Honey, You’re Home All the Time | Cynthia Ruchti

In this episode:

Does it feel as if your spouse or your kids are home all the time? All. The. Time! Learn how to modify and remodel your attitude to make those tight spaces work in this conversation with author Cynthia Ruchti.

About Cynthia Ruchti:

Cynthia Ruchti is the author of 35+ books (fiction and nonfiction) written under the tagline, "I can't unravel. I'm hemmed in Hope." She and her grade school sweetheart husband live in the heart of Wisconsin, not far from their three kids and six (to date) grandkids.

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Discussion Highlights from Honey, You're Home All the Time

  • This week I talked with author Cynthia Ruchti, about how living in a house for 40 years and all of the changes that come with that — the modifications, dealing with the wonky floors and too tight corners and not enough space and no room to entertain — and how that led to a life lesson that she's applied to her marriage and two other relationships.
  • We talked about how she remodeled her attitude and how when that changed, it changed her perspective about her house.
  • Then when she remodeled her attitude about her marriage, it changed that too.
  • If you’re in a season where it feels as if your spouse, kids, or someone else is always there, this is for you. Home. All. The. Time. The HATT club.

Quotes to Remember from Cynthia Ruchti

  • When two spouses are in the same space for a long stretch of time, or a short stretch of time, but it seems like it's we don't have the elbow room that we might have had, or our brains don't have the elbow room it might have had before. That can be a real time when we have to sit down and think about, are we going to rearrange furniture? Are we going to rearrange our attitudes?
  • We plan for premarital counseling. We might get pre-retirement counseling for finances. But nobody shows us or talks about or tells us what do we need to think about if we're home all the time?
  • If I looked at it just from my perspective, it was, "Great. He's home all the time, I'll never be able to think another thought all the way through to the end," I would have completely missed what is my husband's emotional need in this moment.
  • How can we turn this thing that feels like it's not a good thing, and repurpose it into something that's going to wind up being healthy for us rather than a drain on our relationship?
  • I laid down my resentment. And when I was willing to do that, then I had a creative idea of how I could turn it into something that became a good memory.
  • Whatever the kids are doing, we're aware of whatever the husband is doing, we're aware of, if he is having a problem with getting the tractor started, we're aware of it, and we care. That's a good thing. Caring is a good thing, but it completely drains us and keeps us so fragmented.
  • Almost everything we go through is seasonal in our lives…. But if our gratitude list grows, then that's how we can make it through.
  • If we coast, if we think we can stop paddling the canoe and still reach a good destination, we're fooling ourselves that we will never get over learning, learning new tips, figuring out new methods.
  • We can't think to ourselves, "We've been married a while...we're doing fine. We'll just coast along here." It's always going to take that sense of the lifelong learning experience for whatever we're facing in life.

Resources

Spouse in the House: Rearranging Our Attitudes to Make Room for Each Other

Other books by Cynthia Ruchti

Episode Sponsor

Life, Repurposed: Stories of Grace, Hope, and Restored Faith

Transcript

Michelle Rayburn 0:00
This week I talked with author Cynthia Ruchti, about how living in a house for 40 years and all of the changes that come with that — the modifications, dealing with the wonky floors and too tight corners and not enough space and no room to entertain — and how that led to a life lesson that she's applied to her marriage and two other relationships. We talked about how she remodeled her attitude and how when that changed, it changed her perspective about her house. Then when she remodeled her attitude about her marriage, it changed that too. If you have been somebody who's dealt with extra family members around, you're working from home, or maybe you can't figure out how you and your spouse are gonna get along in the same house on those days off or looking ahead to retirement, you're gonna love this episode. This is about figuring out how to work with our own flaws and work with the lots of people around us so that we can live a more peaceful life.

Michelle Rayburn 1:07
You're listening to Life Repurposed, where you'll find practical biblical wisdom for everyday living, creative inspiration, and helpful resources. Grow your faith, improve your relationships, discover your purpose, and reach your goals with topics to encourage you to find hope amid the trashy stuff of life. Thanks for joining me today. I'm your host, Michelle Rayburn.

Michelle Rayburn 1:32
I'm so glad you joined me for this episode of Life Repurposed today, I have a guest! Her name is Cynthia Ruchti, and she's the author of more than 35 books, both fiction and nonfiction. They are written under the tagline "I can't unravel. I'm hemmed in hope." She and her gradeschool sweetheart husband live in the heart of Wisconsin, not far from their three kids and six grandkids. Here's my interview with Cynthia Ruchti. Cynthia, thank you so much for sitting down to visit with me today.

Cynthia Ruchti 2:04
It's it's a joy on every level. So glad to have a chance to have a conversation with you.

Michelle Rayburn 2:10
So I have to apologize ahead of time for listeners if I call you Cynthia sometimes in Cindy at other times, because I've known Cynthia since I was 15. And you were a young mom when we first met. And so we have nicknames that go back a long way. Cynthia's husband was one of my husband's mentors, and now they're friends. They've gone on some wilderness fishing trips together. We've never gotten together on one of those have we Cindy.

Cynthia Ruchti 2:39
Noooo. And that would be purposeful.

Michelle Rayburn 2:42
Yes, it's just fine with me that we haven't done that. So this is kind of like a little family reunion. I want to ask you a question about something in your house. I don't know what it is yet. We're gonna find out. I just know that I've been in your house, and you repurpose all sorts of cool things. So I want to know what your favorite item is that you've repurposed.

Cynthia Ruchti 3:04
That really was a recent thing of the favorite....One of the favorite things we repurposed was a tree that had fallen in our yard 24 years ago, and it was a massive, beautiful maple tree. It was the kids' favorite tree. In the fall, it had just a downpour of beautiful yellow leaves and coated the whole lawn. It was truly — it was the place, too, that we decided if there was ever a fire in the house, that's where we gather. It was that special. It was our tree.

Cynthia Ruchti 3:39
It fell in a storm and it was heartbreaking because it was the shade element. It was so important to us. My husband, being the scavenger that he is, saved all the wood and the board—had the made into boards—on that tree and started in the machine shed, which has several other things that he's started over the years. We have a farmhouse that had a chimney right in the center of the house. So every room it went through, it was an obstacle. For dozens of years, it was a pinch point in our house because at the base of the stairs, it only allowed us 18 inches to get from the dining room into the kitchen, or to the upstairs or to the rest of the house or to my office. And that flow was so tight.

Cynthia Ruchti 4:26
So eventually—there's another story related to that—but eventually, we were able to take that chimney down when we put a new furnace in that didn't need chimney anymore. But that then left big gaping holes where the walls and the chimney had been in our maple floor. But we had maple boards out in the machine shed that then we used to make the replacement boards for that maple flooring in the house. And it really turns something that had been initially a disaster, and one that our mind went to once in a while over those 24 years, it became part of this beautiful floor that we walk on every day now. And a sign too of being able to open up that pinch point and make it and a beautiful open space where now we can sit everybody at the table in the dining room where we couldn't before.

Michelle Rayburn 5:24
What a beautiful reminder. And also for those who love to save things, you never know. You might need those boards out in the machine shed.

Cynthia Ruchti 5:33
It's true. So true.

Michelle Rayburn 5:35
Before we started recording, we talked a little bit about projects on my 100-plus-year-old house and my husband being home. We've been repurposing old boards to try to frame in some windows. Have you found that a lot of people think that writers live in fancy brand new homes with modern features?

Cynthia Ruchti 5:55
Somebody does that?

Michelle Rayburn 5:57
Yeah. We live in these old houses, some of us. So you've been in your house for 40 plus years?

Cynthia Ruchti 6:05
Yes, we I love to move. My husband does not. So we've been here for 40 plus years.

Michelle Rayburn 6:12
I've lived in five homes in the time I've known you. So, tell me what it's like to live somewhere for that long.

Cynthia Ruchti 6:17
It's very interesting, because the repairs and the remodeling that you do get old before you move. So then you have to do it again. Or you have to open up something or we look at pictures of what the house was originally and where it is now. And it's had three or four iterations since then. But it's all been with that design that I know is dear to your heart. That design idea of taking something that maybe was had lost its usefulness in its original state, and repurposing it so that it could become something beautiful and intentional. Sometimes it's not necessarily beautiful, but it's intentionally useful. And I know in our house, we use old trunks. And we have had in the past more antiques, even the French doors that were between my office and dining room at one time, those were secondhand. The other secondhand thing is our fireplace, we bought our fireplace at a garage sale. So all those kinds of things come together. But the good news about it is that when our grandkids come over, they often come in—and the grandkids are getting a little older now)—they often comment that is a place of peace, and they feel at home.

Michelle Rayburn 7:33
Yeah, I love that. I live in an old church that has now become a residence. And I found out that some of the beams that were used to construct the church were donated from, I think, a sawmill or something that was torn down. And in the township history, I found out that they had repurposed these old beams into the church. So it's more than 115 years old. Those beams were old. And you know, you've done this, and I've done this, we use those things as metaphors. So you have beautifully taken your home and turned it into a metaphor in your writing. And I want you to tell me a little bit about that and how your home inspired you in turning that into a message.

Cynthia Ruchti 8:17
As I mentioned that pinch point, that wasn't the only pinch point. Now, there have been several. We've had things like realizing that as the seasons of our life change, we have different needs. There might be something that wasn't a big deal to us when we were in our 20s. But it might be a big bigger deal to us now. So we've made some adjustments that way too. But for the current project that we've been working on, that has just come out the spouse in the house, rearranging our attitudes to make room for one another. There was an awful lot of that was drawn from the idea of what happens when a house that seems like it ought to be big enough, feels very small. For a lot of people they can relate to that if they've been in an apartment, now all of a sudden they're running to people or running a business out of their apartment.

Cynthia Ruchti 9:13
Or it might be that they are I talked to someone earlier today to who they're building a house and their family. And with two kids and two dogs are living in an RV, borrowed RV while the home is being built. So their walls have seemed to be shrinking in to there are a lot of reasons these days when that kind of a thing can happen. But for one of the things that God is teaching me something every day, in everyday things that happen to us, or everyday items even. But during this time when, if a husband is home more often, your spouse is home more often than normal. You're both working from home, or like you and I, we have home-based businesses, home-based occupations. And our husbands are in and out for a long time, and then out for a while and their work outside then kind of dribbles into the inside, or their project becomes our project.

Cynthia Ruchti 10:17
In my house, too, I have an office with a big desk. That's where I usually am most of the day, and I put a lovely chair beside it. There's usually stuff on the chair, and my husband came in one day and said, "Is this stuff on the chair so I won't sit here and talk to you? Or is that just random?" I said, I had to think about it for a minute, I guess. "It is just random."

Cynthia Ruchti 10:45
Although there are those times when sometimes he'll sit in the chair and then just wait like a puppy would. Am I gonna pay attention to him? Am I going to ask him, "Did you need something darling?" But so lots of different metaphors that way, but especially that idea of when two spouses are in the same space for a long stretch of time, or a short stretch of time, but it seems like it's we don't have the elbow room that we might have had, or our brains don't have the elbow room it might have had before. That can be a real time when we have to sit down and think about, are we going to rearrange furniture? Are we going to rearrange our attitudes?

Michelle Rayburn 11:26
I've had those moments where I have to rearrange my attitude. Actually, it happens often because my husband works a lot of weekends in his ministry role. So he'll have two days off during the week when I'm in my home office trying to work. So it isn't unusual. Like yesterday, he knocked on my french door, his face at the glass. And then he said, "Can I get your opinion?" And I said, "Sure your hat looks great."

Michelle Rayburn 11:49
"No, I need you to come out here and give your opinion about something I'm doing on these windows I'm working on." So as we rearrange those attitudes, we've had so many opportunities in our world, not just you and me, Cynthia, but our listeners who have had to rearrange something. And then the attitude adjustment comes with having to adjust like that. So on vacation recently, I was reading your book that you wrote with your friend, Becky Melby—Spouse in the House. And ironically, it was kind of a rainy day. And Phil and I decided we're going to stay in at the condo and just read. So I read the book, mostly in that afternoon, with a blanket by the fireplace, and I looked over at my husband on the other chair, and he was reading a motorcycle manual. These are the differences. So one of the expressions you use in the book is "he's home all the time." So HHATT. Do you say that hat?

Cynthia Ruchti 12:49
Yes HHATT (hat) club. A hat club typically means women who dress in purple and have red hats or something but or it could be some other definition also. But for us, we— Oftentimes if I was speaking at a women's event, if I happened to mention that we're in a season right now where my husband is home all the time, then there would be a reaction from the audience. There would be women nodding their heads going, because they would understand some of them it was because they were retired. And for others it was because of that same thing. Maybe it was a deployed spouse, who is gone for long, long stretches, and then he's home in the house and trying to step back into a role that had to be vacated for a while. And the wife had to take over certain duties. And now do I hand those responsibilities back? Or does he even want to take them over? How do we manage this?

Cynthia Ruchti 13:51
And and of course, in the last several years, last couple of years, we've had everybody has been in a situation where they've found themselves where that that elbow room thing again, or that he's home all the time, or we changed it now to WE'RE home all the time. WHATT, which means, what now? We're home all the time. For some situations, where things like one thing that we went through too, which was virtual schooling, came to live in our house for a couple of teenage grandsons. So all of a sudden this quiet place wasn't, and this calm place had its issues inside the house. So I think a lot of us can relate where we might have only once thought that a spouse in the house home all the time—we're home all the time, they're home, he's home all the time—might have only been related to that idea of way, way, way when we're older, and we're in retirement. We plan for premarital counseling We might get pre retirement counseling for finances. But nobody shows us or talks about or tells us. What do we need to think about if we're home all the time. Most of us in the last couple of years were thrust into it almost overnight. And figuring out how do we do this dance without stepping on each other's toes, is part of a lesson that we, Becky and I, were having to learn. But I think a lot of people have been faced with it.

Michelle Rayburn 15:35
My husband, Phil, and I used to just talk about it, like, let's just work forever, because I don't think we can be home at the same time, all the time. And that's almost like slapping up paneling, or just trying to paint over something instead of really fixing it. So you talk in your book about solutions, really? And if I remember, right, it doesn't begin with fixing your spouse.

Cynthia Ruchti 16:00
That would be true. That would be a no go. Because it's typically it's going to start within us. Interestingly, almost all problem-solving things do. It starts far more with rearranging those attitudes. We're making room for one another. But part of it is understanding who our spouse is, what do they need. We're really quick to want to communicate what we need. But if we start from the other end and try to figure out, all right, he's home all the time. Is that a good thing in his mind, or is that something that's uncomfortable for him? There were a couple of times where my husband was home all the time, and it wasn't at his choice. One time, when back in, when he was way too young, he was forced into early retirement because of a company takeover. And because of that, that meant that way too young, he had all the time in the world to hunt and fish and golf and whatever he wanted to do. But we soon realized not only could we not live on that little bit of a pension that was coming in, but also those hobby activities grew, not wearysome for I would never say that, because fishing will never grow wearysome for my guy, but he but we all have within us this desire to be making a difference to be having positive input. And the excess of all that time then became a handicap and a stumbling block, instead.

Cynthia Ruchti 17:42
There was another time later on when he had gone back to work, and had two part-time jobs that he was juggling. And one of them was eliminated, just out of the clear blue sky. He was job sharing with someone and they just eliminated the position because technology took over for that job. So there again, he was home all the time. But it wasn't necessarily without emotional trauma related to it too. If I looked at it, just from my perspective, it was, "Great. He's home all the time, I'll never be able to think another thought all the way through to the end," I would have completely missed what is my husband's emotional need in this moment. How can we turn this thing that feels like it's not a good thing, and repurpose it into something that's going to wind up being healthy for us rather than a drain on our relationship?

Michelle Rayburn 18:37
That's such a helpful perspective for us to have because then we think, you know, like I think of just like yesterday, my husband coming to the door and asking me for help. If I switch my perspective, I could see that as a compliment. Because he honors my opinion. And he's saying we're a team. And I'd like your input on this vers love that it helps me to think about my own perspective as well.

Cynthia Ruchti 19:02
When you think about the idea of when we get this drive to see oh, that's a tattered basket, what can I turn that into? Or oh, I love that wire bicycle basket. I'd have to paint it up. But I think I can make the windowbox out of that. When we get that drive and let that creativity go. We see how that changes things in the decor of our house. What happens if we do that when we're looking at these these kinds of situations? There was one not not all that long ago. So this is— I'm not coming as a marriage expert. I'm coming as somebody experienced in marriage. But sometime earlier in the summer, I was working on cleaning up the—I think spring—I was working on cleaning up the garden, and he had finished his project came out on the deck with his drink and sat and watched me work. So I'm hoeing and sweating, which I don't like to do and putting big piles of garbage into here and things that need to be hauled away that that he was either oblivious to or didn't really care that he'd be the best person to haul that way. He really would. But my, the selfish part of me was rising up with this, "Why aren't you asking if you can help?" Or "why aren't you even just picking up one of these tools and getting involved" forgetting, number one, that he had, he was finishing and working on a really tough project. And he needed a minute to just sit. And then, right after that, he stood up and left, and I was finishing my job. And he stood up and left to go and try to get the lawnmower engine to run. Again, even though he tried everything, and it was so frustrating to him. And in my heart, I had a choice to make. I could either repurpose that moment and do something positive and make something beautiful out of it, or let it grow a lot rustier and uglier than it ever was in the first place.

Cynthia Ruchti 21:07
So I took him some cold water, walked out there and said, "Is there any way I can help you?" Way out of my natural, completely beyond my natural reaction. But what came from it was something so beautiful and turned out that my brain even could get engaged with it and help find the problem and solve the problem. So the en that became then a good memory.

Michelle Rayburn 21:47
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Cynthia Ruchti 23:09
My husband loves baseball, and commandeers the family room. I use the word family loosely because there's this huge television and a recliner. There are other places to sit, but we all will be watching sports, if that's what's happening at the time. This year, I knew that if I was going to be with him in the evenings, I was going to be watching baseball. A lot. I don't know if you noticed that there are a lot of baseball games still owe a lot. A lot of games.

Michelle Rayburn 23:41
They play a lot more times every week than football players.

Cynthia Ruchti 23:44
I think that is wrong, because they're wearing themselves out. But I started to do what I was interested in with baseball, which was the people the stories of the people what their families were going through, their records and statistics, where where they were emotionally when they stood behind the plate, all those things that interested me. And I got involved one night. He had to go to bed early like he often does because our our clocks are different as well. Or body clocks are different as well. And instead of turning and switching to watching, learning about tiny houses or or redecorating or something, I let the game run and let it play out. So I watched to the end of the game. When he got up in the morning. I said, "Honey, you will not believe this great play that the shortstop made. It was so magnificent. We I can find it for you online so that you can revisit that. It's so cool, and they won the game." And he stood beside me as I was pulling that up on the computer. He stood beside me and he said "You have made me so happy."

Michelle Rayburn 24:57
Ohhh. (chuckle)

Cynthia Ruchti 24:59
Because I enjoyed what he enjoyed. And I invested in it until I did enjoy it. So it's happening all the time in our lives. We that we have those opportunities, whether we take the opportunities or not, is the question. Yeah.

Michelle Rayburn 25:21
So I want to switch gears a little bit, because as I read your book, also, something else came to mind that really ties into what I think some of our listeners are going through. And that is this idea of they're home all the time, when the kids are home all the time. So whether that was homeschooling, or pandemic in the last couple of years, or whether it's summer break, you had a time when you had the kids home all the time, you and I both left medical careers to stay home with our kids. What happened during that phase when the kids were home all the time? Because I know you never went back to that medical career.

Cynthia Ruchti 25:59
Right? I did have a ministry job that I did from home. But that was the challenge because even recording for the radio broadcast or writing when I needed all my brain power to think of those those broadcasts and the programs that we were creating. So children and we never did have a lot of indoor pets. So we didn't have to worry about that part. But children of all stages, too, because we had teenagers and a toddler at the same time. As well as the home all the time situation. I think when we were going through that part, there were times when I had to, again, pull up the creativity that really is inside of all of us. But pull up that creativity to try to find figure out how was I going to navigate moments where I could be alone with the Lord, moments where I could have friend friendships with girlfriends, and it might have been even my radio partner at the time where we would go and do our working at a restaurant intentionally.

Cynthia Ruchti 27:14
Even if we had a toddler in the highchair next to us. To find those, to find a spot. We just needed a spot or a time or a moment. Sometimes some of us have to get real creative in our 20s in our 30s or 40s. With where that spot or that moment might be the equivalent of putting a blanket over our head when we're sitting here in the corner, or a room in the basement or going for a walk or, or doing coffee all by yourself or having lunch all by yourself. So that there would be a an opportunity to do that thing where the brain quiets down, and the brain isn't so fragmented. Because oftentimes when we're home all the time, it's not because we're nosy, It's because we care that everybody's activity is ours. Whatever the kids are doing, we're aware of whatever the husband is doing, we're aware of, if he is having a problem with getting the tractor started, we're aware of it, and we care. That's a good thing. Caring is a good thing, but it completely drains us and keeps us so fragmented.

Cynthia Ruchti 28:26
So sometimes it's the creativity that we apply to other things, the choice of pillows for the couch, or something we're creating with our hands, but applying that kind of creativity to where am I going to inventively find a spot where I can be by myself or find a moment of that, the quiet that I crave. When I was younger, I didn't realize how much I craved quiet. And then as I've been aging, I realized that quiet is one of my core values. So that I think there's a lot to be said for that idea of we we love the idea of looking around at something that maybe looks like it's lost its usefulness, and figuring out how else we can use it. If we think, too, about how can we find that usefulness for something that we didn't even know that could be our quiet space or our quiet moment? It might be a commute.

Michelle Rayburn 29:32
Yeah. Or a drive in the car to nowhere

Cynthia Ruchti 29:35
To nowhere.

Michelle Rayburn 29:36
Yeah. What do you think back to your 35-year-old self? That would have been you had all your kids at home? What would you say to yourself— If you could go back and talk to yourself now what would you say to encourage yourself?

Cynthia Ruchti 29:50
That's a great question. Probably others did say to me, this is a season and it will be gone and I probably thought, yeah, yeah, that's real comforting.

Michelle Rayburn 30:03
Because, I'm about to lose my mind.

Cynthia Ruchti 30:05
I'm about to lose my mind, I'm in the middle of it. But the truth is that almost everything we go through is seasonal in our lives. And we either milk the good out of that season. Like, I'm not a fan of winter, but I do know that I can milk the good out of winter, and survive far better than if I find reason to complain about what I'm going through. It's real easy, it's real natural for us to find reason to complain that, you know, if our to-do list is a to-gripe list, or our whine list, that's, that's not going to get us anywhere. But if our gratitude list grows, then that's how we can make it through. I wish that I had believed at the time that it was going to pass much faster than I thought it would. I know, when our third child came along, there was a big gap between child two and child three. And after I celebrated the fact that there was this baby on the way, my next thought was, whoa, 18 more years before a child moves up 18 years, and counting up, how old was I going to be then? And then if I'd known at the time that the child wasn't gonna leave the house until 22 or 23. That could have been a little discouraging. But would tell myself, "Believe the wisdom people in your life who were encouraging you to not miss all the little wonderful, that are in this season, because they will be gone, they will be gone someday soon. And then you get to go recycle it and go back through with grandchildren."

Michelle Rayburn 32:01
Yes.

Cynthia Ruchti 32:02
Eventually.

Michelle Rayburn 32:04
You know, it's good advice for a spouse to you know— My father-in-law lost my mother-in-law when he was still in his 60s. And, you know, when we're looking ahead, these moments of little conflict with our spouse or with our kids, you know, we appreciate them more when they're not with us anymore. So it is a reminder to live every day to the fullest. And you were one of the people that inspired me along the way because I was a few steps behind. So you know, I watched you go through Lyme disease, which we can't even go into all of that on one show here. But to be a mom working from home, and experiencing Lyme disease back in the days when they weren't good at diagnosing it. So you seemed to turn a lot of your experiences into writing material along the way.

Cynthia Ruchti 32:56
Everything. I've told my kids, once I'm gone, don't look for a journal. I haven't kept any journals. Just read the books, just read the books or, or the past radio broadcast transcripts, or the devotions that I write, because that's usually a barometer of where God is working on me, is the things that come out of my characters or come out in the books.

Michelle Rayburn 33:20
And what a great way then to influence other people, and not to keep it to ourselves. Because when we write about something, we're forced to find the application. We can't, you can't stay in the complaining. No one's going to read a book that's a full on rant.

Cynthia Ruchti 33:37
So true. Unlike social media, which turns out, nobody reads the full on rants on social media.

Michelle Rayburn 33:46
I love to leave my guests with a resource. And I know you have many, many books, I'm going to link to that in the show notes. Because you write fiction, nonfiction, you have really nonfiction topics for every age along the way. But I want to leave the resource with the listeners—Spouse in the House: Rearranging Our Attitudes to Make Room for Each Other. Where can people find that book? And just tell me a little bit more about it. I know, we've been talking about it as we went along here.

Cynthia Ruchti 34:16
It really— It was a fun project to do with Becky Melby, my coauthor. We've been author friends and friends for a long time too. And she was one of those people like you who would always encourage my hand in God to turn back to where I was going to find real wisdom to apply to whatever I was facing. Wouldn't let me wallow very long in anything that was going on. But would would come alongside and be an encourager and a cheerleader through life, which was great. So we took the chapters and Becky would write something, and then I would write something. Sometimes they were very different perspectives on the very same topic. And we went back and forth in the whole book that way so people can find the book Spouse in the House: Rearranging Our Attitudes to Make Room for Each Other, wherever books are sold, but if they want to just go to the my website or Becky's website, they'll be able to get all links, all kinds of links to that and places to purchase if they want to do that. My website is cynthiaruchti.com Ruchti is an impossible last name to spell or pronounce. But it's RUCHTI. However, it's much easier if they just type in hemmedinhope.com. My tagline is "I can't unravel. I'm hemmed in hope." That hemmedinhope.com will get them to the very same website. But it's a little easier way to get there.

Michelle Rayburn 35:48
All right, and I'll link to that in the show notes as well so that people can find that directly from the app where you're listening to this episode. Cynthia, what would you like to leave with our listeners, as we wrap up today?

Cynthia Ruchti 36:00
I think one of the things that has had a real strong impact on me not just as we worked on that book, but as I considered the concepts all together, is the idea that if we coast, if we think we can stop paddling the canoe and still reach a good destination, we're fooling ourselves that we will never get over learning, learning new tips, figuring out new methods. Anybody who's a crafter realizes that you don't become an expert crafter and stop reading craft blogs, or magazines or watching YouTube videos. The same thing is true with us. We can't think to ourselves, "We've been married a while...I get...Yeah, we're doing fine. We'll just coast along here." It's always going to take that sense of the lifelong learning experience for whatever we're facing in life. That might be a chronic illness or it might be family needs or a special needs child or anything that we're facing that is a challenge to us. It's going to take a lifelong learning process. If we let that happen, we're going to wind up with a very satisfying ending.

Michelle Rayburn 37:13
Thank you so much for sharing your heart today with my listeners.

Cynthia Ruchti 37:17
Thank you, Michelle. You're a blessing.

Michelle Rayburn 37:21
You've been listening to Life Repurposed with Michelle Rayburn. Check out tips, resources, and inspiration at Michellerayburn.com to get the show notes for this episode. Each week, I share links to everything mentioned in the episode, graphics you can share, and guest quotes. I also invite you to join the Life Repurposed Facebook community for weekly conversation with others on the journey of discovering the repurposed life.

(Please note: many books posted here on my blog are purely because I want to share them. Sometimes I receive free copies for review, and other times I purchase the books. Some I get from the library. Either way, any endorsement I offer here on the blog is simply because I want to talk about the book.)

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