The Art of Marriage: Tim and Kathy Bush's 42-Year Marriage Story of Resilience and Redemption

Tim and Kathy Bush join us to share their 42-year marriage odyssey, a poignant testimony to resilience and faith's restorative power. Their candid revelations about early trials—a surprise pregnancy, youthful vows, and a long search for happiness—paint a starkly honest picture of marriage. Listen as they discuss Tim's  personal transformation at age 47, offering hope to all who believe in the possibility of change within a relationship.

The Bush's aren't just survivors of marital strife; they care about helping others in their marriages.  They teach "The Art of Marriage" course around the world. Their story is a hopeful example for others, showing that even the most hopeless marriages can  heal, survive and thrive.

Connect with Tim and Kathy via their ministry website, War Room Ministries
https://warroomministries.com/

Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential

Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

I'd like to welcome Tim and Kathy Bush to the Pivotal People podcast. I am excited for this conversation. They have come out with a new book. I'll share the title with you in a minute. It's a doozy, but they are talking about one of my favorite topics, which is marriage, and they teach seminars and they speak at conferences about this important subject from a very honest and real angle. I want to read a little bit of their bio to you. They serve as family life affiliate staff and they share their marriage story at Art of Marriage events across the country and, in 2020, they're founders of War Room Ministries, an organization that works to strengthen marriages and families.

Speaker 1: 1:08

And let me tell you they didn't come out of the gate saying, hey, we want to be marriage experts. They are real people with successful businesses and they've had very successful lives. They've been married 42 years, so they know a little something about marriage. But what they were brave enough to do in their book was to share their real, honest story of their marriage and to show how God can redeem anything. Let me just tell you that. So here's the title. Are you ready? Their book is called Sex on the First Date a story of a broken beginning to a radically transformed marriage. I read it in about two sittings. It's a great read, but I want to thank you for joining us because it's really two pieces that I'd love to talk about. You share your story openly about your marriage and, as I was reading your book, anyone would look at your life and say this is a super, super successful happy couple. You have kids, you have grandchildren. You both have unbelievably successful businesses. I'm looking at them. They're really good looking.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Anyone would say what a great life they have. But you had something. You had marriage problems. So I'm gonna stop right there and just ask you to tell us about yourselves and share your story, and then let's come around to talk about where faith stepped in.

Speaker 2: 2:31

All right. Well, stephanie, thank you first for having us on your show. And boy did we have marriage problems. We had about 27 years of marriage problems, and so, as you started with night number one yeah, it started starting with our really our wedding night.

Speaker 2: 2:47

We, you know our relationship started very fast. I was 17. Tim was 20. As you said what the title of the book was, that's how our dating relationship started, with sex on the first date, and we both really fell hard for each other and continued in the dating relationship having sex and ended up pregnant. I was 18 and we decided to get married because we were going to have a baby, and our daughter, tricia now, who is 41, 41 years old, is truly a gift and we really thank.

Speaker 2: 3:23

God that we did get married and that God made it good. But it was a tough. It was a tough a lot of years, a lot of years. It really was tough because Tim and I spent those 27 years trying to figure each other out, trying to figure out how to make each other happy, and we were looking in all the wrong places for that. We weren't looking to really truly what the answer was for our success.

Speaker 3: 3:47

So for me I tell this on men's events and in marriage events literally all across the country that I did not become a man until I was 47 years old and so did a lot of things. Up to that that most people would say was a man, having successful businesses, being married, having kids, all those things. But I was a boy in every way. Everything I did was selfish, everything was about me, and until I was humbled and literally brought to my knees. But it started out as a young kid. My mom was married nine times. My dad was married four, actually a fifth time he's living with the gal now he's in his 80s, he's still alive. Time he's living with the gal now he's in his eighties, he's still alive. My mom's passed away.

Speaker 3: 4:34

But of those dads, two of my stepdads first my mom and dad divorced at a year old and then two of my stepdads physically abused me to the point where one of them put me in the hospital twice, my brother's dad, and then at age 12, I was adopted by my grandparents and then he kind of taught me how to be successful. But he also taught me how to be promiscuous and how to chase ladies, and the success is what ladies were drawn to and I wanted to make lots of money and be very successful. That's what the women would like. And he was like a cheerleader in that department and literally even telling me someday you're going to be married to somebody like your grandma the rest of your life and you need to sow your wild oats now.

Speaker 3: 5:06

And I trusted him, and that's what I did. And then along came Kath and I saw her as a church girl. I knew I needed to make some changes and I really, really thought that that nice family that she lived in and the church girl she was was going to be the change in me. And it really was up until she got pregnant and then she wasn't fun anymore. Then my old self came back, even before we got married, and it never really went away for almost three decades. So there you go.

Speaker 1: 5:37

You talk about that. I'm so glad you talked about that in your book because I've been to a few marriage seminars and, honestly, I always look and there are the people with the perfect marriage and they've got the 10 steps to perfect marriage and I leave feeling like I have failed in about nine and a half of them. If you have an unbelievable success with their marriage conferences by the way, I mean unbelievable success people are really responding to your being honest. You are talking about your story as if that was so unusual. But you are talking about 1982. You were married.

Speaker 1: 6:13

I was in college and graduated from college in the mid eighties. That was the go-go eighties. Success was measured by a Rolex watch and a sob. I remember everyone had a sob or it was very, a very materialistic time and it was a time where we really dressed for success. That's when that came out. So you were kind of a product of your environment. That was success. And, my gosh, your mother was married nine times. So what is your model? You can't blame yourself, but anyone reading your book would completely understand. And then anyone attending a conference would say, okay, I want what they have because you two have such a beautiful marriage. Now what happened. It has to be pretty vulnerable to share all of this publicly, but I would imagine and you have experienced this you are helping far more people.

Speaker 3: 7:09

We do it out of obedience to the Lord, because if he redeemed our marriage and we feel we literally need to serve him and serve those marriages because of what he did for us, because we don't deserve to be married we literally don't but God had a different plan for us and we know now that he had that plan even before all this stuff happened. He wanted us to go through all these things so we could share them. And Kath was an extreme introvert when we first started marriage ministry. In fact, she said she would do marriage ministry, but she wasn't going to say anything. And so our first marriage event, which was a six-week class, she literally sat behind me and said nothing until we drove home.

Speaker 2: 7:52

And then she told me and on the way home I started telling Tim what he should have said and what he should say the next week and I realized I really felt the Holy Spirit in me say you know what, kathy, you have a voice, you have something to say.

Speaker 2: 8:06

And that's when I started sharing too, because it was really hard at first and as we started in into serving marriages we didn't share like we do now. But it's evolved in a sense that we have to share our whole story. And that's why we wrote the book, because in the conferences we can't share all of that. We touch on a lot of it, but we wanted it put in a book form so that people could read it and they could be drawn into our story. We hear that a lot as we're sharing our story, that we kind of hit every part of broken marriages. You know, we've been through so many things, from infidelity to drug abuse, alcohol, anything that you could think of that would break a marriage. And we tell people we really feel like we stayed married those first 27 years because there was not one of those days that we both said let's get a divorce. There was always one of us that was willing to fight for our marriage.

Speaker 3: 9:03

Mostly me at the start. I just didn't want to see I believe it was Tim.

Speaker 2: 9:07

The first chapter in the book was really my rock bottom, that I really felt like, for the first time, tim was ready to leave me.

Speaker 3: 9:15

And I was ready to leave because I wasn't going to tell her all the things I had done. I thought guys kept those things to the grave. I thought women weren't supposed to act like the guys. So all those years I never told Katharine any of the things that I had done and I wasn't going to tell her because that just wasn't what guys did. And so ultimately I thought it was just time to just to move on, get a divorce and start over, because the kids were raised and we had enough that we could both be successful and and move on. And it's successful in the world's eyes, not in, not in God's eyes, because he never wanted us to get a divorce. He wanted us to do what we're doing and we now we've led over 5 000 couples through the art of marriage. But also, like when I do this stepping up thing for men very first week, I will tell the guys I want you to know whatever you think that you've done bad, I've done worse and I said I'm not bragging about this, but I know I've out sinned you and we're going to talk about that over these coming weeks and so I would gain these guys' trust, because the stepping up thing is also a Dennis Rainey deal, but the subtitle of that is a courageous call to manhood.

Speaker 3: 10:20

All men want to be better men, but they don't know how to do it. And you don't get it from the perfect people at church on Sunday. It's in the broken stories of guys like me that will share our stuff and realize how we came out of it. And then the guys grab a piece of it and then they want to talk. How can I do this myself? And the cool thing is I've had the opportunity to remarry a couple of guys. I have guys that have been buried, you know ask for forgiveness from exes, wives and kids. Those kinds of things are the fruit of it, and you realize it's not me doing anything other than planting seeds. God's doing the work.

Speaker 3: 10:56

But the cool thing is it happens and we see that in marriages too, where people will come into these marriage events that we do. They're not even holding hands, they're on their phones, they're busy and they're literally on different planets, and then by lunchtime the phones go away, the hands are around their backs, they're holding hands and they start to learn some things. And of course our model is we want them to, first off, love the Lord and connect with the Lord and give their lives to the Lord. But then we want them to. The tools we want them to use is God's word, which has always been there, and praying together.

Speaker 3: 11:30

And if we succeed in that, by the end of the conference people are doing their critiques and they'll say my husband prayed with me for the very first time. Or you know, our marriage has a chance now. Or you know, you never know what they're going to say, but the critiques tell it all. We want to hear more of your story, less of the other stuff, and that's kind of how we do the art of marriage. We call it Tim and Kathy style, because nobody does it like us, because nobody has our story Thankfully thankfully for them.

Speaker 1: 11:56

Well, that's you know of right. So the art of marriage is your course. Tell us a little more about where you teach it. You've led 5000 couples, so how long have you been doing your course? And we're going to get to your turning point, because your turning point is really so inspiring.

Speaker 2: 12:14

Turning point was before we started doing marriage medicine.

Speaker 3: 12:17

Yes, we started the first time we did in the living room church, I think called I Marriage, by Andy Stanley. It was a six week course and we did it and there was 36 couples and, the amazing thing, people really liked it and it was in the summer and the attendance was like 100 percent. Everybody came back every week and what we did, and so then when we left that church and got called to another church, I knew that we wanted to continue to do it. Kath wasn't so sure, so we went.

Speaker 2: 12:45

No, I wasn't sure, because we actually moved to the largest church in the area so I knew it was going to be a lot of people like we were going to have to be talking to a lot of people. So that's when I told Tim all right, if we're going to continue in marriage ministry, we're going to go get some training, we're going to go to some marriage conferences. And that's when we I found weekend, family lives weekend to remember and we went and attended the weekend to remember and that's where we got introduced to the art of marriage and we and that's when I really felt God move in my heart.

Speaker 3: 13:16

And our lead pastor. I called him on Sunday morning really early and I said, Pastor Dave, I said I think this is a God thing. We shouldn't be doing I marriage, we should be doing the art of marriage and sharing our story with it. And what do you think? And he says, well, if you think it's a God thing, I think it's a God thing, Let think it's a God thing. I think it's a God thing, let's do it.

Speaker 3: 13:36

We did 13 six-week classes and multiple other things in that church, over 1,300 couples just at that church. And so God really showed up with the art of marriage and stepping up. Because then we got on the cruise and we met Dennis and Barbara Rainey and Dave and Ann Wilson and things just started to all these relationships and God started to use us in other places. And that's kind of when we do these events. We've gone as far away to the east as Puerto Rico and as far to the west as Kona, Hawaii, and we don't charge. We charge for our resources and expenses but because of what God's done for us and we're blessed, we can go do these events and not charge.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Oh, how wonderful. Okay, so I didn't get that from your book and I didn't even think about that, but what a service. There are so many lines in your book that I highlighted One was God doesn't call the equipped, he equips the ones he calls yes. The other line I loved you were talking about when you were you went through a stage of being, you know, struggling financially. He said we were so poor we couldn't even pay attention.

Speaker 3: 14:41

That's so true. 1982, I first got married, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:46

I've been talking about saving money as my career for so long. I wish I'd had that line 25 years ago. So let's talk about your turning point. Share with us what happened. How did you come to faith? I mean, this is such a radical change. Anyone reads this book if you see their life prior which is not so different than many people's lives, by the way, but you did check a lot of boxes so you can relate to a lot of people and they can relate to you, and that's the beauty of it, and you're not hiding that. I had a guest yesterday and they had a line that was theology without love is shameology. So, yeah, we know what the Bible says and we know we're human and we love each other. And, and now let's talk about forgiveness and redemption. So I'm going to be quiet and let you share your story of kind of, where did it go from? Rock bottom.

Speaker 3: 15:40

I think go ahead, you want to start with the counseling.

Speaker 2: 15:42

So when we hit rock bottom and Tim was ready to leave, I really that was our 25 year old.

Speaker 2: 15:47

That was 25 years. We had just our youngest son had moved out of the house. So we were. We had just our youngest son had moved out of the house. So we were. We were empty nesters and I had just returned back from aesthetic school, which I wasn't even sure I was coming back.

Speaker 2: 16:00

But there was just something in me that I knew I wanted to come back and make this marriage work.

Speaker 2: 16:06

And so when we hit rock bottom, I begged him to go to a counselor and we knew of this husband, wife, christian counselor couple that I called them up she had actually been counseling our daughter and I called them up and I and I told him and we actually we sat down and we came to the realization that we needed to either figure out how to be married and be able to be faithful and have a good marriage, or we needed to get a divorce.

Speaker 2: 16:35

And so we kind of had that talk and so we started this intensive counseling. I would go see her, tim would go see the husband, and then for two years we did this and then the four of us would come together in that one week see one and then one week see the other, and then four of us would come together, but we did that for two years solid. So I really felt like during those two years we had really worked through. I was completely honest in counseling, which I assumed my husband was being honest. I found out later that he wasn't being honest, but I really got to a place that I was-.

Speaker 3: 17:10

I was semi-honest with about 10%.

Speaker 2: 17:11

Yeah, and I even told my counselor. I felt like I didn't have anything else to talk about. I felt like I had kind of graduated from the counseling Tim and I seem to be doing pretty good, and so I had told Tim. And there was something in Tim. He said he wanted to keep seeing Jake and I said that was fine, you go see him as much as you want. Well, then there was a turn, so then you can talk about what happened.

Speaker 3: 17:34

Yeah, in 2006 and 07, we were making all kinds of money, very successful, rocking and rolling, getting ready to buy another franchise car deal, and I had several businesses and they were all working on all eight cylinders. In the summer of 08, my brother, who I talk about in the book we got disconnected because of a family member and we connected and forgave each other and started work on what I would call building my own kingdom here on earth, and I show that in the book. But anyway, my brother, I noticed that he was limping and the limping ended up being a brain tumor and he was 43 years old. He had stage four glioblastoma and the doctor said he had months, maybe a year or so, to live and he had a wife and a six-year-old daughter and then later that fall, our nephew committed suicide and so that kind of broke our family. And then the financial crisis in 08 affected us because my kingdom on earth was all being financed by one bank, the same as our dealership so, and that bank went into receivership. So all of a sudden we had no bank and I didn't know how to do it because I started getting sick, filled with anxiety and depression, to the point where in December of 08, I couldn't sleep and things started to come, in my opinion, down around me and I was to the point where all I could think about was death and debt. That's it.

Speaker 3: 19:04

So, around the first part of 2009, I started contemplating suicide and really, really felt that was the only way out and in the way I could help my family, which was in manipulation. I wanted to help my family with the life insurance and they could do all that and ultimately I ended up with a psychiatrist who gave me some, I think, called Zyprexa, that made me sleep and helped me get on some other drugs. He misdiagnosed me as bipolar, but ultimately we got another doctor involved and I got off those drugs. That was a whole process, but at this point I'm drinking like a fifth a day and I'm taking drugs prescription and non-prescription and I went and bought a bible and I'm reading 70 pages a night, whiskey in one hand, bible on the other, and trying to figure things out, and I could not work. So I was. I had all this stuff going on, couldn't work my way out of it, as I'd always been able to do, and then my brother died on februth of 2009.

Speaker 3: 20:00

And we thought things were going to get better, but instead it got worse. So we went to Mexico and my friend Bob I had asked to give me some Xanax because my psychiatrist wasn't going to give me any more, just enough to get down there and back. And so I knew this is what was going to keep me numb and keep me okay. So I was going to get some. And he went to Kath and asked her about it and then I said I would.

Speaker 3: 20:23

Then he came back to me and says I'll get you the drugs, but I want you to consider reading the Bible. And I said dude, I am 70 pages a night, whiskey in one hand, bible in the other. And he says no, I want you to slow down, I want you to read like one proverb a day and just take your time and slow down. And I said you know what, bob, I'll consider that, but you can give me the drugs, right? That's really all I cared about. But I didn't read the Bible right away, the way he said. I came back and a few weeks later I had asked Kath if she would read the Bible with me and she's.

Speaker 2: 20:57

Yeah, it was about three weeks after we got home from Mexico and he told me what Bob had said. And when Tim asked me to read the Bible, I actually say like that is the sexiest thing my husband had ever done up till that point, Like that was the first time. It was a godly way that he was leading me and I was. I was like, of course I will read the Bible with you. And so we started reading. We read a chapter of Proverbs every day.

Speaker 3: 21:22

And then I started. We started on this thing called Advocare and there was a 28-day cleanse that did not allow you to drink alcohol for 28 days. So we're reading the Bible, no alcohol. I'm weaning off my drugs because Jake, my counselor, is actually helping me and he gave me a way to do it, and different than what my psychiatrist said, because he wanted me to wean me off over a period of time.

Speaker 3: 21:45

And then the pastor it was associate pastor, he was an interim and he was leading my brother through his death in hospice. He was concerned about me. He said, hey, I want you to go through grief counseling. And he said I've got a group starting. You lost me a group. No, grief counseling. And he said I've got a group starting. You lost me a group. No group for me, I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 3: 22:06

And he says well, how about if I, how about if I take you through one on one? And so I did that with him for several weeks and on the fourth or fifth week my anxiety was starting to become at bay and we are, in God's word, not drinking. And he said, tim, I could lose my job for this. I'm going to bring you in and close the door this time and he said I've been a pastor for 40 years. I've never had this conversation with another person ever. I want you to really listen to me because it's important. He said I think this is from the Lord. The Lord's got a calling on your life and it's a big calling and it's not here. You need to go find yourself a.

Speaker 2: 22:45

Jesus-loving Bible-teaching church and figure out what that calling is and I want you to know.

Speaker 3: 22:48

I didn't know what a calling was.

Speaker 2: 22:48

But I knew my church girl wife would know. And let me let me, when Tim says church girl, it was because I went to church as a kid, like he, that's what he was attracted to. Our family went to church so yeah, he considered me a church girl. I did not live like a church girl but yeah, when he came home and told me what this pastor said, I I said I don't know what a calling is either, but it sounds good, we should go find it. And I said isn't every church at Jesus loving Bible, teaching church? I just assumed that, and so that started us on a journey to find that Jesus loving Bible teaching church and to lead us to our calling and to understand that we were.

Speaker 2: 23:22

Because we actually thought for those 27 years leading up to this point we would have called ourselves Christians. We, you know, we went to a church and they read the first and second lesson and did the gospel. I mean, I went through confirmation. I thought I was a Christian, we thought we were Christians until we realized we had never surrendered our life to the Lord. We were Sunday morning Christians and by the time it was Friday night. There was not even a thought of God was like I believe that I was saved through God's word. When we took alcohol out of our life and we were reading the Bible we were reading Proverbs, went into Psalms, we read into, went into the gospels I felt like the Bible came alive to me and we were just blown away as to what was in the word of God, like we had no clue that this was what the Bible was, and it made sense, like those blinders that had been on our eyes.

Speaker 3: 24:19

The blinders were gone and it made sense, Like those blinders that had been on our eyes. The blinders were gone and after I had shared all my infidelity with Kath back in February, March of 2009,. I thought she would leave and she didn't.

Speaker 3: 24:29

She stayed Well and this was done because the counselor that he was seeing that Tim was still working through issues and he kept he thought it was the abuse from my stepdad and we went through that and then he finally said there's something else you're not telling me. And I'd been going to him at this point over three years and I told him. I said, well, there's this and he goes, tell me more. And he actually kept the appointment long, made the other people wait out in the lobby and he said you got to tell Kath this stuff and it was all about infidelity. And he said I got to tell her. So I told Kath and she didn't go anywhere. But then a family member had came to Kath right after that and said you need to leave Tim, he's been a bad husband, all these things. And Kath came to me and said I'm not leaving. And she said no matter what happens if we lose everything, I'm staying. And I look back at that and I want you to know that's the first time I feel like I saw Jesus was through my wife. I didn't know it then but I felt it. And now I realize that there's this unconditional love I didn't deserve and it was from her.

Speaker 3: 25:29

But you know, when we fast forward to that church we were looking for, we went to the church where we got saved where I got saved, and Catholic, she said she got saved by the God's word. But we went to that church and I went in and I didn't want to be there because the music was weird. It wasn't the hymns and the songs I liked, it was this stuff called worship music. And I got up and left Kath in the second pew, walked out in the foyer and some guy was there and he says I know him now. But he said hey, what are you doing? I said, well, this isn't for me, I don't like this music. And he said this is for you. Get back in there.

Speaker 3: 26:01

So I went back in, but you know, to get to the transformation moment that you were looking for, we'd gone to this church and we decided to go to this Christmas concert on December 20th of 2009. And they wanted us to help set up the church this is a smaller church and everybody was supposed to. And I said no, we'll just pay more for the tickets. We're going to go to the concert, but we're not going to do any of that work. We're not interested in that.

Speaker 3: 26:25

And we went through the whole concert and at the very end and I found this out during the book writing because in one of the videos I don't know if you saw all the videos or not, but there's eight videos in that book but in one of the videos the pastor, pastor Mel, said that song was not scheduled for the night and in fact I heard this chanting. I didn't even know what it was Lighthouse, lighthouse. And it was not on one of their charts. They weren't going to sing it and so they ended up singing it and during that song I literally felt the Holy Spirit come inside.

Speaker 1: 26:55

Oh, wow, so you felt it through music. Kathy met God Christ through reading the Bible. Yeah yeah, and I think that's beautiful, because there's no, we can't predict how God is going to reach out to us and we can all worship differently.

Speaker 2: 27:12

Yes.

Speaker 1: 27:13

It's worshiping God, it's not worshiptainment, right, and you didn't think you liked that music, but then God spoke to you through it.

Speaker 3: 27:22

It's, and I love your favorite Bible verses?

Speaker 1: 27:25

Of course I love those verses too, but especially Kathy's. Is it 2 Corinthians 5, 17? You know you are a new creation, so I have to tell you my parents, my mother and stepfather except for some of it they had a similar story. So I was raised. So I related to your children's letters.

Speaker 2: 27:46

Okay.

Speaker 1: 27:47

I related to their feelings because our families, our three kids in my family, our safe place from the crazy family was going to church. So we all became Christians in high school and our youth group in our high school was. And then we would come home to crazy, but then we would go to church. And but then, after we all went, when they were empty nesters, our parents came to Christ and they were a million percent. They were both Bible study leaders and I, my mother's faith grew my faith. There's no doubt about it. So it's an amazing testimony, but it is as I said in the beginning. It's so helpful.

Speaker 1: 28:29

But my mother used to always say you know, when I would be hard on myself over something, she would say you are a new creation. That was like my mother, because my mother could look at herself and she could look at my stepfather and say we are new creations. And if we could all truly believe that, instead of the shameology, if we could truly believe that, how free would we be. If you didn't truly believe that, you could not do the ministry you're doing today and who knows how much. If you have brought 5,000 couples closer to God through your marriage conferences and seminars, imagine how many people are going to be helped with this book and I think that spicy title is going to help pull them in to the book section and, like I said, it's extremely vulnerable. It'd be very easy to write a sugar-coated book. It would be very easy to do that. So I know that this wasn't easy. Let me tell you, stephanie.

Speaker 2: 29:28

So we actually started this project three years ago, actually now, probably almost four years ago. We had a different writer and we spent hours, months, a year and a half working with her. We got the book we were going to actually have it published. We got it to the publisher, to the proposal for the publisher spot, and ginger ended up with, uh, covid, and passed away. Oh no, yes. So we, oh my gosh. So we started the whole book all over again. But God is so good, because she would not do that title. A publisher would not do Sex on the First Date. We wanted that title because we want people who are going to look at Fifty Shades of Grey, we want them to pick up this book and the gospel.

Speaker 3: 30:15

Because you don't hear so much of the gospel in the first few chapters.

Speaker 2: 30:18

By design it grows, but our writer that we got with that, lisa Stilwell. She had heard about Tim and I and she was praying. She said Lord, god, please don't give me a sweet marriage story. And then she read about us and she was like this is exactly what I want. And she goes and you've got to keep that title. So it all worked out.

Speaker 3: 30:41

And our kids too. You talked about the letters from them. Those are unfiltered. We did them exactly how they wrote them, and they were heart-wrenching.

Speaker 1: 30:49

But I'll tell you, my mother passed away 14 years ago. I was a Christian, you know. I mean on the spiritual maturity spectrum I was younger. She really brought me along faster because she cared so much. She wanted me to understand this new creation total forgiveness thing, not this Enneagram three you have to be successful thing. But she gave me so many different Christian books. She gave me my first grown up Bible with my inscribed.

Speaker 1: 31:20

I read it every single day and I think of her faith and how it's impacted me, even though the crazy because you know what I saw the crazy. So her faith to me was so completely genuine and real that was more powerful than anything. So I don't know, I think that, yeah, it's hard to share this and maybe it was hard for your kids to a degree. But also I read Trisha's beautiful letter at the end and you know what they don't even realize at this point when you guys are gone someday and they're much older, how much they will appreciate this legacy that you've left. I appreciate my mother's faith legacy so much. I can't even tell you and I'm not even sure she realized to the degree. I mean, I could go on all day about this, but when she passed away.

Speaker 1: 32:15

There were a lot of books she had sent me that I had never read and I read them all and I you know, when you lose someone you love, that's when you really search for what I call the hope of heaven, like, oh, this sounded good and I was a good Christian. I went to church, but, okay, now wait a minute, this thing better be true Because I just lost someone I love. So this better be true. And all of those books that she gave me and that Bible and all the devotionals were my tools to get through her death. She didn't know that's when I would finally be picking him up and reading him, so really, the tool to get through her death was her legacy of faith.

Speaker 3: 32:51

And we're all going to have legacies and when you think about it, the things you do today and we talk about this in especially chapter 20, in the Stakes in the Ground, what you do today could impact generations a hundred years from now that you're not even going to know.

Speaker 1: 33:05

Right.

Speaker 3: 33:06

And so if you think the culture is going to raise your kids and grandkids, or the church or school, you need to have a bigger, a bigger thought and how you could impact your kids and grandkids and and how you treat your wife and how you treat your grandma, your kids' grandma, your grandma, how you treat your kids' grandma. She's a grandma. They call her granny.

Speaker 1: 33:26

She does not look like one.

Speaker 3: 33:29

I'm pretty lucky that way, pretty blessed. But the grandkids, they know without a doubt that we love each other and we take care of each other.

Speaker 2: 33:38

And we serve in marriages.

Speaker 3: 33:39

We serve in marriages and we pray together every day.

Speaker 1: 33:43

They catch us.

Speaker 3: 33:44

We don't stop if they're not here and we read the Bible every day and we don't stop when they're here either. So we invite them, and if they don't want to do it, that's fine. But they know we do it and they know we pray. You heard it in the videos from the grandkids they pray for us all the time they read their Bibles. And when your grandkids catch that, it's pretty big.

Speaker 2: 34:03

Well, Stephanie, that's really encouraging to hear from you how you felt about your mom.

Speaker 3: 34:08

Yes.

Speaker 2: 34:09

Because you know, as parents of adult children, it can sometimes kind of be hard. You don't want to be pushy. I remember our son-in-law when we were radically changed. He says when mom and dad, he calls us mom and dad. When mom and dad were saved every birthday, every Christmas, it was like you get a Bible, you get a Bible, you get a Bible. You know, and it's like we've I mean, we were definitely fire hoses and we have we have calmed down and backed back down a little bit, but it's encouraging to hear you say how much that meant to you what your mom did, because we definitely, tim and I.

Speaker 3: 34:46

We definitely buy our kids some books yeah we buy books and we share our faith.

Speaker 2: 34:51

We're the same people we are whether we're with friends or with our kids or our grandkids. I mean, we're that new creation. We're not wavering.

Speaker 3: 34:59

Well, like my boundary thing and the stakes in the ground, I tell guys when I meet with them if you ever see me anywhere in the country, no matter where it is, and I'm with the opposite sex, I want you to walk up to me and ask me which family member this is. I dare you to do it because that's, our boundaries are that solid. We don't want to. We're not going to have coffee or lunch or sit by somebody of the opposite sex. We're just not going to do that. We're going to do that and even the perception of that. We don't want it to happen because perception becomes reality and that's what breaks a lot of churches some perception of things. It might not even be the reality. Churches get broke because somebody's got their door closed and all of a sudden something happens or doesn't happen, but the perception is. Something is.

Speaker 2: 35:45

Well, we also know who the enemy is, and we don't want to give him a place to get anywhere in between our relationship, don't?

Speaker 3: 35:53

let the enemy get a foothold, but realize the enemy doesn't do it one foot at a time, he goes an inch at a time. He grabs those feet by the inch and we've got to be careful.

Speaker 1: 36:02

You mentioned Andy Stanley. We're members of his church, I mean he's we also did his marriage class and yeah it's, it's just super deceiving. It's, you know, being friends, and I mean he goes through all of it and he speaks from the pulpit and he tells so many examples of things that he has seen and anyone can relate to it. It's just human stuff. It's just human stuff.

Speaker 3: 36:25

So our first calling we thought was orange. So we came there to Reggie Joyner's at the Orange Conference.

Speaker 1: 36:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:32

We went to your big church.

Speaker 1: 36:33

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3: 36:35

But there was no church that day. We went in and saw the two-sided stage and we saw all the. It was so cool because we thought that was our calling.

Speaker 2: 36:42

We really felt like, because we missed it with our kids, that maybe we could make up for it if we went into children's ministry, and it was. Then we realized it just became clear to us what God did in our marriage. That's where we needed to serve Well that's obviously like I said.

Speaker 1: 37:00

he equipped you and it's working because you have helped so many people already and this is really just the beginning. One of the advantages of getting married at 18 is that you're done so early.

Speaker 1: 37:14

I know You've got a whole, whole big runway ahead of you and I'm excited to watch it. And I just I want to thank you and I'm excited to watch it and I just wrote. I want to thank you for taking your time to do this. I so enjoyed your book. I told you before we started recording. I've already shared some of your nuggets of wisdom with people and I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes and if, if you are in the Atlanta area I need to know that because we want to go to one of your conferences.

Speaker 3: 37:42

Okay, I'll remember.