FamilyLife Today®

Tanya Kravick: All of the ministry that we have been involved in to this point, our kids were actively part of it. If we were leading a retreat, they were the ones setting the tables, putting out the manuals, they were sometimes our worship team, they were the ones who were doing the cleanup.

They shared all of the highlights afterwards with us and we celebrated what God did. When we traveled and were speaking, our children came with us. They were always integral in everything that we did.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: We’re still out, Dave is still recovering. Pray for me.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, pray for Ann. It’s harder on her than it is on me, actually. It’s hard on me too, these knees are recovering. Anyway, it’s not about us, it’s about Cheryl Shumake. She's in there today and she’s got Trevor and Tanya Kravick back on talking about marriage on mission and I’m telling you what, you’re going to love this conversation.

Cheryl Shumake: I think it's important to understand that it can be very consuming to be missional. Almost that it takes up the biggest part of your life, especially if you're doing it together. Jonathan and I are co-laborers in that he supports me, but typically I'm the person out front.

We will counsel couples together when we're doing pre-marital coaching or something like that. He will come along with me when I'm traveling or something like that. But we are not constantly in the same vein is what I'm saying. So I think it’s easier for us to make room for our marriage. But when you are constantly in a missional mindset together, it might be a little bit difficult for that. So how do you balance marriage and mission?

Trevor Kravick: It’s a challenge. We didn’t always get it right. We’re still learning. I think the best mindset to be in around balancing these things is, is my relationship with the Lord solid? Am I spending time with him? Am I keeping my wife as my priority?

We have four children at home, but those children aren’t going to be in our home forever. So am I still pursuing my spouse? Do I feel like other things are coming into conflict in our marriage relationship that shouldn’t be? Or competition?

Tanya Kravick: Yes, competition. How we do it is we’re really high communicators. Not angry communicators, but we communicate a lot of words. I think just keeping the communication very high and being approachable in those moments has really helped us to navigate like, okay, I feel like you’re neglecting me in this time.

Just keeping that open, and then we pursue our family relationships as well because the very best investment we can make in the future is in our four walls. So that comes first. I think we forget that the first mission field we are given is around our dining room table. We have to invest there first. If we’re not being faithful in our own four walls first, we're failing.

Part of our role now on our team, I’m sure we’ll get to that, but we encourage that. We want to learn how to live out the gospel in our four walls with transferable concepts to help those outside our four walls to do the same.

Tanya Kravick: I was going to add to something that you said. You asked how that looks in our marriage. When we travel, which we travel fairly often for work, that’s a time for us to connect on more of a heart level, sometimes about work, sometimes about family. One day we were driving and I said to Trevor, "So what do you think I bring to our marriage?"

Trevor Kravick: And I said, "Questions."

Tanya Kravick: I was like, "Okay, so I bring questions." I said, "Well, what do you bring to our marriage?"

Trevor Kravick: Answers.

Tanya Kravick: I think those kinds of conversations are so healthy to dialogue through with your spouse regularly. Asking those questions, having a posture of curiosity, I love that statement. I love having that posture. I’m still learning so much about my husband after 25 years and I want to keep learning him. We change.

Ann Wilson: We do. We are not the same people 10 years from now that we are today. You have to meet your spouse where they are in that moment.

Tanya Kravick: Without asking, how do we know? So what are some practical things that we can do to not let our marriage get consumed in the importance of the mission?

Trevor Kravick: I don’t want to set up the facts that we’ve been good at this our whole entire time serving in ministry. We’re definitely learning and we’re all practicing. We’ve been learning as we go and we need the reminders. Honestly, sometimes the best way to have to be responsible to teach something is to spend time involved in it, or to learn it yourself you’ve got to teach it.

We have this saying, this is something that the Lord impressed upon my heart when I first started speaking: you will never serve what you haven’t eaten. We have to embody what we are talking about. That means that we have to walk down some very difficult roads and experience God’s grace and mercy and wisdom in those spaces so then we can then deliver it to someone else who needs it.

But to focus on some of the highlights or successes we’ve seen practically in that space, as we spend time in these groups, we’re participating in the group in a small group as well. So the content that we’re getting, but also just what we’re witnessing in other couples and we’re like, oh, that looked nice. Oh, I wish that was part of our situation. I think one of the very practical things that we’ve done for years has been a care list.

Tanya Kravick: It was from the very first marriage study that we were ever participants in.

Trevor Kravick: The challenge is I personally write on a card five ways that Tanya could do practically every day that would show me that she cares for me. Then the same thing, she would write five things practically that I could do that would show I care for her.

Tanya Kravick: When we say practically, I’m not saying, "Would you please buy me a dozen lilies?" I’m saying, "Would you be willing to do the dishes?" One of Trevor’s that he had, so he worked from home remotely for a long time, year after year he would have, "Bring me a cup of coffee during the day." It takes about 30 seconds to go fill up a cup of coffee and bring it in his office.

The goal with the care list was I’m creating what I know will speak love to me. So anything he chooses at any time is going to be a win. He doesn’t have to guess or hope that maybe it will be. I’ve said these will be wins. It’s always a win, and the goal after exchanging those is that you pick one every day.

Maybe it’s 10 things, whatever’s reasonable for each couple. But that has been key in our marriage for a really long time to be able to look back at that and consider what is something really simple I could do that I know will be a win for our marriage. That’s going to show honor to my spouse and really demonstrate love to him.

Cheryl Shumake: What a gift you’ve given to each other. You take the guesswork out. You say, "Here it is, this is what I would like to see," especially when you see me struggling or maybe I’m having a long day. You come and you do this thing and I’m like, "Oh you’re thinking of me, you love me, you see me, you know me, and you’re prioritizing me."

What a way to just invest in your marriage in the middle of all of this other big stuff that you’re doing. We really have a mandate from God in our home to be builders of our home as women and to be lovers of our wives as husbands. That is as much a priority to God as Matthew 28:19 is.

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Cheryl Shumake: Talk to me about some of the challenges that you’ve had as a couple on mission. If Jonathan and I were saying, "Listen, we believe God is calling us to sell everything, go move into a gang-infested area and be light and salt in this area," what might we expect?

Trevor Kravick: One of the challenges was provision. Tanya mentioned that I worked from home. I was in the IT world, and I had grown up thinking that my job as a husband is to provide for the needs of our household. I do that by doing my job and bringing in a source of income. In 2015 we were at a time of transition, a season of not really restlessness, but just knowing God was doing something.

We decided to put in our application for staff and they called us to a ministry preview at headquarters. Headquarters at that time was in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Cheryl Shumake: This is staff for FamilyLife, right? For those that might not know.

Trevor Kravick: Staff for FamilyLife. We showed up and it was a weekend event. We actually brought our kids in tow because we wanted our kids to learn that we served together. This is a family thing that we’re doing.

Tanya Kravick: We didn’t really share that yet, but all of the ministry that we had been involved in to this point, our kids were actively part of it. If we were leading a retreat, they were the ones setting the tables, putting out the manuals, they were sometimes our worship team, they were the ones who were doing the cleanup. They shared all of the highlights afterwards with us and we celebrated what God did. When we traveled and were speaking, our children came with us. They were always integral in everything that we did.

Cheryl Shumake: Let's put a pin in that because I definitely want to come back to that after you share the challenges. I think it’s so important for parents to hear that you don’t have to do this isolated from your children. This is not an either/or; this can be a this and.

Trevor Kravick: Yes, and as you shared about Jonathan, you guys are different people. God has created you uniquely and has a purpose for you that is different. We found those differences to be true with us as well. As we took the journey to consider staff, we had no idea first of all that missional staff raise support to serve in the ministry of Cru.

Tanya Kravick: We found that out the first night and we were like, "We're out. Time for us to leave. This is not what we’re called to do. I’m working the job, we’re providing, we got this." But FamilyLife said, "Would you just hear us out? Would you stay and would you just participate in the weekend? We want you to experience it. You came all this way."

Trevor Kravick: So we did. By day two and a half I was like, "I think I could trust God with this."

Tanya Kravick: This is our heart. We knew we aligned with the mission.

Trevor Kravick: That’s what I was telling myself. I could say yes to this, but Tanya wasn’t there yet. They’re persistent but they give you time to think. They gave us about seven days after they gave us a yes to go home and consider this. Do you think this is what God might have for you? That was the question. I had a moment out on the porch where I was like, "Lord, did you just move us all the way across the state? We got these four kids. Now we’re going to have to say yes to raising support, which I don’t want to do, and then we’re going to move all the way to Little Rock, Arkansas. I don’t want to live in Little Rock, Arkansas." I was just really wrestling with the Lord.

He brought to mind the story of Abraham and how he laid down his son. Abraham didn’t know what the end result was going to be, but he knew what God was asking him to do. God was asking him to lay down this very hard thing and trust him with the outcome. I felt like, oh, I could do that. That I could do. I don’t know that I could raise support. I don’t know that I want to move to Little Rock. I don’t know all these other details. But would I trust you? Yes, that I can do.

Tanya Kravick: So we went back and we said yes to FamilyLife and we thought, okay God, we said yes, here it comes. We’re going to report to FamilyLife, this is going to be easy, no big deal. In 2018 we were still in the process of trying to raise our support. For a little context, God had moved us from a large city to a town of 250 people before he invited us to join staff at FamilyLife. That’s a sense of humor.

In 2018 we were still continuing to trust him, continuing the process of trying to raise support.

Trevor Kravick: All of this was occurring while we were still doing ministry, working a full-time job, running a house, and homeschooling several of them. We were learning about each other as we did ministry together. Leading retreats and doing public speaking was something in my career background that Tanya didn’t necessarily have. We volunteered to do things, but she went about preparing for those things way differently than what I did.

I'm more like give me five notes and put me in the environment, I'm good. She's like, "No, we need it scripted, every single word needs to be written down." I'm terrified of that because I think I'm going to fail and not say the right thing. But as I learned that about her, I could find ways to create space for her to be able to do that very thing that allowed her to be the best she could be for God in that particular environment. She knew that she could make last-minute changes and I would be okay with it, usually.

Tanya Kravick: It was 2018 and we were asked to come into a meeting with the then-president of FamilyLife. He sat across the table and said, "Tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing in ministry. Tell me what that’s looked like for you." We shared some creative ways that we’d been using resources, how we were involving our family, what it had looked like to travel to create our own content, all these different things.

He said, "Well this is why I called you in, because I’d like to ask if you would consider leaving your current assignment with FamilyLife," a volunteer role that we had, "and helping to start a new department at FamilyLife." He said, "We believe that if we’re going to make every home a godly home, we need to have year-round ministry going on in communities across the nation, not just a weekend that flies in once a year and flies out."

I believe that’s what God already has you doing. He’s already invited you into that. So would you be part of helping start a new department? There were four couples that were asked. We cried a lot. We were overwhelmed that the Lord would see us and invite a couple from the middle of nowhere to do this. But we said yes.

In 2018 we transitioned to a part-time role with FamilyLife with permission to continue raising our support. We just watched God do amazing things across the state of Wisconsin. He already was, but it just really kicked into high gear.

Trevor Kravick: Fast forward to 2021, and we’re still raising support. Not fully funded yet. The Lord’s allowing us to develop a team of individuals who are like-minded and want to bring the gospel to their communities and to families around them in various different ways. We had developed relationships with many missionary staff at this point in time in different organizations.

One of them served with the ministry of Lifelines, which is an outdoor ministry arm of Cru. They happened to be coming through our area and wanted to spend some time with us. We said absolutely. They brought their camper and they stayed in an area. Through the conversation they had asked us a series of different questions. One particular question that Mark had asked was, "What would it take for you guys to be full-time?" I didn’t have to think about it for a second. I said, "The Lord would have to eliminate my position at work."

He continued other questions, and the day went on. The next week I got a call from the president of my company. Trevor, we’ve met. It’s not a personal decision, it’s a business decision. The executives have decided to eliminate your position at work. He used that exact phrase. I’m a little bit like Gideon. Gideon’s wool’s got to be wet, the ground be dry, now make the ground wet and the wool dry. My next call after almost swallowing a lump in my throat, after telling my wife, was to Mark. I said, "Mark, did I really say that God would have to eliminate my job?" And he said, "Yes Trevor, that’s what I remember." I said, "Well, he just did."

Tanya Kravick: Trevor had this phone call with his boss that his job would be eliminated. He had a follow-up appointment from a medical difficulty that he had earlier in the year tied to the pandemic. He walked in the room after having had some tests done and thought he was fine. He thought he'd just run in and do this real quick. The doctor said, "You need open-heart surgery, soon."

Trevor Kravick: The results of the test had shown that my heart had doubled in size on one side and that I had a broken valve. I had no idea. I had just lost my job. They gave us a severance package, but that severance package didn’t include insurance. Through a series of different events, God provided once again. I had open-heart surgery on September 30th, 2021, which was the very last day that my company was able to cover our insurance need.

What I learned in that moment is that I was holding out my ability to provide for my family from the Lord. I wasn’t giving it over to him yet. With the job transition, he took that from me and taught me a great lesson.

Cheryl Shumake: How kind of God to usher you through that and to show you. We often want to know God as healer, but we don’t want to be sick. We want to know God as provider, but we don’t want to have a financial need. We have to have these experiences in order to learn him in this new way.

I’m very grateful that you are sitting across the table from me now as a brother in Christ who now knows his father as just an amazing provider and as healer as well.

Tanya Kravick: There’s something really sweet that we were able to look back and see. In your flesh there’s a part of you that feels like, "Lord, you’re tarrying. We said yes way back in 2015 and it’s 2021, what’s going on?" What we see now looking back is that if the Lord had provided all of the funding we needed to report in the 18 months that would have been most desirable, we would have moved our family up to the Northwoods where we live now.

We would have moved our family to Little Rock. We would have moved our family to Orlando. Then we would have moved our family back into the field when we became a field-based ministry. Not only did the Lord protect us from all those moves as a family, but also what he was doing in the unseen was allowing us to be part of what he was doing in establishing this team.

We now lend leadership to 83 individuals across the state of Wisconsin who are bringing the gospel to their local communities. That’s what he was doing that we couldn’t see when we felt like how long, oh Lord. That is what he was establishing: his very good work that he was inviting us to be part of.

In those years there were so many times that we were like, "Lord, this is hard, is this really still our assignment?" And just sensing, "Yes, keep going, keep going." Here today now we see what the purpose was in all of that and longing for the day when there are more teams like this across the state, connected to FamilyLife, that are bringing the gospel to every community so that every corner would truly be reached with the gospel.

Not just our state, but all the states and across the world. FamilyLife is in 103 different countries and has a presence there and these teams can make a huge impact.

Dave Wilson: I think this is just a great reminder for every marriage because we just can get stuck into the daily grind of things. Remembering that we’re on a mission and that God has a plan for our marriage is just a good conversation.

Ann Wilson: God wants to do something in you, but just as much, he wants to do something through you. That means your marriage can literally be a light in your neighborhood. If you want a resource that helps you think about that, we have a FamilyLife couples study called "Your Marriage Has a Mission" and you can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com.

Cheryl Shumake will be back with us again tomorrow as your host and Trevor and Tanya will be back as well. See you then.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry. 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.