NC Family Staff | October 19, 2024 | SHARE: 
Life is busy, and it can be hard to make time even for the things that matter. Investing in relationships, our marriages, our kids, or ministry can often fall by the wayside as we go about the demands of life. However – even in the busiest times – it is important to pause, re-center our attention on God, and spend time with those around us.
This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Billie Jauss – author, speaker, and wife of an MLB coach – to discuss how she prioritizes her faith amidst her family’s professional baseball schedule.
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TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Life can seem crazy sometimes. Many of us feel pulled in a thousand different directions. Well, on our show today, we’re going to take a break from our usual family policy wonks and talk to someone who has a lifetime of practical experience keeping her own family rooted and connected in the midst of great change and uncertainty. Billie Jauss has been married to a major league baseball coach for over 30 years, and together they raised three sons in the midst of moves all around, not just the country, but the world. And as if that’s not enough, she’s authored three books, and bonus, she’s a North Carolina native. Billie Jauss, welcome to Family Policy Matters.
BILLIE JAUSS: Thank you so much for having me here.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right, so give people a general idea of what life is like for a family of a professional sports coach. I mean, we think our lives are crazy.
BILLIE JAUSS: For four years, when the kids were young, we moved four times a year, and when I say move, we’re not packing up an entire house and moving. At that point, we didn’t own a house, so we just went from spring training to the season, to winter ball and back to spring training. And we just did that for four years, really, with two trunks and two suitcases. I had my kitchen in one trunk, the kids’ toys in another, and a suitcase for two boys and a suitcase for me. That was before our third son came and you just pack up and go. I look at it as an adventure. So yeah, it can be overwhelming. It can be crazy. We only have year to year contracts, so we never know what the next year may bring. So there’s a lot of change, so it can get quite chaotic.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: So, talk about some of the special challenges that you have, had and have because it doesn’t end when our kids get older, when you’re raising children in this kind of a situation.
BILLIE JAUSS: The thing that David and I look at Major League Baseball has been our mission field. That’s where God’s called us, and that’s where we’re going to serve him to the fullest of all we can. So, our boys grew up in this atmosphere, and they grew up in big league clubhouses, and they grew up with kids whose dads were making way more money than their dad was. So, there were a lot of different challenges, except for the fact that we wanted to raise our kids respecting the janitor who cleaned the bathroom in the concourse of a stadium to the major league pitcher that was making multi millions of dollars, and it was really teaching them to respect people as who they were, where they were, and when God put them in front of us, to love them, you know, where they were.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right. So how did you manage the moves? Because, you know, some of us have heart attacks if we have to change our kid from one school to another, and you were doing it a lot, I’m assuming.
BILLIE JAUSS: Well, we homeschooled for a little while, so that helped. We had our kids in school, and we’ve always said home is where we are together, so it was sort of mandatory for our family. People often ask me, didn’t the boys argue with you when you packed them up and moved them for the summer when they were in school, or when you packed them up and moved them for three, four times a year during the season. And honestly, my boys never complained, because it was more of hey, we’re going with dad. This is our family. This is where home is. This is what we’re doing. And so, I guess I never gave them a choice. I don’t know. I just sort of said this is the next adventure. And when they were little, they’d wake up some mornings going, Are we on an airplane today? What ballpark are we at today? So, I made it fun. Sometimes it did cause me great anxiety, especially the first time we were moving out of the country. We were going to Venezuela. There was some political unrest, and I was just a little concerned, like, what are we getting into here? I’m from eastern North Carolina, like my family’s in Edgecombe County, they don’t really go a whole lot of places back then, and here I am packing and moving to Venezuela. So, there was anxiety, but I really tried not to allow that anxiety to be present to my boys. Now, if they said they were worried about something, I’d be like, Yeah, you know, I get that way too, but let’s look at it this way, and I give them a positive alternative to it. So, I felt like that really prepared my kids to be open for whatever adventure may come.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: So how old are your boys and how are they doing now?
BILLIE JAUSS: Oh, my boys. My boys are 34, 32, and 28 and I prayed for many years that they would not go into baseball, because it’s not that easy on the wives, as we’re talking about now. And all three work in baseball. Our oldest is an area scout for the San Francisco Giants, and he is an area scout in the Carolinas. So, if any of your parents listening have kids that are playing high school or college ball in the Carolinas you may have seen DJ around a ballpark. And then our middle son is a mental performance coach, and he reads writes and speaks Spanish fluently, so he oversees a cultural integration program with the Arizona Diamondbacks as a mental performance coach. And then our youngest son is now the head pitching coach at Penn State University. They love baseball. They love the life they’re living. I was not happy they were going into baseball, but they found some great women in their lives that are ready for the adventure.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right. So is there a lesson, I know there is, in there for those of us who maybe worry about the chaos in our lives. I’m hearing that mom’s attitude can go a long way.
BILLIE JAUSS: Yeah, you know, I encourage my baseball wives, because those are the ones that are, we’ve been in pro ball now 37 years, so we’ve been married 35 years. And over those years, I’ve sat in the stands with a lot of different women, and the thing that I always tell them is to pause, pause and see where God has you. There may be a lot of chaos going on. I joke around with my girls. I’m like, Look at us. We have these kids running around crazy, but we can sit and find moments of peace where we are, because, of course, peace is provided by God. And when our eyes are focused on Him, no matter what the chaos that’s going on around us, we can find peace in those moments. And so that is where I feel like, for the boys and for me and the craziness of raising three boys when dad’s gone eight months a year, so it’s really allowing my kids to see that I can pause and I can find peace in the chaos of what’s going on around me, and then I can take one step forward.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, let’s talk about the relationship with your husband, because that has got to be a challenge as well, when he’s gone a lot, as you said, and also very distracted. That’s a high-profile job, and it’s also has a lot of pressure. Do you have some tips for us on how you stay connected with your husband through all of that.
BILLIE JAUSS: You know, our biggest thing over the years, because we went through a time in our marriage where our marriage was falling apart. It was because he was chasing his job and I was chasing the kids, and we didn’t connect. And then once we came back together, and hey, we need to check ourselves on this, the number one thing we started to do was to pray for one another. Because when we say, “Oh, I’ll pray for you about that,” we don’t always get around to it, the other person doesn’t know if we did or not. So, we would pause again and take five minutes and say, “What can I pray for you?” And pray exactly what they ask for. And then in turn, they ask, “What can I pray for you?” And they pray exactly what you’re asking for, not interjecting any backhanded prayer of Lord, I wish he’d clean off those countertops when he’s home, or whatever it may be you really do just pray for what it is they’re asking prayer for. And in that I can say that was a big turnaround for our marriage, because I knew my husband, he was going to the Lord for me, and I was going to the Lord for him. And then the other thing is date nights, and we didn’t always have nights. We still don’t have a lot of nights that we can go out on a date, because he’s still working in professional baseball, but we would find a time once a week where we could sit together alone, be that in the backyard, at a park, on a bench, whatever it was, just to catch up with one another. What is it that’s going on in your life? What’s important to you right now? What are you struggling with? Where do you find an excitement in? Like, where can we go together in this? And those are really the two things over 35 years of marriage that have kept us growing closer together.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Wow. Great advice, and pretty simple, really. So, thank you. That’s great.
BILLIE JAUSS: It’s just doing it, right? It’s just making the time.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right, so talk about these relationships that you make when you move to new communities, because that’s got to be a difficult thing. Here I go again, for you and the rest of your family, talk about why that has been important for you guys.
BILLIE JAUSS: For us, it’s really been important to love the people that God puts in front of us, wherever He places us. And so, in that, it’s really seeing every person that is in front of you. I categorize them in four different categories. One is accidental acquaintance, that person you meet in passing that you may never see again. For me, it’s an Uber driver, somebody I’m traveling on a plane with, people in the stadium.
The next is your social circle. Who are the people that you’re in more contact with? That, for me, is wives in the stands, the ushers, the security, the ticket taker, those people that I’m seeing over and over again.
And then the next category is kindred spirits, and those are the ones who are in your social circle, and you’re like, “Hey, I like you. There’s something about you that I want to connect on a deeper level.” And you get to know them. You ask deeper questions, you spend time with them away from that social circle setting, and you’re more intentional on the time that you’re spending with them.
And then the fourth category is a forever family, and I like to say that your forever family are the people that will go to war for you when you don’t even know you’re in a war. Those are the people that have your back through everything. And each of those categories are different types of people, different groups of people, different numbers of people. Your accidental acquaintance is going to be much larger than your forever family. So those are the way I categorize and it gives me such freedom to know I can love that person that’s in front of me right now, but I don’t have to divulge every bit of my personal information and love on them, on the same way that I would love on a kindred spirit. But it gives me freedom to be able to put these people in these categories and know that I can still intentionally show them love when we are in each other’s presence.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: So, you mentioned that you’re not real thrilled that your children went into baseball. I think some parents get pretty caught up in pushing their kids. Talk about that a little bit. How important is that? Are we placing too much importance on that, do you think?
BILLIE JAUSS: You know that is such a family-to-family thing. For us, being in pro sports, I was always really cautious to push my kids, because I didn’t want them to think they had to be major league players or their life was a complete failure. And there are a lot of baseball families that put such pressure on their kids, that you’re going to be better than dad was. You’re going to be this, you’re going to do that, that they end up not even liking baseball. So, I really watched what was going on around me and made some decisions early on. I had an old scout tell me one time, I was at a game and I’m like, so tell me what I need to say to my kid after he comes off the field, he goes, “Billie, never coach your kids between the lines of the baseball field. You never coach your kids when they’re in the dugouts. You never coach your kids when they’re on the field.” And that’s hard for some dads, but this guy was telling me, he goes, “The best person to coach your kid is someone else. And you don’t coach your kids then, you wait till they get off the field. And the best time to talk to kids in sports is when you’re driving. You’re both looking straight ahead, and you just ask a question, and they ask a question, or they vent, and you’ve tried to redirect them in that.” So, I never put pressure on my kids about having to play at a certain level.
The way that baseball is now, and having a son that is a professional scout and having a son who is a college recruiter, it’s two totally different views of what they need to see and how they need to see it. And in that, if you’re gonna get picked up by a college recruiter or a professional scout, you have to be playing in leagues and levels that you’re being seen. That falls into the category of how much do we spend on that, and how much time do we take for that? I am still, to this day, and both of my boys that do recruiting and scouting agree with me wholeheartedly on this, is the well-balanced athlete. When you focus on one sport and one sport only, there’s so much in the way that you play that one sport that doesn’t get tapped into, as if you played a different sport. My son, this past fall, was driving somewhere, and I’m like, “Where are you going? Is it, you going to a baseball game?” He goes, “No, Mom, I’m going to a basketball game.” I’m like, “D, you’re professional baseball scouts. Why are you going to a high school basketball game?” He goes, “Because I’d love to see how they interact with other players in a sport they might not be as good at. I want to see how they interact with their parents after. I want to see the whole picture.” And that was a confirmation to me, of other sports develop them just as much as that sport does.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, we’re just about out of time before we go, Billie Jauss, where can our listeners go to find your podcast, get copies of your books, and just in general, follow what you do.
BILLIE JAUSS: My website’s the best place to get all of that information. It’s BillieJauss.com.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right. Thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.
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