FamilyLife Today®

Guest (Male): You've got 30 seconds. I didn't prep you for this. You have no idea what I'm going to ask you. But a single girl comes up to you and says, "I'm getting married. I want to have the best marriage ever. Tell me what I need to do in 30 seconds." Go.

Guest (Female): I'd just say one thing. You need to base it—

Guest (Male): No, you're not allowed to say Jesus.

Guest (Female): No, I'm going to say that. You have to base it on the rock of Jesus, or it's going to be really hard. And even with Jesus, it can still be hard.

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

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: We've got Bryan Carter and his wife Stephanie in the studio today. Welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Bryan Carter: Thank you so much.

Dave Wilson: What a lot of people may not know is you are on the FamilyLife board.

Bryan Carter: It's been an honor to serve. But I've been connected to FamilyLife for probably 20 years.

Ann Wilson: Really? How did you get connected?

Bryan Carter: I met Dennis in 2002 at a mentoring conference. Crawford Loritts had organized it. He had invited young pastors, young preachers. And what happened out of the conference was every person there got a mentor.

It just so happened there was a lot of gentlemen there, but I was fortunate enough to get Dennis as my mentor for two years. So it was Bryan Loritts, myself, and a couple of other guys. Every month we talked on the phone. And it was a mentoring call, and then once a year we had a gathering together. And so it was a joy to talk to Dennis once a month.

Ann Wilson: Had you and Stephanie been married yet?

Stephanie Carter: 2002, so we had just had our first baby.

Bryan Carter: About three or four years.

Ann Wilson: So it was perfect timing for Dennis Rainey to come into the picture. New in ministry, new in marriage and family.

Bryan Carter: But we've been talking on the phone for once a month for almost 20 years. We're still talking, 22 years now. We have a call scheduled for tomorrow.

Ann Wilson: That's awesome.

Dave Wilson: So did you guys meet in high school? You told us earlier that Bryan was this amazing high school athlete. Were you just following him around the court or what?

Stephanie Carter: No, we did not meet in high school. I went to University of Oklahoma. He went to Oklahoma State.

Dave Wilson: Were you rivals then? How did you meet?

Stephanie Carter: Oh yeah, we were very rivals. So we met through some mutual friends. And so we met at a Big Eight conference on student leadership. They introduced us there, and he seemed like really not into me. So I kind of felt like, "Wait, I thought you were trying to meet me."

Dave Wilson: Bryan, what was that?

Bryan Carter: Well, I was just trying to make sure. They told me she was interested. I was just trying to make sure. I didn't want to seem too overly aggressive. I just wanted to let things play itself out. So I asked for her number like a week or two later.

Dave Wilson: A week or two later?

Bryan Carter: Well, I didn't want to press, no pressure. But the first time we talked, we talked for like two hours. We just kind of connected. It was like a natural connection. Sometime, maybe a month later or a few weeks later, we dated. We went on our first date together to—where did we go? Putt-putt? Was that the first game?

Stephanie Carter: Okay, so I have to give this to Bryan. He had great conversation, and I just don't feel like young men back then did. When we tell this story, young women today will be like, "Yeah, it's still the same."

So we just talked on the phone and had great conversation. And then he planned this great date. Now I'm not going to lie. I think it was just my mom had kind of scared me a little bit. She had watched too much Dateline. So when we're going on our date—I mean, OU is in Norman, Oklahoma. So everything pretty much is a typical college town. So when he said we're going to the Olive Garden, I was like, "Okay, I know where that is in Norman."

And so when we drove past the Olive Garden, I was like, "Oh my goodness." This was before cell phones and you felt like somebody could track you. And I said, "Where—I thought we were going to the Olive Garden." He's like, "Yeah, we're going to the Olive Garden in Oklahoma City. I thought we could just talk more if we—"

Ann Wilson: How far is that?

Stephanie Carter: 30 minutes.

Dave Wilson: Oh, that's impressive.

Ann Wilson: That's more impressive in my mind than putt-putt.

Stephanie Carter: Well, putt-putt is coming. But that's a part of it. It's a two-parter. So we go to dinner, and the waitress in the middle of dinner comes out with yellow roses to give to me.

Dave Wilson: Wait, wait a minute. Are you serious?

Bryan Carter: I had dropped by the restaurant before.

Dave Wilson: Impressive. They're fist-bumping right now.

Stephanie Carter: Yes. So he had the yellow roses, which was really sweet. And then he said, "I remember that you said you love to ice skate or we can go putt-putting. What would you like to do?" And then I was like, "We have something else to do?" in my head. I was saying this. I was like, "Sure, we can go miniature golfing. That sounds great."

Ann Wilson: And did you think, "I'm going to beat you because I'm such a good athlete"?

Stephanie Carter: And I did. I did beat him.

Bryan Carter: I had a plan. Whoever lost had to pay for the next date. So I set myself up to lose. I took the fall. I took the dive so that I could get another date.

Stephanie Carter: No, because I beat him fair and square.

Ann Wilson: I have a feeling you still are.

Stephanie Carter: Dating him was really—he just was super, super sweet. Just had never seen anything like that, just super romantic, great conversation. Now I will be honest. When I asked my friends about him—like before I gave them my number so he could call me—I said, "Okay, so tell me something about him."

And they were like, "Well, he goes to Oklahoma State." I was like, "Okay." And they're like, "Oh, he's in a fraternity." "Okay." And then they're like, "He's the president of the Black Student Association at Oklahoma State." I was like, "Okay." And, "Yeah, he's a minister." I was like, "Absolutely not. Wait a minute. Absolutely not."

Dave Wilson: Why? What are you asking why? You were the same way. You said I will never be a pastor's wife. Ever.

Stephanie Carter: Exactly. I kept feeling like, "No." I guess because I would just see that pastor's wife, and she just looked like, "God help me."

Dave Wilson: Bryan, what was your family life? It sounds like you come from a really good family.

Bryan Carter: So my dad was a pastor. I watched his transformation. I watched him going to church off and on, really becoming really committed to ultimately saying, "I want to be a minister. I want to be a pastor. I want to start a church." And so he started a church when I was about 10. But he's also a mechanic and a craftsman.

So he takes these old buildings and he remodels them. And he turns them into churches. My middle school years are spent after school going to help him as he remodels this church into a facility. It was that was part of what we did. Very involved in church, very engaged in church. So as a young man, I just felt a call on my life to do ministry.

At that age, like 15, 16, 17, I knew I wanted to be a pastor. Now mind you, I expected every pastor to be bi-vocational. So my plan was to teach school, be a principal, and be a pastor. I just felt like that connected me to the community. And I could do all of it together. It just felt like a natural fit.

So even when I went off to college, I was a science and education major because I felt like this would be the pathway where I can serve people, connect with people, help people.

Dave Wilson: It would be Principal Carter.

Bryan Carter: Yeah, listen, it all goes together. Principal and pastor, it all goes together. So it felt like a natural move. And so watching my dad and my mom together, learning how to treat a woman, all of those things collided when I met her. I always knew I wanted to get married. We were dating sophomore year in college. I knew I needed a wife.

And so I'm looking. And so when we meet, it just is this connection that really—and so even when we first start meeting, we're coming to church together. I'm driving, she's driving, meet at church. It just is a connection there because I knew what I wanted. I wanted somebody that loved the Lord, somebody that had goals and ambitions, somebody that was cute. All those things were part of what I was looking for when I found her. I just said, "Man, God, this is really answering my prayer. This is what I've been looking for."

Ann Wilson: Wait a minute. I need to get over the hump of like, what do you do with—he wants to go into ministry and be a pastor. How did you get over that? She's asking because she's still not over it.

Stephanie Carter: Listen, yeah, I don't think as wives you ever get—you're always like, "So when—okay, this is 20 years, so how much more? How much longer?" But I think Bryan's heart is what won me over. And I could look past the ministry part because I was an education major. I was an elementary education major. He was middle school.

So we had these desires just to teach. And like he said, we had never seen a full-service staffed pastor. It was, "This is what I do. I teach," and we had aspirations to be a principal. He was going to be a superintendent, and that was going to be our life and that was going to be our role. So I really wasn't thinking pastor's wife. And I think it was the only time I would get really nervous about it is when his dad would talk about it.

So that would take me down. Because I remember like his mom. His mom was very traditional, very traditional house. Mine was the complete opposite.

Bryan Carter: My home church is a very small church, small family church. And that's the church that I grew up in. That's where we met, that's where we dated. So part of the transition is she's thinking right this is where—like I thought I was going to succeed my dad. You talk about 20 to 30 people, small Oklahoma City.

Stephanie Carter: That's on a good day.

Bryan Carter: Hey, hey, hey, listen. Pastors, they count by threes. It's about 10. It's like a home group. It's a small group. It's a small group. A car drove by, there's three more people. So it's a small, intimate family church. But he has a lot of outreach. But that's—in those kind of settings, it would have been hard for her to fit into this space. It didn't fit. And it was going to be a struggle. It already was a struggle.

Ann Wilson: You call it a struggle. Is that what you mean?

Stephanie Carter: I was strong, and his dad would say things like, "So would you be up to taking piano lessons?" No. I remember that now. Bryan, don't do this. Don't do this. Then my friends—I love my friends. I would plead with them. They could go out and kick it all night long, and then they'd get up and go to whatever the hot church was in Oklahoma City.

And so I'd be like, "Hey, you guys want to go to church with me?" They're like, "No." I was like, "Please go to church with me." So they were like, "Okay, okay, okay. We'll go to church with you." So they go, and one of my friends was like, "If anybody ever says that you don't love Bryan, I'm going to be like, 'She loves him a lot. She loves him a lot.'"

Dave Wilson: Because Ann and I made this pact when we got married. I was only 19, Dave was 22. But we came on staff with Athletes in Action with Cru. And then a couple years later, we're like, "Let's go to seminary. We're going to do this the rest of our lives." And so I made a pact with him like, "All right, we're going to go to seminary, but you are not going to become a pastor, right? This is our deal."

Ann Wilson: This is our deal because if you're going for that, I don't think I'm into that.

Dave Wilson: She literally said, "I'm not doing that. I'll do ministry, but not that kind of ministry."

Ann Wilson: Because I had expectations and I had a vision of what I thought a pastor's wife was.

Bryan Carter: Totally what you saw.

Ann Wilson: And I wasn't that. I'm like, "They are going to hate me. So I can't do that." So you kind of get that.

Stephanie Carter: I so get it.

Bryan Carter: Bryan's so plain right now. Because do you remember that time Bryan had to preach?

Stephanie Carter: No, at another church. In an African-American context, sometimes the pastor's wife will sing before the preacher gets up to preach.

Ann Wilson: And it's the pastor's wife.

Bryan Carter: Yes, or playing the piano.

Ann Wilson: Or sometimes both.

Bryan Carter: And so they call her up to sing.

Stephanie Carter: Oh, I cannot sing. That is not my gift.

Dave Wilson: Wait, wait, wait. They called you up to sing just because you're—

Stephanie Carter: Out of nowhere. Out of nowhere. Like she tried though. She tried. And then in this small church, they even had the nerve to shade me or kind of tease me. Yes, they did, Bryan. Because they were like, "That's not whatever—that's not a worship song." I was like, "You know what?"

But we made it—needless to say, we made it through some seasons of testing trying to find our roles. I was trying to find myself, she was trying to find hers, and the box really didn't fit. So ultimately, what happens is we relocate to Texas. We moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It would have been hard trying to navigate through all the dynamics: family, ministry, family church. It would have been challenging.

And not to say that I didn't—I think in my mind, I wanted to, but I think we tried—went through a few challenges there. And it felt like, "This is not going to work." We had a church meeting one Sunday that we had, and it just it went really sour between me and my dad. And it really was a moment where I said, "This is not going to work." And I really wanted it to.

I had a vision of what could happen. I saw some things. But that conflict that we had—I don't think I would have made it in ministry. I think it would have been hard in ministry, and I think it would have been hard on our marriage. And so those tensions ultimately led to us relocating. We graduated together in May, and then we moved to Texas the next month.

Ann Wilson: Sounds like this is God's plan.

Stephanie Carter: It definitely was God's plan. But I learned a valuable lesson during that season. My mom, she taught me how to pray. And so I'll never forget the year before we got married. It was a true testing season. Just things were getting just thrown at us left and right. And I'll never forget my mom was like, "Do you pray for Bryan?" I said, "I do." And she was like, "How do you pray for him?" I was like, "Help him to realize that he—"

And she was like, "Stephanie, that is not how you pray for him." And I said—she was like, "You need to pray for the future husband he's going to be, the future father, the future leader he's going to be."

Ann Wilson: What did that sound like?

Stephanie Carter: And so I said it definitely didn't sound like what I was doing before. And so I would be like, "God, just whatever the plans you have for Bryan, I pray that you will just surround him with people that can pour into him. I pray for the future husband he's going to be, how he will lead our family and so on. And then I pray for the father he will be."

And just doing that prayer. And then my mom was like, "Have you told Bryan?" Because our biggest issue was we did not want to live—where were we going to live? Were we going to stay in Oklahoma City, or were we going to move? That was huge. That was our biggest thing. So my mom was like, "Does he know that you don't want to live here?" And I said, "Yes." And she was like, "Oh, what am I asking? Of course he knows you don't want to live here. I know you've told him."

And so she's like, "Have you prayed to God and asked him about where he would have you to be?" And I said, "No." And she was like, "Stephanie, I don't want you to tell Bryan anymore about what you don't want to do or this and that. I need you to take that to God and I need you to have faith in what God will have, the plan that he has for you." I kept feeling like, "No, but see, God doesn't—" And she's like, "God knows everything and God is going to hear your prayer." "But he doesn't know his parents are doing this—" She's like, "God knows, and I need you to leave it there with him."

And I said, "All right." And so I'm praying. This is probably like in August. The church meeting that he talked about earlier, that happens in January. So I haven't said anything. I haven't said anything else about it. I just took it to God. I left it there. And so when the church meeting happened, I'm kind of like, in my head, the sassiness in me wanted to be like, "No, this is what you want. This is why you want to stay here."

Bryan Carter: I was ready. Because I was so accustomed to some of the dynamics at work, you can manage them. Right, that's what—but often times when you bring in someone that's outside, it's all like, "Wait a minute. Right, how do we—what's this?" And so we were trying to, but it just—the conflict and the differences. And most of it was just differences.

You have one generation colliding with another generation. It's just a total opposite ways of view. And then I'm young and I'm probably a little bit arrogant. And so I'm thinking, "My way, my way, my way," and I'm trying to change things at the church probably a bit too fast, a bit too quickly, which is meeting with resistance. And it just was a recipe for disaster.

Dave Wilson: And probably creating tension between the relationship you had with your parents.

Bryan Carter: With parents, relationship with my wife. So it's one of those things where most young couples—we're not even married yet, but managing through your parents, your spouse, your fiancé, trying to navigate—that can be hard sometimes. And so I'm feeling like I'm caught in the middle trying to make everybody happy. And so it was a bit rocky.

Guest (Male): Hey friends, Ron Deal here, Director of FamilyLife Blended. Did you know Blended and Blessed, the only worldwide livestream designed for couples in blended families, is free this year? Saturday, April 18th. We're going to be live in Oklahoma City. If you show up there, we're going to charge you for lunch, but other than that, it is free. Free to livestream. Churches can bring a group of couples together and enjoy the day absolutely free. Gayla Grace is going to be with us. Davey and Christie Blackburn, Cheryl Shumake's going to be with us, Kathy Lipp and Brian Goins, our MC. It's going to be a wonderful day. I hope you can join us. Learn more and get the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com.

Dave Wilson: Now as you look back, I mean, here you are 25 years later, and we haven't even mentioned your book, Made to Last.

Bryan Carter: Made to Last, right.

Dave Wilson: We'll get to that tomorrow. But it's all about long-lasting relationships. Do you think that start—prayer, I'm hearing leaving and cleaving—how important would you say now 25 years in that is to building a relationship that's made to last?

Stephanie Carter: Oh, I would say it's crucial. It's essential. I learned a valuable lesson. There was an issue where his dad did a sermon and he talked about women and what they're supposed to wear. And at that time as a college student, you had your stuff on a rotation. And so he had an issue with pants. Never knew it was an issue with pants. I had my little pantsuit on that he had bought me.

Dave Wilson: Where his son had bought you the pantsuit and his dad's talking about pants?

Bryan Carter: I broke all the rules. Nobody knew the rules.

Stephanie Carter: So his dad does a sermon about pants. And I'm like—again, the church is small. On this day it may have been eight people. I'm the only one with pants. And I just kept feeling like, "Yeah, no, this is not going to work." So making a long story short, I leave the church. And I basically—we almost end our engagement because I just saw my life and I kept feeling like, "I cannot do this."

So to have a marriage to make made to last or relationship with made to last, you also have to compromise, but then you also have to let go of yourself. Like I was a very—my parents had raised me to be very strong and very independent. I remember crying, calling my parents to tell them about what happened. And my dad was like, "No." He's like, "Stephanie, you're going to take that?"

And then my mom was like, "Stephanie, this is something you have to pray about. This is your all's first sign." Because we had not had any major things in our relationship while we were dating, in our engagement. And so this was the first true test. I'll never forget, so I go to another church. I'm in the church that everybody goes to in Oklahoma City. And I'm sitting there and there's an older woman sitting next to me.

And she sees my engagement ring and she goes, "Oh, where's your husband?" And I was like, "Oh, I'm not married." She's like, "Oh, where's your fiancé?" And I was like, "Oh, he goes to another church." And she was like, "Well, baby, if you wear his ring, you need to be by his side." And I was like, "Well, see, you don't understand—" "I don't care. If you wear his ring, you need to be by his side." And that was so convicting to me. And I remember going back to the church.

Dave Wilson: With a dress on?

Stephanie Carter: Yeah, with a dress on.

Dave Wilson: Good for you.

Stephanie Carter: But it was very—I went back and it was very humbling because I'm very competitive. I've always played competitive sports. And so I felt like I was losing and that his dad had won.

Dave Wilson: It was a battle.

Bryan Carter: It was a battle. I think when you talk about "made to last" couples and relationships, one of the last chapters in the book talks about resilience: suffering and trials. And I think her commitment to me, her commitment to our relationship and willing to face those challenges and obstacles and us willing to face those challenge and obstacles together, I think are essential for any relationship.

I think when things get hard, if people quit or someone says, "I don't want to dive in" or "I'm not going to deal with that," I think that's when we lose the strength of our relationships. It's the challenges and the obstacles that we go through together, that we face side by side, that we fight back to back together with instead of fighting each other, that then allows us to build something that's healthy, that's strong, that's reliable.

I mean, now looking back 25 years later, I mean those moments and challenges and tensions and conflicts that could have really driven us apart, they both were painful. They were hard. I hate some of the things she had to go through. As a man, I had to figure out how to love her, protect her, support her, and I probably didn't always do the best job early on in marriage.

But I had to learn through those lessons. She had to coach me and I had to manage through them. But it's that resilience, right? It's that persevering. It's that relying on our faith, watching God work on our hearts and our soul, watching God mature us. Because sometimes in our own immaturity, we become selfish and self-centered and we don't think about others.

But now looking back, I just can see God faithfully working through those moments, faithfully working through those challenges, growing her, growing me, and really giving us a peace about some of those things. Sometimes you can't change other people, right? Most of the time you can't. But you learn to have a peace and you learn how to navigate through some things in a way that honors God but also protects your relationship.

Dave Wilson: Well, that was a great conversation with Bryan and Stephanie Carter.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, I love having them on. And as we said, they're on our FamilyLife board. And they've—actually, Bryan's written a book that we talked about today and you can get it. The book's called *Made to Last: 8 Principles to Build Long-Lasting Relationships*. And you can get it at the show notes at familylifetoday.com.

I tell you what, one of the best things we ever do for our marriage—it's get away and focus and work on our relationship. And we don't want to do it. It's hard to get on the calendar. But when we do, we grow and our marriage gets better.

Dave Wilson: You know what, though? You know what really goes along well with that getaway is something that's cheap or that's on sale.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, we're talking about the Weekend to Remember, FamilyLife's marriage getaway, and it's 40% off right now if you sign up. And I tell you, don't want to miss this deal. It's Friday night through Sunday morning. It's literally life-changing and legacy-changing for your marriage.

Dave Wilson: And here are the sale dates: March 20th through the 30th, you can get that 40% off. So visit weekendtoremember.com. There's no promo code needed. Again, that's weekendtoremember.com to get that sale.

FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru Ministry, celebrating 50 years of God's faithfulness as marriages grow stronger and families flourish in him.