No matter how crazy life gets, family stays centered

November 20, 2023

It seems like Deacon Matt and Stacy Halbach can do it all.

In addition to serving as director of deacon formation for the Diocese of Des Moines, Deacon Halbach is an author, speaker and senior national catechetical consultant for William H. Sadlier Inc. Ordained to the permanent diaconate in 2018, he is assigned to St. Luke the Evangelist Parish and School in Ankeny.

Stacy is the author of Bloom: Unfolding the Beauty of Femininity in Light of the Son, a mother-daughter guidebook that considers puberty in terms of the wisdom of the Catholic Church and how that can help us live the lives God wants us to live. She is also a speaker and blogger who homeschools five of their six children.

Together they have JUMP IN! Catholic Ministry, with the goal of “supporting Spirit-led family life.”

But the truth is, they don’t do it all, according to Stacy.

“We tend to see people and what they’ve accomplished, but it’s not all at once,” she explained. “It’s little things here and there, it’s little ‘yeses’ over and over.”

Not perfect, but “Awesome”
That’s the concept of their JUMP IN! Catholic Ministry --- jumping into “the river of the Holy Spirit” and saying ‘yes’ to where God is leading. Stacy said when you do that, things tend to happen quickly and easily.

That is possible because they know their center needs to be their relationship with each other and with Jesus, she said.
“No matter what happens, no matter how crazy life gets, that’s what we always return to, is me and Matt together, worshipping God, praising him, finding things to be grateful for,” Stacy said. “So many things flow from that.”

That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, Deacon Matt said.

“We have our challenges. We have our own bandwidth issues. Everything else any other couple would deal with, we’re dealing with. It’s just typical married life,” he said. “We’re just trying to be as open to the Spirit as possible and I think that intentionality allows for more creativity and more ease with which we’ve done these things.”

A look at their blog at jumpincatholic.com gives honest vignettes of their family life with its struggles and successes. They emphasize that just because life is hard, it doesn’t mean life can’t be awesome and beautiful.

“Through the struggles and through the trials, that’s when Jesus can really show up and show off,” Stacy said.

Marriage “Glue”
Their desire to be totally committed to each other and Jesus grew out of how they met and got to know each other as they ministered at Totus Tuus in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Totus Tuus, which means “totally yours” in Latin, is a faith formation program for youth held in as many as 50 dioceses and archdioceses around the country each summer.

At that time, Deacon Matt had been accepted to study for the priesthood for the Diocese of Tulsa and Stacy had just completed her sophomore year as a theology major at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas. It became obvious as time went on that their true vocation was marriage, however.

“When you talk about vocation and specifically a vocation to marriage, God calls you to marry a specific person,” Deacon Matt explained. “There’s such a powerful synergy here because we’re with the one we’re supposed to be with.”

He emphasized that they are their most authentic selves with each other. By journeying together, they seek to discover the steps the Lord wants them to take.

When the couple stops praying together and celebrating the sacraments, marriage becomes about two people co-managing a family and something gets lost, Deacon Matt said.

He called their date nights the “glue” for their marriage.

“Those date nights aren’t just making sure you have quality time with your spouse,” Deacon Matt said. “Always as a part of those date nights we’re talking about our lives in terms of our faith, talking about our current struggles and our current worries in terms of where is God and what’s going on in my heart.”