780 You know, we hated that.
00:32:26.880 So we said, look, we're going to keep our anger between ourselves.
00:32:30.420 You're mad at me.
00:32:31.340 You take it out on me.
00:32:32.820 I'm mad at you.
00:32:33.400 I'm going to take it out on you.
00:32:34.520 But we're going to continue to be loving and gentle to our kids.
00:32:37.300 It's not going to be their fault.
00:32:39.040 We're not going to let it be their fault.
00:32:41.000 For the most part, we tried to keep our arguments behind closed doors, which we did.
00:32:46.240 But what does it make?
00:32:47.580 We lived in such poor housing, you could hear everything anyway.
00:32:52.380 But we also made sure that, you know, the kids, we'd say, this isn't your fault.
00:32:58.500 Don't worry about it.
00:32:59.740 Doesn't mean anything.
00:33:01.420 Daddy and I are just having a disagreement, you know.
00:33:03.480 And we also agreed with our disciplining that we would support one another so that we wouldn't
00:33:09.920 undercut and undermine one another.
00:33:12.420 So I'd say the kids would come in and go, mommy, daddy said, and I'd go, well, if your dad
00:33:20.020 said it, then you got to do it.
00:33:22.120 Yeah, but it's not fair.
00:33:23.800 It's too bad.
00:33:25.080 That's your dad.
00:33:25.860 And he's the authority.
00:33:26.820 You got to do it.
00:33:27.700 And he'd do the same for me, you know, and we subscribe to the thing, okay, if you have
00:33:33.720 a legitimate complaint, we'll listen to it.
00:33:36.900 But that doesn't mean we're going to let you off.
00:33:39.280 But you can then, you can explain yourself.
00:33:41.760 We were in agreement with that.
00:33:43.600 So then all the arguments about other things, those things we were very, very much united
00:33:49.400 on.
00:33:49.720 And I'm sure it's part of what held our marriage together as well as our love for the Lord.
00:33:53.620 Truth has a power of its own.
00:33:55.260 It moves hearts and saves lives.
00:33:58.020 I'm pleased to announce the launch of the new LSN TV app, which can bring all LifeSite
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00:34:14.560 Don't be alone in the darkness.
00:34:16.400 We've been cancelled.
00:34:17.660 Fight the cancellation.
00:34:19.040 Download the app.
00:34:25.260 Know what whether it be outdoors or if it might be for you.
00:34:35.060 You're the one at that point.
00:34:36.320 Don't be alone in the dark.
00:34:37.800 Email the app.
00:34:37.920 We can't have a love.
00:34:38.700 Help me.
00:34:39.760 Dorewy is so sorry.
00:34:40.280 Love you.
00:34:41.380 Leben эта любовь will be long.
00:34:42.080 It's so sorry.
00:34:43.100 You're the one at that point.
00:34:44.700 Love you.
00:34:45.460 What I should do now for life is the only-
00:34:45.840 síndrome of anasto another man.
00:34:48.740 And God bless you.
00:34:50.600 What I should do once it's like-
00:34:51.780 rid of promets.