When Finding Success Feels Empty: Bryan & Stephanie Carter

Hey, this is Shelby Abbott with Family Life Today.

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Again, that's weekendtoremember.com. Now every year 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, OK, what does God want to do in our family this year? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

You can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app. 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. And I was like, I don't know if you saw something. I remember that. I mean, I know you wrote the book a little while ago, but you remember how you opened 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, married 25 years, three kids, you're in the middle of it and, you know, pastor of a large church for 20 years.

Dallas. 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 framed 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 circles. We were in the midst of a building project. I succeeded at our church, the founder.

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. 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 that's happening. But it was at that juncture. I'm 37 at the time, and I end up talking to Dennis, right? Actually, I talked to Dennis, and then I said, then I need a counselor. He said, what do you need? 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 that's 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. He was just so busy. 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 he just seemed like he thrived off of it. Maybe because 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?

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, now what? 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, you know, just talking to different wives. You would hear 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. I just knew that there was something missing.

And it wasn't my wife, one of 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. And I had 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. What is that?

What in the world is that? I was like, how am I going through midlife at 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 said, 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'd say I had gotten 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 kind of, it was a recalibration of my life. And even now I have to continue to remind myself 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 script your 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. And that's your first chapter. That's the first chapter. God first. Yeah, God first. Which is, for Dave and I, it's vertical.

It's so similar to our story. Yeah, go vertical is more important than horizontal. But Steph, did you see this? Did you notice it? Did you see a change? How did it impact your relationship?

Yeah, I definitely saw a change afterwards. He's always concerned, like, with my growth, whether it's spiritually, mentally. And so being a pastor's wife, that was kind of overwhelming because we had two small children at the time, had left teaching. So he knew I was struggling with that. He knew he recognized kind of the sacrifice. And so one of the sweetest things he did, and I did not realize this until after she passed, was he called Lois Evans, Tony Evans' wife, and asked her to be my friend. He was like, can you just check on my wife? And I love that Lois was like, oh, she asked for it. She's like, no, what did you do?

He was like, nothing. She just doesn't have anybody. Sometimes being in ministry and just being a pastor's wife or being the senior pastor's wife can be very lonely because it's not like you can just kick it with everybody or just be friends with everybody. And she was a safe place. She was a safe place to have.

So he always was concerned or always was just making sure that I was kind of taken care of. I know that, you know, when I read that, I really connected. You even said in your paragraph that you would go to the Word of God to get a sermon, or something like that. And I was like, oh, you know, I think every pastor relates to that. You open the Word of God, intending to spend time with God, and all of a sudden you're starting to put a three-point outline together out of this passage. And you're like, look at what I'm doing.

I'm not meeting with God. I am now trying to create something that I can give to people and they'll go, you know, thank you or wow. And it's like you're saying God's first, but it's really the ministry's first. 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. I think it helped me to reset my priorities a bit. I think this 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. It meant Mondays where I took the kids to the park. It meant Mondays, babe, I got it. I'm doing the drop off. I do pick up.

I'm gonna go have lunch with them at school today. So I think 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 our family and 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 on vacation this year?

Let's make sure we take care of that, right? Are we going to this marriage conference just to go and not to teach? So 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 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 hear 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 kind of, to some extent, the crash or burning out, right, 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, to guard 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. It used to be 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. So 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 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 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 can not be on the same page. So I might want to do something. Curtains. Yeah, curtains. Curtains. You need them.

You need some. Like right now our big thing in our house was wanting to do some things with our backyard. So any time 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 are going to pray for each other consistently. And so we're going to have a devotion time.

What did I leave off? That's a good foundation. There you go. 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 only going to help us would 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 want to do for our marriage specifically. And then we'll add others around financial.

Right. What was our plan? Financial. Where we're going together as couples. Parenting. What activities 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 this one here.

How do we help that child take their next step based on where they are? If they have unique gifts and talents, how do we develop those unique gifts and talents? And so these six or seven category, 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. OK, 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, 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. And 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 pray in our thirties. We were so lonely in ministry. We pray for friends.

It was hard because you're a 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 vacationed together. We spend time together. It's a safe space.

We can be transparent. We don't have to be pastor in this or no titles. Do they go to your church?

Neither one go to our church. That's what makes it great. Yeah, yeah. 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 is probably been one of the biggest blessings in our lives is for that. I mean, you know, what I just heard is so good because 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.

OK, what's that look like? Oh, 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 one point three a month now is average for sure. 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, OK, read your book. So you bring God in 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 relationships 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 ago, then have a conversation 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 to 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 loved 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 going to do it like you want him to do it. Yeah. Just let him do it.

It doesn't matter what they eat, what they dress like. I don't care. You're going to leave the house to go do what you need to do. 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 Doritos.

Y'all, this is a bad dad moment for you. He's wiping the Dorito dust on her back of the laundry. I can see it. 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. It's on her back.

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. I'm with you.

I'm with you. That's some good advice. Well, I want to talk about made the last principles with parenting tomorrow. But let me ask you one last thing today because you mentioned a safe couple or couples. A lot of couples don't have that. How do you get that and why is it important? We have that and it's so critical. But coach some couples.

They got to 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 got to 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. Those are rare situations.

That's rare. That's why we only 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 and violate that trust. And then you got to be willing to be friendly. Sometimes you just like, well, I'm going to keep all our stuff and I'm going to share anything.

I don't know about them. But you never really build a heart connection without being transparent. In those safe couples, you're vulnerable. You're sharing the junk. Yeah. I mean, you're not doing that with everybody, but with those you feel like. 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 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 no, we have the most kids.

And then 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 D.C., remember that? We went to D.C. 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. We're like, no.

We're like, no, it's not. So anyway, we go on a couple's trip with them and stuff. But our kids have been in pre-K together and our kids will all graduate next year from college. But every couple needs a place. You have to have it. I mean, you're craving where you can just be yourself.

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 people to help you. And she says, not probably.

You can do better. But the accountability of friendship is healthy for you. It's healthy. It's healthy for me. You gotta have it.

You gotta 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. Thank you. Lots of great things to apply.

You know, I love this. Get people into your life who you trust and who you can be honest with, regardless of your life stage. Laugh together. Cry together. Be honest together.

Because community is what we were made for. I have learned so much from other couples who walk with Jesus by simply observing their marriages and frankly copying what they do in certain areas. We all need this and it's so, so valuable.

I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to David Ann Wilson with Brian and Stephanie Carter on Family Life Today. Brian has written a book called Made to Last. Eight principles to build long lasting relationships. Brian lays out clear insights, ways to tap into the love and power of God and practical effective steps to improve our most important relationships. You can find a copy of that book at familylifetoday.com or you can give us a call at 800-358-6329.

That's 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now coming up tomorrow, David and Wilson are back again with Brian and Stephanie Carter. They're going to talk about transitioning from dictatorship parenting style to a coaching approach. That's a tough shift for all of us, but a necessary one. We hope you'll join us for that tomorrow. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.