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In today’s blog and video, I sat down with my pastor’s wife, Veronica Partridge. For some back story, before we jump into today’s interview, Veronica and her husband began a full-time ministry a little over a year ago. Since then, they have had back to back trials. Despite many trials, they have kept pursuing ministry and leadership roles at our church.
I have watched them personally handle some of the trials that have been going on in their life, and I have admired their strength, humility, and vulnerability. So, I really wanted to interview Veronica on how she has handled the trials.
Veronica, can You Introduce Yourself?
Yeah, so I’m Veronica Partridge, I’m 29, and I’m married to my wonderful husband Dale Partridge. Together we have 5 children, 3 here with us, and 2 in heaven due to miscarriage. Our oldest is 5 and a half her name is Aria, and then we have two boys one who is 3 and 2, their names are Honor and Valor.
My husband and I are in full-time ministry now. We have a background, mostly my husband has a background in the entrepreneurial space. About a year and a half ago we sold our company and entered into full-time ministry. So our main focus is we, pastor a home fellowship and then we also have online ministries. There’s Relearn Church where we teach others how to plant biblical house churches. We also have an online ministry called Ultimate Marriage which is an online marriage program with a few marriage retreats throughout the year.
Can You Catch us up on What Your Last Year has Looked Like?
Yeah, like the last 18 months! Unfortunately we did have a lot of trials come our way as soon as we stepped into full time ministry. Honestly, I have quite the list but I’ll give you the main things that we had.
So, the week we stepped into full-time ministry our whole family got hit with influenza and we had the flu in our house for 21 days. Our children contracted RSV shortly after that which is a respiratory infection, which ended up putting two of our kids in the emergency room. One of our sons ended up in the ER multiple times that week, we later found out the son was diagnosed with asthma. Which is why the respiratory illness was so hard on him.
Then, my husband had some skin cancer on his forehead that was removed. in July of last year, I was bitten by an insect, didn’t see the insect so I don’t know exactly what it was but I contracted Lyme, Bartonella, and Babesia. So, I’ve been on a journey of figuring out what my health looks like now, trying to take care of myself with a lot of these symptoms. Then, a week later we were pregnant and I had a miscarriage… (for full list watch video)
Again, I can go on there are a lot more things that happened but I say those are probably the most stressful things that happened.
Dealing With These Trials Where Have You Had to Give Yourself Grace?
Honestly, throughout this last year, a lot of our routines had to go out the window. That really affected me emotionally. I was really frustrated because I wanted to be a good wife, a good mom, and manage my home.
We stuck to doing the bare minimum; our family went into survival mode. We did not go out a lot as we had before. Without children, we just kept them on a very basic routine. I couldn’t add any more to my plate with trying to keep them to a super strict schedule like keeping homeschooling going on a strict schedule. Honestly, I just had to let a lot of that go.
I had to learn how to give myself grace in that, because I would get really overwhelmed and emotional about it and my husband was like, “Just focus on what you can do. You can’t do it all.” I had to learn that because I’m a doer naturally. I want to go and do things and keep my home managed well and I enjoy that. So, having that taken away really forced me to just rest in the Lord. To read his word, and put my focus elsewhere.