FamilyLife Today®

Bryan Carter: We set goals for our family. Where do we want our marriage and family to go for the year? And so we set goals for us as a couple, as parents, financially, the house, kind of what we trying to do around the house, spiritually. So we're looking at our lives probably through about six key categories and we're saying, okay, what does God want to do in our family this year?

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife 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. It was about a pastor. Things were going great at his church and he felt empty. He sat down with a counselor and I thought, wow, I went through the exact same thing. It was the framework for what his life was about and his marriage.

He's sitting in the studio right now. Bryan and Stephanie Carter are back in the studio. Welcome back, guys.

Bryan Carter: Thank you so much for having us.

Dave Wilson: That’s funny. You're over there like, "I don't know if you're talking about me." I mean, I know you wrote the book a little while ago, but you remember how you opened it. It's called Made to Last and it's eight principles for long-lasting relationships. Pastor of a large church.

So I told Ann when I read it, I said, "Oh my goodness, 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.

Bryan Carter: Sure. Thank you. It was a unique season in our lives where our church was booming. We were adding services, three to four services. 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 was a lot of pressure to come through, right?

I'm in year 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.

Ann Wilson: And how many years had you guys been married at that point?

Bryan Carter: At that point, we probably been married about ten years.

Ann Wilson: And you’d had all your kids by then? So they were little.

Bryan Carter: Right, they were little. We had two, probably seven and five and a little two-year-old tagging around. I'm in seminary as well, so I'm at 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 Rainey. Actually, I talked to Dennis and I said, "Dennis, I need a counselor." He said, "What do you need?" I said, "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."

Ann Wilson: Stephanie, did you know about this?

Stephanie Carter: I didn't. I really 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. We kind of had resolved in our marriage just through premarital that we both can't have two demanding jobs.

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 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. 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 like, "Now 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, "Now wait. Now what's going on?"

But then he just assured me and so then I was just really proud of him that he wanted to go talk to someone. You just don't hear, just talking to different wives, you would hear of wives talking about their husbands not seeking 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."

Ann Wilson: And you knew, Bryan, that you needed that.

Bryan Carter: I knew something was missing. 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 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 and what was happening.

I remember the conversation when she was like, "Now what's going on?" I said, "I don't want to do that." Meaning seeing a lot of leaders fall in ministry. So let me figure out what's happening. I think it's in many of our lives. There is this temptation 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? How am I going through midlife at 37?" He began to describe success and significance. How we climb and climb and try to achieve 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.

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. 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 it would." He said, "What you're really looking for is significance."

He said, "Bryan, what's happening is you've become a bit disconnected 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."

It was 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. I had gotten out of balance. I had gotten out of rhythm. My priorities were all mixed up.

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 was a recalibration of my life. Even now, I have to continue to remind myself of that.

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, let's review some of the verses, scripture memory, let's fast, let's find some time to just be with God. I think that's key to a lot of relationships.

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 going to get along with her or get along with my kids or get along with others. Every relationship is foundational, begins with my relationship with God and everything else flows from there.

Dave Wilson: When you did that, was it something that you saw honestly transformed you, how did it impact this? And of course you were a dad of young kids at the time.

Bryan Carter: I think it helped me to reset my priorities a bit. I think this pressure to perform consumes us, always on email, always looking at your to-do list, always trying to look at the next thing. It's just this constant. At that juncture, it meant Mondays I took my off day. It meant Mondays we took the kids to the park. It meant Mondays, "Babe, I got it, I'm going to do the drop off, I'll do pickup, I'm going to have lunch with them at school today."

I think it meant our date nights were protected. 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, everybody sees that, or leading 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." 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 family. Whether it's our vacations, whether it's family time, it just helped me reset things a bit.

Now every year, we set goals for our family. Where do we want our marriage and family to go for the year? We set goals for us as a couple, as parents, financially, the house, kind of what we trying to do around the house, spiritually. We're looking at our lives probably through about 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. I think that crash or burning out helps you to say, "This I don't want to happen. 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?

Ann Wilson: Stephanie, walk us through that. You sit down, is this on a vacation where you sit down and go through your goals?

Stephanie Carter: Sometimes it's on a vacation, but then also, even before we get to that, we have a talk time. Our talk time is 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. He is the master scheduler. Which is great, I love it.

Basically, that talk time starts every Sunday. When our kids were younger, they really weren't a part of talk time, but now as they got older, I'd probably say late elementary, early middle school, they were a part of talk time. During that talk time, it's our family meeting. It might be, "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.

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.

Bryan Carter: Curtains.

Stephanie Carter: Yes, curtains. You need them. You need some. Like right now, the big thing in our house was wanting to do some things with our backyard. Anytime we've wanted to do something super whatever, he'll be like, "Remember the backyard. 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? When you say, "What are our goals for our marriage this year?" Because most couples don't do this. We just survive, we're just getting through.

Stephanie Carter: We're just trying to make it. 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. We're going to have a devotion time. What did I leave off?

Bryan Carter: That's a good foundation. 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 marriage small group with couples. That's not only going to help us but help those other couples as well.

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. What is 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 how do we help that child take their next step based on where they are or if they have unique gifts and talents, how do we develop those unique gifts and talents. These six to seven categories 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 where we take them somewhere and then we have a vacation for ourselves." That's a couple goal. One time we told our mentor we're going to Disney World. He said, "No, no, no. Where are you guys, where are the two of you going on vacation?" He said, "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."

We've learned staycations. We'll stay right in Dallas, get a hotel, have a great time. We've learned how to have time together. Oh, and one more thing that we've learned: couple friends. 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 prayed and God sent us two couples.

Two couples that we met over ten years ago that we vacation together, we spend time together. It's a safe space where we can be transparent. We don't have to be pastor in this or no titles.

Ann Wilson: Do they go to your church?

Bryan Carter: Neither one go to our church. But having friends has 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.

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Ann Wilson: Again, that's WeekendtoRemember.com.

Dave Wilson: So often you hear a couple say, "God's first." But that's all they say. There's no action behind it. "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."

The average person we pastors know, it's 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 and he asked a great question. He said, "Okay, read your book so you bring God in your marriage and everything works out, is that it?"

Ann Wilson: That’s a good question.

Dave Wilson: 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.

Your relationship's lasting 25 years in because it isn't just a motto, God first. It is, no, this is what it looks like. If God's first, it's going to affect my bank account, right? We pastors know. You're going to see it in your calendar, you're going to see it in your bank account.

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?" 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.

Ann Wilson: Talk time. I like it.

Stephanie Carter: The talk time is huge. I think it also helps your children to see it as well. 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.

For me, there was a season where I did Bible Study Fellowship. This is before I was the women's ministry director and so on, I was so new to being a pastor's wife and I just needed a safe place. Bible Study Fellowship was that safe place for me. Because you go to Bible Study Fellowship and they can't ask you about church.

I would love my little Bible Study leader. She'd be like, "We don't discuss that here" and I'm like, "Yes! Alright, we just do Jesus. Nothing else." But that was my safe place. 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.

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." 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. Just let him do it. Doesn't matter what they ate, what they dressed like, you're going to leave the house to go do what you need to do.

Ann Wilson: Was that hard for you to do?

Stephanie Carter: Yes. But I learned a quick lesson. It was with our first child. I would just critique him and I would nag him and I'm like, "No, that's not Bryan, please." I'll never forget there was one time I was doing laundry and so I was like, "If you can just watch Caitlyn."

He's like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm watching the game." I give him Caitlyn. 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 the back of her onesie.

Dave Wilson: No! No way!

Stephanie Carter: And so I'm walking through with the basket 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. I gotta wash it later. She can't reach over. It's not one of those fancy onesies you have for her. This is just a plain onesie." Using our child as a napkin.

Ann Wilson: And now you would just let that go?

Stephanie Carter: I would let it go. I learned that who cares? It is not hurting her.

Dave Wilson: I’m with you. That’s some good advice. Well, I want to talk about Made to Last principles with parenting. But let me ask you one last thing 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 gotta have that. That's really important. So help us.

Bryan Carter: I think they 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 on us.

Start out praying and then you have to take chances, right? You have to spend some time together. Try lunch together. Try dinner together. Try the families together and just be open to see how it goes. Sometimes you gotta 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 why we only have two.

We don't necessarily mix the two. They are two distinct separate relationships. But I would say pray for it, give it time, you gotta 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.

Then you gotta be willing to be friendly. Sometimes you just like, "Well, I'm going to keep all our stuff, not going to share anything, I don't know about them," but you never really build a heart connection without being transparent.

Dave Wilson: So in those safe couples, you're vulnerable. You're sharing the junk.

Bryan Carter: We're sharing the junk. You're not doing it with everybody, but with those you feel like you can.

Stephanie Carter: And that's what's so important, right? Somebody. Just somebody that you can share with and that you do life with. To our couple friends, we each have three kids. And they're all pretty much going through the same season. I always believe that you should have someone in your life that's walking ahead of you, walking besides you and then of course somebody that you're pulling up behind you.

We have a group of another friends, we forgot to mention them, that all our older kids were all in preschool together. We would go on vacations together. We still do it, but we stopped taking our kids. Because there was like four of us. So two of us have three kids. 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, "No more kids. This is not vacation for us guys." And they're like, "No!" and 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.

Bryan Carter: Every couple needs a place. You crave it where you can just be yourselves. Where you can be honest and they don't get mad when you say, "Well, you know Bryan is not doing this." And 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.

Stephanie Carter: She says, "Not probably. You can do better."

Bryan Carter: But the accountability of friendship is healthy for you. It's healthy for me. You gotta have it. You just can't do it in isolation. It doesn't work. It doesn't work.

Ann Wilson: This has been so rich, you guys. Thank you. Lots of great things to apply.

Dave Wilson: Well, it's great having Bryan and Stephanie with us again and just remember, you can get their book. It's a great book.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, it's called Made to Last: 8 Principles to Build Long-Lasting Relationships.

Dave Wilson: You can get it at FamilyLifeToday.com. Just click the link in the show notes. I tell you what, a lot of people don't know this, but we're on YouTube.

Ann Wilson: I love watching YouTube clips. You get a lot more out of it, I think, when you're watching people.

Dave Wilson: And the next generation's probably going to watch it rather than just listen to us. So you can do either or, but if you want to watch and enjoy it, youtube.com/familylife. Just go to youtube.com/familylife. Or if you're a big YouTube person, just go to YouTube and type in FamilyLife Today.

Ann Wilson: I put three words on there and it still worked: FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.