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[00:00:00] Morgan Jones Pearson: Lance Funk is not your typical Alzheimer's patient. Diagnosed at the age of 51 and in seemingly perfect health, Sharley Funk has watched her husband's health deteriorate since his initial diagnosis in 2021. In describing this experience, she wrote, In some ways, it's like being a young mom. But instead of watching a baby grow and progress, I watch Lance.
Sharley Funk has shared her open and honest perspective of having a husband with early onset Alzheimer's on her Instagram account, the moment of funk. She and her husband, Lance, live in Southern Utah and are the parents of three children and in 2023 became grandparents for the first time.
This is All In and LDS Living. podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Pearson, and I am so honored to have Sharley Funk on the line with me today. Sharley, welcome.
[00:01:06] Sharley Funk: Thank you, Morgan. I'm very honored to be here.
[00:01:09] Morgan Jones Pearson: Well, this is so So I feel like I should tell listeners before we start that this episode, the president of Deseret Book, uh, Laurel Day sent me a message and she had run across your Instagram account, Sharley.
And she said, I think this woman has a really valuable perspective to share. And so I went to your Instagram and the very first picture that popped up Had your daughter Riley in the picture and Riley and I served our missions together. And so I was like, man, this is such a small world, but I, she was such a great missionary.
And so I immediately, I said, well, she was an amazing missionary. So her parents must be awesome. And I'm so excited to get to, to talk with you more, but before we get too far into this, I wanted to, um, I know, Sharley, that you have shared a bit about the first realizations you had that something was wrong with your husband's health.
Um, but could you share with us when you all first noticed signs or symptoms that something was wrong? And, and what did you think when you first received the diagnosis?
[00:02:24] Sharley Funk: Yeah. So I think it's a little bit different situation for us because my husband was 51, um, really 50 when he started first showing signs.
And so we, the 1st things I noticed was we'd be having a conversation and I'd ask him a question and he wouldn't really answer the question. Like, sometimes I was like, are you not really listening to what I'm saying? And it wasn't like that before. And I even remember saying to him 1 time. Have you noticed we're having a hard time communicating?
Like, we've always been so good at communicating. We're kind of having a hard time and he was like. No, and then the other thing was passwords and just the computer and things like that, that he's always been really tech savvy and he uses. Technology a lot in his work, or he did, and I noticed that he just was struggling so much.
He would change a password on his phone because he forgot his password, but then he wouldn't really realize that he had to change that password on his computer where he had it saved. And so he literally for weeks, he just get tied up in this stuff. That was not making sense. Then also, I had a few phone calls from his work from people saying, what's going on with Lance?
Like, he called and asked me about this form that he's probably filled out 1000 times before. And he said to me, is that the 1 with all the numbers on it? Like he had never seen it before and so things like that were like the big red flags in the beginning, right?
[00:04:03] Morgan Jones Pearson: And do you think he had any sense of? His his mind slipping or was he just unaware of it?
[00:04:14] Sharley Funk: It's so hard to say like mostly unaware of it. I think he, he realized he was frustrated, but I don't think, I don't think he really realized. And every time that was hard for me, because I would have to be the 1 to tell him. Right? And even when he stopped working, I had to be the 1 to say, you're not really capable of doing this anymore.
Like, it's kind of a liability right now. And he. I was so upset and said, what have I done that's so bad? And it just broke my heart because really like every step of the way, I had to be the one to tell him, you know, you can't drive anymore. There's, you're putting other people at risk and things like that, that he didn't understand because he didn't see it.
[00:04:58] Morgan Jones Pearson: Right. Oh, that's so hard. So you start to recognize these things happening and then. Presumably went to doctors, and they tell you that it's early onset. How well, yeah, tell me how that happened.
[00:05:17] Sharley Funk: That actually took about a year because because of his age. no one would have ever thought that this was Alzheimer's.
It's so rare and somebody his age and I didn't think it was either and. What they first landed on was PTSD and we spend about a year on that of like, this is going to this is curable. He needs counseling because there were some. He just has had a lot of trauma in his life. He's had a lot of death in his life and a lot of.
A lot of hard things, and then right about the time that he started showing symptoms, he was an owner at. There were 5 owners at his, um, at his work. He was a realtor and he was an owner and remax and. They had their, their office assistant who they, we loved her so much. She was like family to us and we found out she had embezzled a huge amount of money.
Like pretty much all the money in, in the business and we never took money out. It was kind of our retirement was this ownership of this business. None of us had ever taken any money out and she had embezzled 400, 000. Wow. And so. We had to take out a loan. Lance was the one that had hired her, like, I think, and then, and then that's when the symptoms started.
So we were kind of all like, wow, this maybe it's related like, like he just this was so traumatic for him that that's what's causing this. And so he went to counseling and we, we tried different things and it was hard for me because we'd go to the doctor and I didn't want to say in front of my husband.
I didn't want to say he's just not very smart anymore. But that's kind of what I was feeling. So it was tough. But finally, I went to the doctor without my husband and I said, listen, this is what's going on. And he said, okay, we're going to line you up with this, this testing to really find out what's happening.
[00:07:14] Morgan Jones Pearson: I cannot even imagine what that has to feel like. And, and to your point, I think you had a post where you said that, that a doctor said, you know, the odds were. So incredibly low, even when testing him that it would be that and so I want to now back up a little bit and you and Lance have been married for how many years now?
Is it 35 or 36?
[00:07:44] Sharley Funk: No, it'll be 33 next month. Our anniversary is almost here.
[00:07:49] Morgan Jones Pearson: That's amazing. Yeah. Well, first of all, congratulations. Well done. Thank you. Um, and even more well done given, given the circumstance, you are absolutely remarkable. And he is, he's lucky to have you. But I wondered, could you tell us how the two of you met and what first attracted you to Lance? Kind of what makes Lance special?
[00:08:13] Sharley Funk: Yeah, so it's. It's kind of funny. I, it was in college. We went to school in, um, in Cedar city, Utah, and I worked at pizza hut there as a waitress. And he started working as a delivery driver. And I met him the day he started, we were working the same shift and I got off work and went home.
And then maybe like a half hour later, he pulled up and he was going to visit some girls that lived above me. And I opened my door and I'm like Lance. And so he came in and visited With me and there were six of us that lived in my apartment, but only one other roommate was home. And he stayed there for like two hours with just me and my roommate.
And we hung out and it was fun. And then he started dating my roommate, but it was really like the best situation because he hung out with all of us. Like he hung out at my apartment a lot and we just hung out together and. And then my roommate went home for the summer and he would still hang out with me and my other roommates that stayed in town, but we worked together at night.
So we'd hang out in the day. We go to the pool. We go on bike rides and then we'd work together at night. And we were spending probably like 18, 20 hours a day together just sleep for, you know, we were teenagers. We didn't have to sleep very much and we just became best best friends. It was, it was amazing because there wasn't any.
Yeah. You know, when you're dating, sometimes you're kind of trying really hard and there was none of that. I was just gone. So he became my best friend and he was still dating my roommate. And, you know, eventually they broke up and we started dating and it just, you know, that we've, we've been best friends our entire marriage.
It was the best way to start. You asked the thing I really was attracted me to Lance, so it's a little bit different because I wasn't really attracted to him in that way at first, but he was so funny and so kind and so thoughtful. And he loved his family, just all the things that you want in a husband.
And when I think back of, like, the things that made me just fall in love with them all over again, there was 1 time I'd been in my garage and working and it was just really hot and I was. It was later in the afternoon and I came in and showered and I got out of the shower and I had a big, icy Diet Coke from Maverick sitting on the counter of my bathroom and I was like, oh, my gosh, that is the best was so thoughtful that he ran and got me an icy cold Diet Coke.
To like surprise me with because I've been out in the hot garage and he just that's who he is. He just was always so thoughtful and sweet. And like I said, my best friend, I never got sick of being with him. We could just be together all the time. And it was awesome.
[00:11:07] Morgan Jones Pearson: Well, I, I think that having a best friend for a spouse is such a blessing.
I have thought often since getting married that I think. Under the best circumstance, marriage is like heaven, and that's, that's what makes it heaven is being married to your best friend. Yes. You had an experience early on that has led you to kind of share your journey, and I thought that this was so Impressive that you followed the prompting that you received.
Can you tell us a little bit about why you continue to share the good and the hard?
[00:11:49] Sharley Funk: Yeah, so, in the beginning, this is before we had a diagnosis and we didn't know what was happening and it was just so scary financially scary because he was the provider for us and it's scary in so many ways. And I just remember one night feeling so overwhelmed and I, I prayed and just said.
What can I do? How do I need to prepare for the future? What, what is just, I'm lost. I need help. And I had all the, all the answers come, you know, like, like, obviously I need and I was writing them down. Like, I need to pray. I need to honor my covenants that I've made with Heavenly Father, and I just need to stay close to Him, and I need to have faith, and those things came, and I was like, okay, and then I went to sleep, and I woke up in the night, and the words came to me that I needed to be honest and open.
And I was like, okay, and then I had the, I don't know if it was a voice. I think it was just an impression. Like, you need to write that down. And so I picked up the pad of paper that was next to my bed and I wrote down honest and I laid back down to go back to sleep. And the voice was. You didn't write the word open.
You said you wrote honest, but you didn't write the word open. You need to write open. And in my mind, I was kind of like, well, aren't they the same thing? So I just I grabbed the pad of paper and I wrote open and and then in the morning, you know, I went right back to sleep. And in the morning, I was like, well, that was weird.
But that I think in the beginning, I thought that was just a guide for me for that time period, like, I had to be open with Lance. I had to be open with him and say, hey, I know you don't recognize this, but this is what's going on. And and I know you don't recognize that there are some things going on at work and in our home, but this, this is what we're seeing and I thought that's what that meant.
But as it's as it's gone along. I've realized it means it's everything right now. Like, I have to be honest and open with myself. I have to be open and sharing and open in asking for help and open, open to new experiences and open to having faith and having a completely different outlook in life than what I thought my life was going to be.
[00:14:11] Morgan Jones Pearson: Yeah. Well, you mentioned being open and asking for help and I love reading. You've shared a lot of different examples of ways that people have served you and your family. And I think sometimes being the recipient of service is a lot harder than even giving the service. Um, but I also think sometimes when we see somebody going through something hard, it can be so hard to know what to do.
And I loved reading your post because it, you've done such a good job showing that people kind of bring what they are capable of bringing. And so I wondered, what have you learned about the many ways that service can be offered or rendered?
[00:14:55] Sharley Funk: Well, I've learned that it can definitely be tough to accept it.
In the beginning, people in my, in my church wanted to, in my ward wanted to bring mills in. And I was like, well, we don't, we don't need mills. We're fine. But I had a friend say to me, but people want to help. It helps them feel good. And, and they feel so helpless right now, but they, they want to be able to do something and that's something they can do.
And so we had, we had mills brought in, like, once a week for a little while, and it was awesome. We'd have. You know, somebody come to our house and they visit with us for a minute and it was honestly really nice for us. And I think people liked doing it. I've had to learn to ask for help, which is hard.
Sometimes, like, even something as simple as. I, my husband always took care of the yard and I went out to, you know, I wanted to use the lawnmower and all that stuff, which not a big deal, but like, I don't know how to edge. I don't know how to edge the grass. And so I asked a friend to show me how to do that.
Just things like that. And then even harder is there come there will go along and there'll come times where I have to make some major decisions. Like, there came a time where. Lance needed full time help, like, 24 7, and I was working trying to fill in the financial gaps, and my daughter was helping while I was at work, and the time came that really, like, he needed help that was going to be either a professional or me, that we didn't really want our daughter doing.
Yeah. And. I was just so confused on what to do. And I called some of my friends and they dropped everything. We got together and I just cried to them and told them the situation and they helped me reason it out. And so even stuff like that has just been amazing that I have people I can rely on and it can help me.
And of course, you know, prayer always, but sometimes it just helps to talk things through too. For sure.
[00:17:08] Morgan Jones Pearson: Absolutely. Sharley, you've described this experience as having your husband disappear a little more every day while he's still right in front of you. And I thought that description is incredibly poignant.
Um, Lance was initially diagnosed in fall of 2021. And from what I can tell, at least, it seems like the impact was felt very quickly. What did it feel like for you to experience such a change over such a short amount of time, but still have your husband there and present with you?
[00:17:44] Sharley Funk: Yeah, that's that's a hard one because there wasn't really there wasn't a beginning.
There wasn't a dividing line. Really getting the diagnosis was obviously devastating and and we had to face some things that we kind of already had and I know the Lord prepared me for that. I had had a few things happen. Like, I had had a friend tell me when I told her about what was happening with Lance.
She said her dad had passed away from Alzheimer's and she said, it sounds like Alzheimer's and I wasn't ready to hear that yet. So I had just completely pushed that out of my mind. But eventually it came back and it was kind of a preparation for me of this is what this could be. It really could be. And so the diagnosis really just maybe at that point was helpful for me, which sounds strange.
But up until that point, no, most people didn't see it in Lance. He was this healthy, he worked out every day, he was this attractive 51 year old that seemed fine. And I, I felt like. People thought I was crazy. My kids, even my kids didn't even see it and and they would get frustrated with me sometimes because it would seem like I was treating my husband like he was dumb, which I had never.
I never did that before, but I think they saw that and they thought that that I was being disrespectful to my husband and I was trying to help. Like, for example, we'd go out to eat. And he would have a really hard time ordering. So I would order for him because I didn't want to see him struggle trying to order.
Um, but to other people that looked like I was just being a pushy wife, like, oh my gosh, let him order for himself. So things like that, in some ways getting the diagnosis helped because then I had validation. Like no, really, you guys like this is happening. Yeah. Because at first. Thanks. Not everybody sees it, and everybody, I think everybody goes through things as they get older, they kind of forget things, and there's some things that happen, and it's easy to dismiss one or two things, but when it's like, affecting your life, and you can't continue on with your life the way it is, then it's something more.
[00:20:06] Morgan Jones Pearson: Right. I always say when it comes to health stuff too, there's nothing worse than not knowing. And so I'm sure knowing what it was and then being able to move forward from that helps as hard as it is. I loved one post you shared, Sharley, where you wrote, Remember in the movie Hook when Tinkerbell is trying to convince the lost boys that the grown man in front of them is actually Peter Pan.
One of the lost boys takes Peter by the face and studies him. Suddenly, the boy's eyes light up as he said, Oh, there you are, Peter. And then you said today Lance smiled and laughed at something I said, there he was. It caught me totally off guard. And I wondered, How often do those kind of moments happen?
How often have they happened over the last few years? And what have those moments meant to you?
[00:21:04] Sharley Funk: Yeah, it's, um, it's really a miracle when we see those moments. I, it's just such a tender mercy and it happens less frequent now than it did before. I see it a lot when our kids are around that he, he is happy and he, He knows who they are and he likes being with them.
And i've had moments between just the two of us when we'll just look in each other's eyes and And we communicate things to each other but yeah hearing him laugh or seeing him smile or uh Try to crack a joke because he was always really funny. So seeing him kind of try to crack a joke it's it's fun and you just It it's kind of crazy like Obviously, you're going to miss the things that that you saw in your husband before, but I even missed some of the things that are Alzheimer's related, you know, which I wouldn't think I would.
For a long time, we would, he would have a hard time going to sleep at night, and so I would read scriptures to him because that put him right to sleep, which I think is kind of funny that he would just, nothing could put him to sleep like the scriptures, but he would get his glasses out and put them on when I was reading scriptures to him.
And I just thought that was so cute because he, he wasn't reading, but he would get his reading classes out because I got my reading classes out. And then when he stopped doing that, like, it was kind of sad. I missed it a little bit. Yeah. So yeah, there's just, it's nice to see those, those glimpses into land.
[00:22:39] Morgan Jones Pearson: Yeah. Well, you mentioned that he frequently seems to know who your kids are. You've talked about how in private, You finally one day decided to ask him if he knew who you were And he replied it's hard to say um, but then you wrote this on instagram and I I'm, pretty sure I teared up reading this post, but you said today is our 32nd anniversary We have lived the majority of our lives together.
We have grown and matured and experienced life together I'm not sure who I am without Lance, so it's okay if he can't put into words who I am. I know he feels I'm someone he can rely on and feel safe with. What has it been like for you, Sharley? I think this is probably something that a lot of people have experienced.
The, the feeling of going from Being so loved and cared for to then becoming a caregiver. I think becoming a caregiver has to be one of the hardest things. Um, so what has it been like for you to, to go from being so lucky to be in a, such a happy, loving marriage to now becoming a caregiver?
[00:24:00] Sharley Funk: It might sound strange and I'm still in the middle of this, so sometimes it's hard to not get emotional, but I'm just, I'm, I'm honored to be in that position to be able to help him.
It was hard when I was, I was working all the time and wasn't able to be here and now I'm with him all the time, but I'm honored to be able to give that back to him. And, and I want more than anything for him to just know that he's loved and that he's still important and that he has things to contribute and for him to feel safe because I know his world has got to be so scary and, and when he's with me, I know he feels safe.
And so it just makes me feel so good and so honored and, you know, we know that is it in, I think it's in Matthew. In as much as you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me, and I've been given this gift of being able to just serve my husband who I love, but also, like, I know that the Lord is proud of me for what I'm doing and that I've been given a gift of being able to serve someone.
And I probably wouldn't have gone out and done that on my own. Does that I don't know how to describe it. Like. Something that you didn't seek. Yes, exactly. Like, I wouldn't choose this situation, but it's an opportunity I have to serve that I wouldn't have otherwise had.
[00:25:38] Morgan Jones Pearson: Right. Well, you have clearly done a beautiful job of it.
I'm sure there are moments where you feel like it's overwhelming, but you've, you have done it with grace and, and I think that is so admirable. At what point, Sharley, you've mentioned several times when you had to tell Lance that you They probably shouldn't continue working and how scary that was because he was the provider for your family.
But I loved on in a post you talked about how you cried for two days and then you went and got your real estate license. Can you tell listeners a little bit about how you reached that decision?
[00:26:29] Sharley Funk: There were just so many miracles placed before me. I, and I recognized and I said, all right, I recognize that.
It's like, God said to me, you're going to go through this. Really hard thing, but I'm going to place all these things here to help you and no one was going to come and save me, but I had so much help from our heavenly father. Like, I have mentioned my husband's a realtor. There was a guy he worked with.
Who years years before, like, I just had had this thought, like, what would what would I do if something happened to Lance financially? Like, what would I do? How would I. How would I get by? Because I was, I was a stay home mom. I was a homemaker. I didn't work. And the thought came to me, this man's name is John Ames, and the thought came to me, you could go to John Ames.
And I was like, okay, that's really weird. Like, go to him and ask for money. Like, I don't understand. But I just kind of blew it off. And that was years before. Well, when Lance was diagnosed, John had come to him and said, Hey, I know you're, I've noticed you're struggling in real estate. I want you to come on my team and be part of my team.
And so Lance had just recently gone on John Ames team and been trying to work as part of his team. Didn't work out for Lance. He couldn't work anymore, but I was able to step into that and I had this team that they trained me. They helped train me and coached me and helped make it easy for me to get into this business that I, I was able to make money right away instead of waiting years.
Like, it takes a lot of people in a sales business. Yeah, so that was a huge thing. It was so hard. I would be sitting at a phone making phone calls and I would have to take regular breaks to go to the bathroom and just cry. I don't want to make it sound like it was easy and I just walked into this thing.
Like, I, it was the hardest thing I've ever done and I would have quit if I could. But I didn't have a choice. I couldn't quit. And so I pushed through and everything was okay, but it taught me something about not giving up because I would have if I had the choice. It was so hard. So, yeah, I've learned lots of lessons along the way and that's 1 of them is to not give up and and and I was forced to learn that lesson.
It was a good 1 to learn though.
[00:29:01] Morgan Jones Pearson: That's such a good lesson. I admire so much the ability to kind of pivot. And I think so many times things happen that are unexpected that we don't see coming. And you are kind of forced to do that. And sometimes. In those moments, it's like, well, what do I do? But I love that you took action and did something, did what you could do.
I wanted to ask you, Sharley, one of the, the darker, harder parts of this experience seems to have been the anxiety that Lance has dealt with. And at one point, it was so difficult. That it was, it just seems like it was making life incredibly difficult for you and your family. What, what do you wish people knew about the really ugly parts of Alzheimer's?
[00:29:58] Sharley Funk: Gosh, I wish people could just stay oblivious to it because if you know about it, it's because you're experiencing it and it's so hard. Luckily, we were able to get it under control, but they just can become a completely different person. And they can be mean and they can think that you're out to get them.
And we went through that with Lance where he, he thought that we were against him and he thought I was. It kind of his enemy. And yeah, I, I actually, it was, it's tough because in the medical profession, you're trying to get help, but they're all so busy. The neurologist, you know, you get, you get an appointment and, or you get a prescription and it doesn't work and it takes like weeks to get that worked out and it just making it through the medical field.
And again, I just saw the Lord's hand in my life because. I'm not, I'm, I'm not a person that ever that really goes to the doctor. My kids have never, we've never gone to the ER and I took my husband to the ER one night because I just, I didn't know what else to do. And that led to a chain of events of us being able to get help that actually helped us.
So honestly, faith, I've just had to have faith and rely on Heavenly Father and, and And I've been guided to different paths that have, have helped me.
[00:31:31] Morgan Jones Pearson: Well, I, I think that reading your, your account of, Those harder parts I to your point like I think I've been completely oblivious. I Love the show. This is us um, which I think you know showed some of the challenges of somebody going through alzheimer's, but I don't think until you've experienced something Like what you've gone through that you have any sense of what those hardest parts are and I think that's what's made What you're sharing so important and so valuable is that it does give insight into the experience that you're going through.
Another thing that you've shared is kind of confronting this idea of anticipatory grief and wondering whether. Something might be your last. And I think that has to be incredibly hard to stay in the present when you know that at some point, things will be different. And so I wondered how, how have you been able to remain present?
[00:32:45] Sharley Funk: That's a really good question. The anticipatory grief. I'd never even heard that term before. And once I heard it, I was like, that's, that's exactly is I know what's coming. And so it's like a, it's a long term grief, you're grieving and all along the way, but then, you know, what's coming to, and you know, it's not going to get better.
And so I just, I have made a conscious effort to just slow down, delete things from my life that I can delete from my life and just. Try and live my life at Lance's pace and sometimes it's sitting on the couch with them for 2 hours. So they he'll have a nap and you know, I, I've got the stuff going on in my head.
Like, oh, I should be doing laundry. I could get up and do this. I, I should be doing this, but I've just made the effort to, to slow down, take that time and realize this is just, this isn't just a short time in my life. This isn't going to be my entire life. This is a short time in my life and I'm going to take this time.
And just be with Lance and just enjoy this and just lay my head on his shoulder and just remember what it felt like to sit next to him and to hear him breathe and to. Now, him and just the things that your husband is your person and so that's that's been. For me, a blessing, and that's something I can do, because I know that this is.
It's a short term, it's not going to be a long term thing for us.
[00:34:27] Morgan Jones Pearson: I think that what you just shared is so relevant to so many different situations in life and I think that it's important for us to recognize that, uh, somebody told me when I first had my baby. You know, and she wasn't sleeping through the night and I was completely exhausted.
Somebody said, you know, everything is a phase, the good and the bad. And I think that's true in life in general, you know, everything is gonna, is gonna pass. I think that's why the scriptures say, and it came to pass so much is to remind us that everything eventually passes. And, and so we should be present.
Um, Speaking of that, I think sometimes when you are being very good at being in the present, it can be overwhelming. And I, I think that it makes complete sense to me why you've shared candidly that sometimes you felt ready to be done. How have you dealt with feeling guilt for those type of feelings?
[00:35:39] Sharley Funk: Well, I think sometimes. Sometimes it just feels like our days are so repetitive, but it's just the same thing over and over and I'll have to tell Lance the same thing over and over and over again. And, yeah, sometimes I'm like, we, we know that this life is not the end for us. I know that there are so many good things ahead of us on the other side.
And sometimes, yeah, sometimes I'm like, I'm, I'm just ready to. I'm ready to be done with this and move on to the next the next phase of my eternal existence and I'm not really I'm not and it's not I've never been suicidal or anything like that. It's just for the 1st time in my life. I've felt sometimes just ready to be done and and yeah, there's guilt from that because there's so much.
Good here on the earth. And there's I know there's things left for me to do and it's just I just Constantly have to go back to faith that this is Heavenly Father's plan and that that Lance has a different Plan than I do and I'm gonna go on living and I'm gonna have things in my life and in my future that he won't But he'll get to be with his brother and sister who have passed away and his mom and he'll get to have other experiences and hopefully still be part of our, our life here on earth.
But yeah, it's, it's all wrapped up in, in faith. I think of just the, okay, Heavenly Father has got this. I have no idea what the plan is, but he's got this and I just need to trust in him.
[00:37:23] Morgan Jones Pearson: So well said. You recently wrote that you felt like you finally had reached a point where you were ready to face life without Lance when the Lord sees fit.
There have been, from what I understand, kind of some ups and downs since he was initially diagnosed where it was progressing rapidly, and then it kind of slowed down, and then it didn't. picked up again. And I can only imagine, you know, the roller coaster as a wife in wanting to keep your husband longer.
But you've reached this point, you said, where you feel like you feel able to handle it. What aspects of the gospel have helped you reach that point? And you mentioned faith. How has faith helped you, um, face this experience?
[00:38:14] Sharley Funk: To say, honestly, to say I'm ready is I, I know I'll never be ready because it's not something I've experienced before.
So I, I don't really know what to expect as far as like grieving the loss of a spouse. Cause right now he's still here. Right. He's still in front of me, but I felt, I felt like Heavenly Father had given me a period of time to, like I said, just be with Lance and it was a gift for me. And I reached a point where I said, you know, I don't think.
Almost like, almost like I'm being selfish because I don't think he would want to live his life this way. I think there are so many better things ahead for him and so for me, I just kind of went to Heavenly Father and said, okay, I think I'm ready. I've had this time. I'm grateful for this time and I don't want him to have to stick around for me.
And I, I told him that too, during a moment when he seemed like he had some more clarity. I just said, Lance, I want you to know, I'm going to be okay. It's going to be hard and I don't want to do this, but I'm going to be okay. And our kids are going to be okay. And I'm so grateful that you've been my husband.
And I'm so grateful that we have the eternities together. And it's okay if you're ready to let go and that for me, I just had, I just had to come to that realization and it took months. It took like 7, 8 months for me to come to that of, like, I think he's ready and I need to, I need to let go to and say, it's okay.
So, the gospel, it's hard to pinpoint one thing because it's everything. It's the belief that we are eternal beings and this time here on the earth is short term. It's the belief that this isn't the end, that I'm going to be with him again and even while I'm still here on the earth, I think he's still going to be part of my life.
I think he'll still have an influence in my life. In my kids lives and probably can do more for us from the other side than he can do here now. So, yeah, I mean, the gospel is everything. I don't know how people deal with stuff like this that don't have the gospel because it would be so hard to not just be bitter and angry and and blame God for the hard things you're going through.
[00:40:44] Morgan Jones Pearson: Yeah, I want to, I want to ask you one last question before we get to the all in question that I didn't prep you for. So I hope that's okay. But I just wondered, it seems like your kids have been a real strength to you. Um, what kind of gratitude do you feel for your children and for the way that they have helped you through this experience?
[00:41:11] Sharley Funk: Well, I think. We've grown so much closer. I think we've always been a close family, but to experience something like this together, you grow closer and you probably share more of your feelings and emotions than, than maybe you would have in easy times. They, there's nothing I don't think is rewarding as seeing your adult children being compassionate and kind and loving and being good people.
And so, yeah, I'm so grateful that they are the people they are like, I'm so proud of them. And I know Lance is so proud of them. And, and, yeah, we just feel, I think we both just feel that. Ultimate joy when we get to be with them.
[00:42:03] Morgan Jones Pearson: Well, you have a beautiful family. Thank you. And I, I so appreciate you giving us a glimpse into your family's life through this interview, and also would just encourage people to go read your posts because you do such a beautiful job.
And my last question for you, Sharley, is what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ
[00:42:30] Sharley Funk: Being all in to me is really taking upon you the name of Christ. And I often think of, you know, the commandment, like, don't take the Lord's name in vain. And I, like. I heard this somewhere. I can't remember where, but I like to think of it as not taking his name in vain, like, as a swear word, but taking his name in vain as I was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and I am a representative of him.
And so when I'm driving around and somebody makes me mad, you know. I, I need to be Christ like in that situation and I need to be a representative of Christ at all times and all things and all places and, and I think that that's what all in means to me is just, and also accepting God's will for your life.
Like what is happening in my life is not at all what I had planned and what I would pick, but accepting that, okay, I'm going to learn, I'm going to grow from this. There are positives that are going to come out of this hard situation and. I'm going to be continue to be grateful along the way. And to me, that's, that's what being all in is about.
[00:43:47] Morgan Jones Pearson: Well, Sharley, you have such a bright light about you and such a good perspective. And I so appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. We will definitely keep you and your family. I will keep you and your family in my prayers and, and just thank you for, for sharing with me today.
[00:44:06] Sharley Funk: Thank you, Morgan. And I love your podcast.
I love how uplifting and just spreading goodness because we need more of that.
[00:44:12] Morgan Jones Pearson: Oh, you're so sweet. Thank you.
We are so grateful to Sharley funk for sharing her experience on this week's podcast. I highly recommend checking out Sharley's Instagram account, @the_moment_of_funk, because I found her faith so inspiring. Thanks to Derek Campbell for his help with this episode. And thank you for listening.