This episode is supported in part by the Christian Standard Bible, a translation designed to be faithful to the original text and clear for everyday readers. We're grateful for their partnership in helping bring gospel-centered content to families like yours. To learn more about the CSB, visit csbible.com. Hi. We set goals for our family.
Where do we want our family, marriage, and family to go for the year? And so we set goals for as a couple. As parents, Financially, The house, kind of what we're trying to do around the house, spiritually.
So we're looking at our lives probably through about the lens of six key categories. And we're saying, okay, what does God want to do on our family this year? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifetoday.com.
This is Family Life Today.
So, I recently read a book where the opening paragraph, the first page of the book, I felt like I was reading my story. Oh. Yeah, it was about a pastor. Things were going great at his church and he felt empty. And he sat down with a counselor and I thought, wow, this is.
I went through the exact same thing, and it was the framework for what his life was about and his marriage. And he's sitting in the studio right now. Brian and Stephanie Carter are back in the studio. Welcome back, guys. Thank you so much for having us.
That's funny. You're over there, like, and I was like, I don't know if you still have a lot of people. I never remember that. I mean, I know you wrote the book a little while ago, but you remember how you did it. I remember it well.
I remember it well. I mean, it's called Made to Last, and it's eight principles for long-lasting relationships. And, you know, pastor of a large church. And so I told Ann when I read it, I said, oh my goodness. you know, we wrote a book about vertical marriage and the first two chapters Are about this moment when everything was going great at the church, but my heart, I said, I lost my first love.
Now, I'm not saying you did that, but walk us through it because you frame that story to say this is the most important thing in your life and to even make a marriage that lasts.
So, tell our listeners what I tried to tell them. Sure, sure. No, thank you.
So, it was a unique season in our lives where. Our church was booming. We were adding services three to four certain. We were in the midst of a building project. I succeeded.
At our church, the founder.
So he had been there 28 years. I'm coming behind him. There's a lot of pressure to come through, right?
So I mean, you're probably seven or eight. God is just blessing everything. A lot of demands, preaching for us, different services, trying to build a new building, raising the money, designing it, trying to grow staff, reach people, reach our city. And how many years had you guys been married at that point? At that point, we probably married about 10 years.
Oh, boy. And you had all your kids by then, so they were little. Right, so they were little. They were little.
So we had two, probably seven and five, and a little two-year-old kind of tagging around.
So I'm in seminary as well.
So I'm in Dallas Seminary. It's a crazy, chaotic season. But on the outside, everything looks great, right? Young kids that we're chasing around, booming church is happening. But it was at that juncture, I'm 37 at the time, and I ended up talking to Dennis, right?
Actually, I talked to Dennis, and then I said, Dennis, I need a counselor. He said, What do you need? Dennis Rainey. Dennis Rainey, Dennis Rainey. And I'm like, I need a counselor.
He recommends a counselor because I'm talking to this counselor about trying to process what's happening. I have this emptiness on the inside. I said, with all this happening, somehow I feel empty on the inside.
Something is missing. Stephanie, did you know about this? I didn't. I really, he was just so busy. Like he, like a typical pastor, he was a workaholic and he loved ministry.
He loved serving. I remember he would leave when it was dark and he would come home when it was dark. And we kind of had resolved in our marriage, just through premarital, that we both can't have two demanding jobs. And so at this time, I'm at home. I had been a school teacher.
I taught third and fourth grade. I was an instructional specialist. And then after the birth of our second child, I came home. I think we were just in the routine of the busyness, but you could see like the weight. I always saw the weight of ministry on him, but um He just seemed like he thrived off of it.
Maybe because we had been, you know, I'd known him since college, we had met in college, and so he was a leader on his campus.
So this was nothing new of how busy he was. But it wasn't until later after he talked to Dennis and he was like, I need to go spend a couple of days with a therapist. And then I was kind of like, no, wait, now why? What's going on? Yeah.
Because during that season, it seemed like there were a lot of leaders who were falling and having integrity issues.
So I kind of was like, no, wait, no, what?
Now I kind of like perked up a little bit.
Now, what?
Now, what's going on? But then he just kind of just assured me. And so then I was just really proud of him that he wanted to go talk to someone. Because you just don't hear, I would, you know, just talking to different wives, you would hear of wives talking about their husbands not going to seek any type of counseling or talking to a therapist. And here it is, I have one that wants to go talk to a therapist.
So, of course, I'm going to be like, yes, go ahead, please. And you knew, Brian, that you needed that. I knew something was missing. Yeah. I just knew that there was something missing.
And it wasn't my wife, it wasn't my kids. There was an emptiness inside. That was happening despite all the success, apparent success that seemed to be happening all around me. I just knew I needed to talk to somebody to try to process. What I was feeling, what was happening.
I remember the conversation when she was like, What's going on? I said, Well, it's not, it's and I have been seeing a lot of leaders fall in ministry. And I was like, I don't want to do that.
So let me figure out what's happening. And I think it's in many of our lives. There is this temptation, right, that we all face. And if we don't. Ask ourselves sometimes the tough questions or have someone helping us to process through.
Those moments. When I began talking to my counselor, he told me I was going through a midlife crisis. I said, I'm 37. I said, what is that? I said, what in the world is that?
I was like, how am I going to be like a 37? He said, and he began to describe success and significance, right? How we climb and climb and try to achieve success, success, success. And we think we have it, but even when we attain it, It doesn't give us what we thought it would. There's a distinction between success and significance.
And he began to unpack for me that you've been climbing and achieving and trying to have all these things, and you've gotten it. And now that you have it, you're like, this is not what I want. It still doesn't bring me the joy and the satisfaction and the fulfillment that I thought I would. He says, What you're really looking for is significance. He says, Brian, what's happened is you've become a bit disconnected, as you mentioned, from your heart, from God.
You've gotten so many things going on that you've forgotten your first love, which is God, which is that relationship, cultivating that, spending time with Him and serving others out of the overflow of your relationship with God. And so it was that. Those sessions and that conversation and reassessing my life that helped me to get reconnected back to God.
So, in turn, I could get reconnected back to my family and to the ministry that we were doing.
So, it was just, I said, I had gotten out of. out of balance. I had gotten out of rhythm. I'd gotten my priorities were all mixed up. And so it required me getting back to my devotional time, getting back to my prayer time.
Getting back to my just alone time with the Lord and just being versus doing. Just being in his presence versus performing. It kinda it was a recalibration of my life. And even now, I have to continually remind myself of that. I'm on my church has blessed me with a sabbatical, and part of that is just me to get reconnected, reset.
Time with the Lord. Slow down. Take your time. It's okay. Spend time, memorize.
Let's review some of the verses. Let's scripture memory. Let's fast. Let's find some time to just be with God. And I think that's key to a lot of relationships.
So if I'm not connected to God, well, If I'm not in his presence, if my relationship with God is not good, of course I'm not gonna get along with her or get along with my kids or get along with others. It's found every relationship. Is foundational, begins with my relationship with God, and everything else flows from there.
So when you did that, was it something that you saw, honestly, it transformed you? How did it impact this? And of course, you were a dad of young kids at the time. Yeah. I think it helped me to reset my priorities a bit.
I think there's Pressure to perform. consumes us, right? Always on email. Always Looking at your to-do list. Always trying to look at the next thing, right?
I mean, it's just this constant.
So I think. At that juncture it meant Mondays I took my off day. And then Mondays Well, I took the kids to the park. It meant Mondays. Babe, I got it.
I'm going to do the drop-off. I do pick up. I'm going to go have lunch with them at school today.
So I think it. It meant our date nights were protected, right?
So it meant that. I had to Make sure that I was hearing her heart. hearing her passion, her desires for a family or marriage.
so that I wasn't so consumed with Public success. Certain things can give you an esteem preaching, right? Everybody sees that, or leading the meetings, or organizing things in the life of the church. Everybody sees that. Nobody sees the time with the kids like we do.
Nobody sees, are we going to vacation this year? Let's make sure we take care of that. Just trying to build out the rhythms of our family.
So that we have a rhythm that is manageable, that cultivates the love and the care and the grace in our families.
So, whether it's our vacations, whether it's family time. It just helped me reset things a bit.
So now every year we have a We set goals for our family. Where do we want our family, marriage, and family, to go for the year? And so we set goals for as a couple. as parents financially The house, kind of what we're trying to do around the house, spiritually.
So we're looking at our lives probably through about the lens of six key categories. And we're saying, okay, what does God want to do in our family this year? By us doing that together, I heard her heart, and we can stay aligned. We can look back and say, okay, this is where we're going. This is how we're going to get there.
And we can work together to make it happen. But I think that crash or burning out helps you to say, this I don't want to happen, right? I don't want that feeling.
So how do I build in the rhythms and routines to protect my heart, but also to guard the heart of our family?
So Stephanie, walk us through that. You sit down. Do you guys, is this on a vacation where you sit down and go through your goals?
Sometimes it's on a vacation, but then also even before we get to that, we have a talk time. Our talk time, it's like something weekly that we do where we talk through the kids' activities. We talk through what I'm doing this week. You're looking at your schedules.
So he is the master scheduler, which is great. I love it. But basically, that talk time starts every Sunday. And so when our kids were younger, they really weren't a part of talk time. But now as they got older, I've probably say like late elementary, early middle school.
They were a part of talk time. And so, during that talk time, it's kind of like our family meeting. And so, it might be, you know, hey, how can I pray for you? And it could be something as, oh, I have a test this week, or, oh, I have to have a conversation with so-and-so because they were mean to me and I don't know, or just talking through that, just giving an open, an open dialogue with our children. I think that helped immensely.
And then, as far as the goal setting, that was very essential because sometimes, as husband and wife, we cannot be on the same page.
So, I might want to do something, yeah, curtains, curtains, curtains, like right now. Um, the right now, our big thing in our house was wanting to do some things with our backyard.
So, anytime we've wanted to do something like super, you know, whatever, he'll be like, remember, the backyard. That's right, that's right, the backyard. That's our focus. That's our focus. But when you start talking about marriage kind of stuff, what did that look like?
Like when you say, What are our goals for our marriage this year? Because most couples don't do this. Right. Like, we just survive. We're just getting through.
We're just trying to make it. Yes.
So, our goals for our marriage might be: we're going to go to a marriage conference, or we're going to have a date night consistently. We're going to pray for each other consistently. And so on. We're going to have a devotion time. What is that?
What did I live on? That's a good foundation. It doesn't have to. Those three to four right there give us a rhythm that helps protect and strengthen our marriage. Marriage conference, as she mentioned, some years we might do a married grow group.
So a small group with couples that's not only gonna help us, but help those other couples as well.
So normally those four to five, that's typically where we try to focus on in terms of what we wanna do for our marriage specifically. And then we'll add others around financial, right? What was our plan financial? Where are we going together as couples? Parenting.
what activities do we want the kids involved in this year that will grow them spiritually it might be going to a christian camp it might be this one here needs some extra tutoring or this year this one here how do we help that child take their next step based on where they or if they have unique gifts and talents how do we develop those unique gifts and talents and so these seven six to seven categories they just help us they help shape a vision for our house so that we stay aligned and stay connected the other thing that's happened my wife always says we have two vacations every year we have a vacation with the family okay we take them somewhere and then we have a vacation for ourselves that's a couple goal one time we told him our mentor if we're going to disney world he said uh no no no where are you guys where are the two of you going on vacation that's not a vacation that's work you guys need to plan a separate vacation after you come back from that for you guys so we've learned staycations we'll stay right in dallas get a hotel have a great time so we've learned how to have time together. Oh, one more thing that we've learned. Couple friends. We prayed in our 30s, we were so lonely in ministry. We prayed for friends.
It was hard because you're pastoring, you're leading, you're serving. We pray, and God sent us two couples. Two couples that we met over 10 years ago. That we vacation together, we spend time together. It's a safe space where we can be transparent.
We can be, we don't have to be pastor in this or no titles. Do they go to your church? But neither one goes to our church. That's what makes them great. Yeah, yeah.
That's what makes it better. But having friends. Oh, it's been a blessing. To be able to just be you and to be able to share and be authentic has probably been one of the biggest blessings in our lives. Uh Well, we've been speakers at the Weekend Remember Marriage Gateway for 36 years.
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So often you hear a couple say, God's first. But that's all they say. There's no action behind it. You know, what's the most important thing in your marriage? God first.
Okay, what's that look like? I don't know. Do you go to church? Once or twice a month? You know, the average person we pastors know, it's like 1.3 a month now, is average for church.
When our book came out, we ended up somehow, don't ask me how, on the Today Show, and Craig Melvin, who didn't know us, was the host, and he looks at us. He asked a great question. He said, Okay, read your book, so you bring God into your marriage and everything works out. Is that it? And I thought, that's a great question because that's what it can look like.
God first, you just said. Here's what God first looks like. It's in the calendar. It's something we talk about. It's something we pray about.
We vacation. We have community. I just want to make sure our listener heard that because so many of us say the same thing and there's no action to it. You are. Your relationship's lasting 25 years in because it isn't just a motto, you know, God first.
It is, no, this is what it looks like. If you're going to do it, it's going to show up. If God's first, it's going to affect my bank account, right? We pastors know. You know, you're going to see it in your calendar.
You're going to see it in your bank account. I mean, I just want somebody listening to go back and listen to the last five or seven minutes and go, then have a conversation tonight with your wife or your husband and say, what would that look like for the Smiths or the Wilsons or whatever? Because we're not doing that, but we need to be doing some of these things or all these things if we want a relationship that's going to last. Talk time. I like it.
The talk time is huge. And I think it also helps your children to see it as well. Oh, yeah. Your children need to see you setting goals for your family. They need to see you setting goals for how am I going to grow spiritually.
So for me, there was a season where I did Bible study fellowship. This is before I was women's ministry director and so on. I was so new to being a pastor's wife and I just needed a safe place. And Bible study fellowship was that safe place for me because you go to Bible study fellowship and they can't ask you about church or you can't say like, aren't you? And I would love my little, my little Bible study leader leadership.
You'd be like, we don't discuss that here. I'm like, yes, all right. We just do Jesus. Nothing else. But that was my safe place.
But for my kids to see me going off to Bible study fellowship and then that they're staying with their dad instead of I'm getting a babysitter or my mom is watching them. But them seeing their dad love me enough to say, hey, babe, I need you to go and I need you to grow too. And I need you to get filled. And I don't want you to worry about the kids and this, that, this, that. But then this is my advice to that wife.
Or that mom, let him do it. He's not gonna do it like you want him to do it. Yeah, just let him do it. Doesn't matter what they ate, what they dressed, you're going to leave the house to go do what you want. Was that hard for you to do?
Yes.
But I learned a quick lesson. It was with our first child. I would just critique him and I would nag him. I'm like, no, that's not. Brian, please.
I'll never forget. There was one time I was doing laundry, and so I was like, if you can just watch Caitlin. He's like, yeah, yeah. I'm watching the game. I give him Caitlin.
She's laying on his chest. He's eating Dorito. Yeah. This is a bad dad moment for you. He's wiping the Dorito dust on her back of her onesie.
And I'm walking through with the best of clothes, and I'm like, she's a napkin. She's a napkin. He's like, what? It's not hurting her. It's on her back.
She's going to wash it later. She can't reach over. It's not one of those fancy onesies you have for her. It's just a plain onesie. Using our child as a napkin.
And now you would just let that go. I would let it go. I learned that, like, who cares? It is not hurting her. Yep.
I'm with you. I'm with you. That's good advice.
Well, I want to talk about made the last principles with parenting. But let me ask you one last thing because you mentioned a safe couple. Mm. Or couples. Sure.
A lot of couples don't have that. Yeah. How do you get that, and why is it important? We have that, and it's so critical, but. Coach some couples, they gotta have that.
That's really important.
So, help us. I think they start with prayer. Yeah, you have to start with prayer. I think a couple has to start praying now. for God to send that relationship.
I think you gotta pray for it. I don't think they happen by accident. I think they happen as a result of God's grace into our lives. They're an expression of God in us. I think you start out praying.
And then the Lord, you have to take chances, right? You have to spend some time together, try lunch together, you have to try dinner together, try the families together, and just be open to see how it goes. And sometimes you got to see, you know, you got to give it time to figure out: is this the right fit? It's hard to get four people. To really connect well.
And everybody likes each other. And everybody likes each other. Those are rare situations. That's why we only have two. That's not when we have two.
And we don't necessarily mix the two, right? They are two distinct, separate relationships. But I would say pray for it. I would say give it time. I would say you got to be open and honest, be willing to cultivate that relationship.
You've got to protect that relationship, which means what happens there, you stay there. You don't take it outside of it and violate that trust. And then you got to be willing to be friendly.
Sometimes you're just like, well, I'm going to keep all our stuff. I'm not going to share anything. I don't know about them. But you never really build a heart connection without being transparent. Those safe couples, you're vulnerable.
You're sharing the junk. You're sharing the junk. Yeah. I mean, you're not doing that with everybody, but with those, you feel that. With those, yes.
And that's what's so important, right? Yeah. Somebody. Just somebody that you can share with and that you do life with. Two of our couple friends, we each have three kids, and they're all pretty much kind of going through the same season.
I always believe that you should have someone in your life that's walking ahead of you, walking beside you, and then, of course, somebody that you're pulling up behind you. We have a group of another friend, we forgot to mention them that we all, all our kids, our older kids, were all in preschool together, and so we would go on vacations together and we still do it, but we stopped taking our kids because there was like it's like four of us, and so two of us have three kids, and we know we have the most kids, and then there's two couples that only have one kid, so they were like, Oh, we take them everywhere. I'm like, No, we're done with this. We took them to DC. Remember that we went to DC, and that was like our last time.
We were like, We're like, No more kids, no more kids, no more kids. This is not vacation for us, guys. And they're like, No, we're like, No, it's not.
So, anyway, we go on a couples trip with them and stuff. But our kids have been in pre-K together. But every couple needs a meaning you crave it where you can just. Just be yourselves, right? Where you can be honest.
And they don't get mad when you say, Well, you know, Brian is not doing this. And Brian, I don't get bristled up, I don't get resistant. I say, You're right. I probably could do better. And we can talk through it.
You need to do it. She says, not probably. You can do better. But the accountability of friendship is healthy for you, right? It's healthy for me.
You've got to have it. You've got to have it. You just can't do it in isolation. You can't do it in isolation. It doesn't work.
This has been so rich, you guys. Thank you. Lots of great things to apply.
Well, it's great having Brian and Stephanie with us again and just Remember, you can get their book. It's a great book. Yeah, it's called Made to Last: Eight Principles to Build Long-Lasting Relationships. And you can get it at familylifetoday.com. Just click the link in the show notes.
I'll tell you what. A lot of people don't know this, but we're on YouTube. I love watching YouTube clips. You get a lot more out of it, I think, when you're watching YouTube. And the next generation is probably going to watch it rather than just listen to it.
So you can do either or, but if you want to watch and enjoy it, youtube.com slash family life. Just go to youtube.com/slash familylife. Or if you're a big YouTube person, just go to YouTube and type in Family Life. One word. I put three words on there and it still worked: Family Life today.
Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most. Yeah.
