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An Interview with Kristin and Todd Evans: Podcast Episode 072

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In this week’s podcast episode, Catherine interviewed Kristin and Todd Evans about their experiences with mental health and marriage challenges, while parenting a child with disabilities. Kristin and Todd share how they were able to move from an incredibly challenging time to a deep, rich relationship with Christ and renewed connection with each other—with application for any couple parenting a child with disabilities.

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Catherine: Hi everybody, this is Catherine: Boyle from Key Ministry. I'm delighted to bring you this week's podcast, and today I'm actually joined by a couple of guests, which is always a treat. So today my guests are Kristin and Todd Evans. Kristin and Todd do a lot of work around disability and special needs parenting. They have some great insights and a wealth of resources. So welcome Kristin and Todd to the Key Ministry podcast!

Kristin: Thank you,  Catherine, for inviting us.

Todd: We're excited to be here and look forward to hopefully providing something that helps your readers today.

Catherine: Yes, absolutely. I'm sure that you will. Well, for anybody who's listening who isn't familiar with you guys or your work, just talk a little bit about who you are as a couple and a family, maybe what you've done professionally, either in ministry or outside of ministry, and then for sure how disabilities have impacted your family.

Todd: If I had to define both Kristin and myself, we're very, very, very driven people. We love to excel, love to exceed, in everything we can. It was our dreams in college individually. And then as we got married, and kind of seeing how God shaped and formed our vision for how we could do ministry and impact the church, we were super excited about all that, and where we thought we were going.

I put the emphasis on where we thought we were going, because we were heading in that direction. And then God blessed us with some challenges with our children, especially our daughter with disabilities, and what she's struggling through, and how it's impacted how we see ourselves, who we are as a couple and how we look at life. We've kind of had to step back from some of our goals and aspirations, and realize this is where God has placed us, and to work on that.

So professionally, we've got a number of degrees between us. We both got our masters in ministry from Wheaton College. We've both gone back and gotten additional degrees: Kristin, in social work, so that she can work with counseling and things like that. And myself, really a career change, to try to support our family. It (supporting our family) just wasn't working in ministry, to try to raise our kids, with all the challenges that were there. So I went back and got my doctorate in engineering to go that route to help our family.

Catherine: Well, your experience is not uncommon. You said something a minute ago about God blessing you with challenges, or something to that effect, and yes, those challenges change us as individuals. So, Kristin, talk if you will, just a little bit about your work with counseling. I know that you are doing a lot of that sort of thing as part of your ministry.

Kristin: Yes, pre-Covid, I was working as a crisis counselor; I have experience working with couples and individuals, with lots of families who have children with disabilities.  With Covid, we had to isolate immediately with our medically fragile daughter. That actually opened the door for me to begin writing and speaking. So I'm not actually working with clients right now. I'm doing more researching and writing and speaking, which is actually really neat because I'm getting to encourage and empower a lot more people than I would've been able to. So that's actually been really neat how the Lord's opened that door.

Catherine: It's a different approach to counseling perhaps, but it still is giving counsel from that deep well of experience that God has allowed both of you to have, just through your day-to-day lives as parents of a medically fragile child. So one reason that you guys got connected to Key Ministry and me specifically—a couple years ago—was because Kristin, you've written and you speak a lot about the mental health challenges that come along with having a child with disabilities. You both are very honest talking about marriage challenges, too. This is a very common thing. It's not necessarily something that is talked about that much in terms of the support that's needed for families who have a loved one with disabilities. But if you would just talk for a minute or two about what has been your experience with mental health challenges and marriage challenges.

Kristin: We went through a really dark season…

Catherine: I wouldn’t be asking this if I didn't know that you guys were okay with talking about this kind of stuff.

Kristin: That is a big, very important topic. And like you said, I think it's not talked about, especially in the church, because of the stigma, which did impact us. At first, Todd was a youth pastor. I had to resign from my position to do full-time caregiving very quickly after the emergency C-section with Beth and three months in the NICU with her. I was already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which impacts about one in five medical parents (parents of a medically fragile child). And that actually, I think that statistic is low—any parent that has had any kind of medical emergency—we had numerous emergencies with Beth. And so whether it was postpartum depression or just depression, I developed severe anxiety. I just spiraled, and along with that, [I had] my faith crisis. And so here Todd is, trying to keep his job as a youth minister. I'm just trying to keep the kids alive, literally.

Todd: I'm not familiar as much with the mental health side of things at that point in my life. And I know my wife is struggling, but don't really recognize some of those more intense signs and symptoms that she's going through, and I don't really connect with her as much during that time period of our marriage. I just kind of saw some things going on, but didn't know how to respond, what to do. So it was—I had to keep moving on with my family and take care of our kids: the medical and the financial and all those pieces, just to kind of help keep our life together.

Catherine: And you don't know what you don't know. I mean, you think that, okay, I'll just keep doing what I know to do and this is going to work out, but sometimes, that just isn't the case.

Kristin: It was nearly tragic. So by the time—and we were just stumbling, looking back, doing the best we could—by the time he was like, yeah, I think you do need to go for counseling, it was really almost too late, especially with the trauma. The sooner you seek treatment for trauma, the better the outcome. So yes, we struggled through that. Our marriage was crumbling at that time. I didn't even want to go to church. I was so angry with God and distant. We were in a very dark, dark place.

Catherine: I know just from the challenges of the families and their loved ones that we interact with that these kinds of things are so common. They just are. And when you have a mental health crisis, that tends to turn into or is absolutely intertwined with a faith crisis. And then you add to that all the challenges, and what's the chicken and what's the egg? What was the start of having the mental health crisis or the faith crisis? Was it the disabilities? I mean, it doesn't really matter. It's just these things are common challenges for families who are caring for children with disabilities.

Todd: And you say they're common, but I think in the middle of it—I know this was true for us and probably for a lot of families, maybe those that are listening—you think, it's just, you're isolated, [you think] that no one else has these things. You can't even bring them up…

Kristin: That something's wrong with you. You're a bad parent, a bad Christian.

Todd: I think it is so important to normalize it more and say, yes, this is normal. This is what we're all going through.

Kristin: It's at least one in three disability parents that experience at least moderate depression and anxiety at some point. One in three.

Catherine: Yes. You said a second ago that you think that the PTSD stats are low. That sounds low to me, too. I mean, how could it not be? It's just so many challenges that you don't foresee—but you guys are sitting here today—which is amazing, because honestly, I don't know how families who don't have Christ in the center make it through some of the things that you guys are describing, and that many people in this community go through. How do you get through it without Christ? Well, the answer is—sadly, we see it on the news, the tragedies; it's the alcoholism and the drug abuse.

But you guys figured out a way, maybe out of necessity, maybe because God was just working in your hearts to find breakthrough in your marriage relationship and restoring—or establishing—practices to support your mental health needs. So talk if you will, just a little bit about one or two things that you guys did that were really important to help you.

Todd: I'd say at that point, in some ways it was a choice. In some ways, it wasn't a choice. It was just at the end that a brick wall…

Kristin: Desperation…

Todd: …desperation, we've got to do something different. What's happening isn't working and it's all going to just end up very badly if we continue down this path. So it was really out of necessity, just having to choose to look at things and say, what can we do different? Then we just had to look at each other and say, this isn't working; my way is not working. Your way is not working. We've got to find something else. I have no idea what, let's start talking about it. And that's really, I'd say where it started, which is us being willing to come to the end of ourselves and say, we can't do this on our own anymore. We don't know how to go forward, and let's brainstorm and try to do this before it's too late.

Kristin: Yes, I think we just came to that point of desperation and it was a choice like Todd said, and we had to address both the mental health and the marriage problems together, and then the faith crisis. We had to make a choice with both to come to that point of we're at the end of ourselves. I was just agonizing over how could God be good and allow our family to suffer and just—I needed that answer. I needed to understand, and came to a point realizing, I'm never going to know probably, but I'm going to have to trust. And I think Todd was at the same point of just having to trust God, in a way that I don't think we ever could have come to have this faith, this deep faith in relationship with Christ any other way, than through the dark pit we were in.

Catherine: Right. I know when I personally have hard times trusting God, I don't know if it's something I learned at church, but it's like when you can't trust what you see before you, then you have to trust His character. Scripture talks about the things that He is, and I mean, it's absolutely a leap of faith when you have those challenging times where you have no idea what the way forward is going to be. So I'm curious, did you guys have church community support at this time in your life or were you out of church? What was that like for you?

Todd: Well, as Kristin was saying, I was serving in ministry at a church at the time…

Catherine: But that doesn't mean you had church community…

Todd: In some ways it was almost harder to get…

Kristin: It was isolating…

Todd: …faith and church support because you felt like you could not share everything going on in your own personal struggles. I did have a friend on staff that was able to listen and share some and connect with and be honest with; that was a very valuable piece of helping me. But other than that, it was more just having to do my job, and having to put on the good face every Wednesday night, every Sunday, every time I met somebody. The parents and families knew some of what was going on with us; they tried to support us, and really did a great job in doing that: physical and financial and different ways…

Kristin: …brought us meals…

Todd: …but on the mental health side, and just struggling through that, that wasn't a place we felt like we could share with that community. So it was in a lot of ways isolating, in the midst of being in the church.

Kristin: It was a small town, and the head psychiatrist attended our church in the small town. Lots of therapists were in our church, and one of them had a son in the youth group. So it was like that stigma of—what would they think if they knew our marriage was crumbling? I could barely function….

Catherine: Small church, small town, small environments; that can be pretty challenging. I was going to ask—I was actually thinking when you were talking, Todd—I live in Richmond, Virginia, and I know that pastors from my church—years ago—would connect with other pastors as their own kind of, somebody understands my life. It's not somebody within your existing church, but making friends outside of that [environment] who's really your peer group. But if you're in that small environment, I can understand there's not a lot of outside support. And small groups in churches, Sunday school, whatever, tends to be the organ recital at prayer time, for Aunt Edna's hernia surgery, instead of anything that's real and substantive that people have going on.

So thinking again about other caregiving parents like yourselves, who may find themselves in a place today as they're listening, where they say, we're exactly where Todd and Kristin used to be. So what were some effective ways that you guys found to address disagreements between each other, or were there any tools that you guys found especially helpful to navigate some of these challenges that are unique to families that have children with disabilities?

Kristin: I think firstly, it was more how we looked at each other. We had to go back to when we got married; we had a saying, think the best of one another. And through all of these challenges, I think we kind of lost that, because we didn't know what the other person was going through during the day. And I think we had to go back to that first, just thinking the best, we're doing the best we can. And then we just had to start to connect in very simple ways, with actually checking in and listening to what our days were like, and validating ‘that sounds really hard.’ That was something I needed, that I wasn't getting. And so it was kind of this rote teaching: ‘this is where you say, that sounds really hard.’

Todd: And I would say, ‘honey, that sounds really hard.’ As rote as that sounds, it opened the door to let her know that I cared enough even to recite that statement, but I truly meant it, and I just didn't know how to form the words. And she helped me with that and it gave her an option to share some of that.

Catherine: That's like speaking your love language and those kinds of things. I mean, in my own experience, that doesn't come naturally. So it does take that effort.

Todd: And the other big piece of doing that, it's the urgent thing in life that calls your attention all the time. And with children with disabilities, there’s always an urgent need, so you're always trying to take care of them and the situation and everything else. So things like marriage, like caring for one another go to the back burner. So it became kind of putting a little bit of focus back, like she was saying—on the marriage, and on our relationship, and listening and valuing that, and saying, ‘yes, something else is urgent, but I can postpone it for five minutes or 10 minutes so that we can talk, so that we can catch up.’ And just doing that over time started to make a difference in our relationship. It wasn't overnight. This is months and years of time of doing it, and we got better and better at it as we went along and it got more natural to do it, but it was just putting that focus on it, even if it was just for one minute or five minutes a day.

Kristin: Right? Because parents like us don't get big chunks of time, typically. So it's the little moments, it's the five minute check-ins, it's the little text message I'm thinking about you, the little thank you note or little treat that you leave one another that really adds up, and stuff to help you reconnect. And then the other thing was we learned how to cope and de-stress together, because parents who have children with disabilities have to learn new coping skills and use them more, and couples have to learn how to cope together and de-stress together. So that was another big step we took.

Catherine: So what I'm hearing here is—what I think is so important—is that you were able to find ways to give each other little mental breaks, because it's so easy to get stuck in whatever the crisis is or just the ongoing day to day. And you guys interrupted that flow, so that it gives you just a little bit of head space to maybe rise above whatever is the challenge of the moment, the urgency. It can be life-giving. And it sounds like it really was for you guys, to put just those small things into practice. And I would just add that none of those things cost any money. It's just a little bit of thought, and a little bit of intentionality, but it's putting deposits in your marriage bank account, if you will. So you guys made it through your crisis of faith, which a lot of people don't. So how have each of you grown in your relationship with Christ because of your experience being parents of a child with significant disabilities?

Todd: I'd say the biggest thing for me is that, like I mentioned in the beginning, I'm very driven, very self-reliant, always dreamed of just changing the world in whatever context I was in. And having a child with disabilities changed what I could really practically do. I felt like in the world that I had a different focus. I could not look at that big picture thing. I had to take care of my family, take care of my marriage, and turn my attention back to that as a primary thing. And that used up a lot of time.

So I'd say really a humility of realizing I don't have to do all those things, that God doesn't necessarily want those; He wants my faithfulness every day. And especially when I look at Beth: we get medical supplies delivered, and they come in some amazing things called boxes, and they have these really cool things in them called bubbles. When she gets them at the front door, she'll just play sometimes for hours popping bubbles and ripping up the cardboard into 200 or 300 pieces and coloring and building on them. And she's having the most fun, enjoying the world. And so I look at her, and I think about myself and it's like, okay, I probably try to do the same thing in God's eyes. I build these things and try to do all this stuff in my life—and it's really just cardboard that's going to get thrown away later today.

So when you have that perspective, you realize some of those things just don't matter. What matters is being faithful to family, to loving, to caring and doing that. So it really helped me to humble myself and my aspirations, and turn that focus back to the daily things, and allow God to be more in control. And I'm still working on that. I'm not there yet. I still get worried about things a lot every day and still have to work through those, but that's what I keep coming back to, and it keeps me focused on what I've learned from Beth.

Catherine: What about you, Kristin? How have you grown in your relationship with Christ, through being a mama to Beth?

Kristin: I think just a change in perspective on life at that moment. I had to make that decision to trust and not know how or understand, but believe that God is good. And that changed the way I was seeing our life. I was able to start seeing all the ways that God had been good and had blessed us, and Bethany wasn't supposed to survive. She's a miracle several times over.

Catherine: And how old is she now?

Kristin: 13.

Catherine: Okay.

Kristin: Yes, 13. She wasn't supposed to survive to birth. So just the gift of simple gratitude for each new day, for the blessings that God has given us, and definitely a deeper connection, deeper relationship with God than I could have ever found any other way, without coming to that point of desperation and having to trust and have faith.

Catherine: Yes, all those words we talk about in church—but when you actually have to live them, it's quite different. And it's always been interesting to me. You'd see people talk about going through cancer or whatever, something very challenging—before I started into this kind of work. And you'd hear people say that they wouldn't go back to life before cancer, and it's like, how could that be? But it's usually the people who have reached that deep well of relationship with Christ that are the ones saying that.

And hearing both of you talk about being two driven, type-A kind of people: I think it's in, is it Nehemiah? I think God says—or Zephaniah—don't despise the day of small things. It's like God sees all those little things that we're doing, whether it's things we do or the way we're trusting…. I think He's using you guys to change the world. So I wouldn't count that out that He's actually answering that desire. You guys are ministering in a pretty powerful way.

Todd: Well, that's one of the things, kind of like Kristin was just saying, it's looking back on the past in times that we did not see God working necessarily. But then looking in hindsight of how much He was and how much He is, and how He's been faithful with where He has placed us now. I kind of had to give up on ministry. We had to leave the church we were serving at and change careers multiple times, not knowing if we'd ever get back to being able to have a ministry together and to help people. And just through Covid and what led us there with Kristin's job and things like that, it came full circle: seeing God's faithfulness, that's been kind of neat. It's almost 10 years between those events happening, but God being faithful: that's just incredible and humbling to hear and to see.

Catherine: Yes, it's amazing how He will fulfill those desires that He plants in us. I mean, usually in a way that we're not going to be able to predict. So, wrapping up the conversation today, I'm sure we're going to have listeners who are people who may have just received a diagnosis for their child. So if you could sit down and talk with that mom or dad today, what are just one or two things you would recommend that they do to support their own needs, not just the needs of their child?

Kristin: One of the first things I would definitely say is find support…

Todd: Oh, that was mine!

Catherine: You can both use that one!

Kristin: That was one thing we didn't do, and that would've made a tremendous difference. Some kind of support group, if they're not able to get out of the house; there's online live support groups. We've got links on our website to those. That is critical to the health of their mental health and wellbeing, their marriage. That would, even if it's just one other parent who has maybe not the same diagnosis, their child doesn't have the same diagnosis, but one other parent, a support group, that would be my first encouragement.

Catherine: Just knowing you're not alone is huge.

Todd: I think the other thing is just knowing it's not all up to you. You feel this great burden of, ‘I have to take care of the situation, my child just got this diagnosis,’ or they think I have to take care of my wife, or I have to oversee everything. And I think you can step back from that and say, it's not all up to me. You can give yourself some freedom to know that you can't do it all, and that you don't have to. That there's other ways God's going to work, in ways that you can't see right now.

There's other supports and systems in place that can help, and funding and government support and church support that's there. And if you can get that burden off of you from the start, I think that would be a big help; it would've been to me for sure. Even down to the simple of—if it's not all up to me, I can take five minutes and go out on my deck and listen to the birds, and have some time for myself, or I can go for a run or I can do other things that are going to build me up. If I focus only on the problem, the situation and the sorrow and grief, then I'm not going to be able to function in the long term.

Catherine: And perhaps more than any other kinds of families out there, families who have kids with disabilities, really, the parents need to be functioning at their best as much as possible.

I want to give you guys an opportunity before we wrap up—it's been a fabulous conversation. I really appreciate your wisdom that you've shared with our audience. So go ahead and just mention whatever website, resources, links that you'd like, and we'll make sure all those end up in the show notes for the podcast.

Kristin: Yes, I'd love to recommend two books, actually. One is The Other Side of Special, and this is a pretty recent book. The three wonderful ladies who created Take Heart Special Moms podcast have written this book, and it is so empowering and inspiring. It's from a Christian perspective, and they really lay out their story and how they have gone through the darkness from doubt to faith and despair to joy. So that's the first book I'd recommend. The second one is Room at the Table: Encouraging Stories from Special Needs Families, Stephanie Pavlantos and Starr Ayers put this book together. It's an anthology of stories from different parents and family members who have children with disabilities, and it is very inspiring to see how other parents have gone through that journey as well.

Todd: And there's short little snippets, so you can pick it up and just…

Kristin: …like two pages long…

Todd: …in five minutes, read a story and get an encouragement through that.

Kristin: So those are two books we'd recommend. We would love for parents to come to our website. We have lots and lots and lots of free resources, disabilityparenting.com, and they can download all those for free and…

Todd: Everything like links to mental health resources, to financial resources to…

Kristin: …respite care resources…

Todd: …ways of organizing your life better so that you can kind of fit it all in, because we need help with that.

Catherine: Yes, that's huge.

Kristin: …different worksheets and coping skills, worksheets on marriage skills, worksheets…

Todd: …encouraging stories and pictures and blog posts, and lots of good stuff there to encourage you. We know how hard it is to sometimes day to day, to keep that joy, keep that faith. Just ways to encourage you personally and in your marriage. So disabilityparenting.com. And then we do have a book coming out, but it won't be out for a few months, but we'll be having little snippets and things within blog posts to kind of tease some of that. That's going to come out in the book, which will be on the website periodically.

Catherine: And we're going to plan to talk to you guys when the book comes out, too. So listeners, if you're not already subscribing, definitely hit subscribe so that you can catch this conversation that's going to continue with Kristin and Todd in the spring when their book comes out. And I assume you guys are on all the major social media. People can follow you there. Disabilityparenting.com.

Kristin: Yes, Instagram is just @disabilityparenting. I do have a mom's Facebook support group, a private group for just moms. We focus on mental health and faith and sometimes marriage, and that is Disability Moms Living Strong on Facebook. There's a link to it on the website, and those are the two major platforms.

Catherine: Well, this has just been fantastic. So again, we'll have all of those links in the show notes, so definitely check those out and connect with Kristin and Todd, if there's something that they can help with, answer questions that you have, or if you just want to get plugged into some of their online communities, this is a great way to support yourself and help support others who are parents of children with disabilities. Because this life is challenging and it's not meant to be lived alone. It's a whole lot better when you find this community.

Thank you both again for your time, for talking with me today and sharing with our audience. So for the Key ministry team, I'm Catherine Boyle. Thanks so much for listening to Key Ministry, the podcast!