There is a specific kind of wisdom that only comes from living. Not from a book, a podcast, or a motivational seminar, but from actually doing the hard thing for a long time and choosing to keep doing it even when it gets harder.

Jonathan and Brittany Roberts have that kind of wisdom. They have been together for 21 years, married for 17 of them. They have lived in Germany, Alaska, Arizona. They have survived deployments to Afghanistan, months of separation during Jonathan’s eight years in the Army, a cross-country move during COVID, selling their home, cutting back to save money, canceling Netflix, giving up sparkling water, and betting everything on a job that Jonathan did not technically have yet.

What comes through in a conversation with them is not drama. It is steadiness. The kind that only comes from two people who decided, a very long time ago, that getting out was not really an option they were entertaining.

The yellow piece of paper

Brittany tells the story this way.

Jonathan came home from a sales training event. He had met Andy Elliott, stood in the photo line, asked to book a one-on-one, and eventually sat down with him for two hours. He came home changed, but not in a way he was ready to talk about.

He had a yellow piece of legal pad paper covered in what Brittany describes as nearly hieroglyphics. He taped it to the bathroom mirror and said he was not ready to discuss it yet.

She waited about a year before he told her what was on it.

That paper, and whatever was written on it, was the seed of everything that followed. A few years later, Jonathan left his job, told Brittany he was done looking for other work, and declared with complete certainty that he was going to work for Andy, even though he had not received an offer. They had high six-figure income at the time. They had a nice house in Peoria, cars, and real bills. They cut everything back. No eating out. No hockey games. No streaming services. They lived lean and waited.

He got the job.

They moved to Scottsdale. Then Brittany, who had moved to Arizona on the agreement that she could stay home with the kids for a while, found herself helping out with small tasks around the office. Then more tasks. Then all the event coordination. Then, one day, a paycheck showed up in the account.

Nobody offered her the job. She just started doing the work.

What the military actually teaches you

Jonathan is measured when talking about the Army. He does not reach for glory or use it as a rhetorical move. When asked whether military life gave him a sense of community he later brought to his coaching work, he thinks for a moment and says that, honestly, he mostly kept to himself outside of work.

But Brittany’s answer is different.

Their first duty station was overseas. She had a community of military wives, all of them in a similar situation, kids to raise and husbands who were gone constantly. That community was how they survived being in another country. Then they moved to Alaska, and that dynamic did not exist. She built her own friendships off-base.

When they left the military and moved to Oregon, they had family. They had old friends. Then they moved to Arizona during COVID and had neither. She had started to build something new before finding the Elliott Group. But when they arrived there, she says, it felt like built-in family almost immediately. A kind of welcome she had not expected and had not quite experienced before.

That sense of belonging is part of what both of them say they want to give other people. Jonathan talks about showing up, keeping his word, and being willing to serve regardless of his position or how long he has been around. Brittany talks about being the stable presence. The one who is always a fast text back. The one who helps people work through problems and does not need to be famous to do it.

She calls it collecting the children. The people who need a stable figure in their lives, someone who does not have all the answers but has more figured out than most and is willing to sit with someone until they find their own way through.

On being broke and not remembering it

Jonathan grew up with his parents divorced. They were, in his words, dirt poor. Food stamps, living with his grandparents. He says he does not remember feeling unhappy or feeling poor. He just remembers the life they had.

He tells a story about taking his daughter Holland, at four years old, on a first-class flight to Disneyland. The rest of his family flew coach. He watched her sit in her seat and look at every single passenger walking by with an expression of total indifference. He says it is one of the funniest things he can remember.

The memory is not really about first class. It is about the look on his daughter’s face and the fact that he was there to see it.

Brittany’s mother sent her a text the night before this conversation that Brittany was still processing. Her mother wrote about taking her kids to the Target food court years ago. Organic macaroni and cheese. Pineapple juice. She wrote that she wished she had truly been in those moments instead of just getting through them. She wished she had sat there and enjoyed watching their chubby cheeks while they chewed and been fully present instead of just moving on to the next thing.

Brittany read it out loud and said she tries to remember that when she gets into work mode. Jonathan added that you are probably not going to remember most of what you received as birthday gifts. What stays is the memories you made.

The choice you make every day

Toward the end of the conversation, Brittany said something that she had been sitting with lately, prompted by two upcoming weddings in their circle.

Choosing to get married is a choice you make one time. When you say yes, when you show up on that day, you made that choice. But staying married is a choice you make every single day for the rest of your life. Nothing about signing that paper means you will stay married. The work of it is ongoing. The building of it never stops.

Jonathan added his own version, which comes from somewhere older. The Army’s core values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. He said he was trying to live by most of those before he ever joined. And that the biggest lesson he took from his years of not quite living up to them, particularly around drinking and the promises he broke to Brittany and to himself before getting sober two and a half years ago, was about integrity.

Not integrity in the abstract. Integrity as the thing you erode slowly when you say you are going to do something and then do not do it. The kind that puts a strain on a relationship not through one dramatic betrayal but through the accumulated weight of small broken promises over time.

He said: you are going to fail. That is not the question. The question is what you do after the failure. Whether you let it ruin you or let it build you into something better.

What a life looks like when it is built with intention

Jonathan and Brittany Roberts are not famous. They are not selling a program about how to have a great marriage. They are just two people who made a decision a long time ago and kept making it, through deployments and moves and lean years and hard months and all the ordinary chaos of raising children and building a career and figuring out who you are as an adult.

What they have, more than anything, is a life that was assembled on purpose. Not perfectly. Not without setbacks or mistakes or arguments. But intentionally. With both of them pointing in roughly the same direction and trusting each other enough to keep going.

Brittany’s bracelet, a gift she received from a mentor, reads: be a light.

She wears it every day.

It is a small thing. But for people like Brittany and Jonathan, the small things done consistently over a very long time are exactly how the big things get built.

About me:

I am currently a Master Facilitator for The Elliott Group in addition to being on the board of advisors for our Cultural Transformation Department in ELLIOTT ARMY.

With over 14 years of client service experience, I have held substantial leadership roles in the automotive industry. I’m also an accredited coach, a writer, a speaker, and a triathlon finisher. To contact me for engagements, you can reach me at [email protected].

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