25 Years and Still in Love (Part 2 of 2)

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I think a lot has to do with being together all the time with children, our kids begin as their small, and the map lies, conversations, and we get where we don't dictate well together on a one to one I think is one of the reasons that men find it difficult to pray with their wives. That's a big factor in Christian marriages otherwise don't pray together. One of the big reasons is they don't communicate well. Therefore, they don't press communication.

Anyway, see, and if we talk and one of the great ways we get through angry moments. I think one of things is help Carol and I and I tend to be silent. Carol wants to get things solved like Carol tends to come at me.

She wants it solved.

She wants to know the answer she wants to know how I feel and she wants to know what's going on and she wants to be reassured.

Osborne says in his book. When your wife asked you if you love her. She's not asking for information she's asking for reassurance to talk with people to communicate with each other and to be able to talk through those kind of things.

If we don't tend to get destructive we get sarcastic we get verbally abusive. We pull up old problems and make them current and some people even hit I grew up in a home where my dad with my mom. I passed out flat on the floor.

You know, I just I could never hit a woman. In all my life so far from my thinking in that I counsel people who hit people who hit have run out of ideas say and it just there's no more ideas so you and that's kind of a crazy thing okay, but those are the kind of things that happen out of anger, then probably the most important thing he says in this passage is don't let the devil get a foothold. I'm convinced that the devil gets his toes in the best long-term anger situation you a couple to get a hassle to get it solved also to get a husband is getting strokes with the secretary. The wife was getting strokes at work or somewhere else. And all of a sudden you got an extra fair going on because people can't solve a problem within the structure of the marriage and all the devil needs is one little crack.

I got a very close personal friend in the ministry who the devil got a toe into his life in this area this year and he is done.

Probably will probably never be in the ministry get. He wrote me a letter and he said this happened in a way that I cannot believe his letter. He said that devil to me is a guy who's preached about that for the last 22 years is been a very close personal friend of mine, but he is the devil got just got the crack's situation is a wealth that can be could never happen to me. Folks there but for the grace of God walk off and I'm just saying boy to me long-term anger situations in marriage are a great place for the devil to get a foothold.

You'll get in there and be something that becomes incredibly destructive and you want to select that long-term anger will do that. So I encourage you in that area agreed to disagree. Make room for one another. We just tell you about some of the differences between Carol and I we talked about this. We were different people in some areas. I'm a sports freak and I'm not as bad now as I used to be, but I'm still bad, but I used to be awful that I am. I was in Bonn, Germany.

When Carol and I were in Europe this year I was in Bonn, Germany at a convention, and a guy walked up to me and introduced himself and found out I was forced home he came over and introduced himself and Apollo. I begin to talk and and along we talked I thought I knew this, I noticed he kept talking.

You know he's the head of navigators for Europe is the European director. The navigators organization and we were talking all of a sudden I said he's he's telling me some major thing I am not as my wife was told many of you. I'm a terrible listener knife and I'm turning over. He's tell me the smartest thing of the navigator something in is this guy who is in writing that was conversation I went Army, you and all American fullback from Army he's in another world. These tell me something to teach us. He says what I said fullback and Army. I said you were there the same time. Roger Starbuck was a Navy. He said I said I used to sports freak. I said I knew I knew who you were. The minute I saw you and heard your name and we left. He left about 10 minutes.

He said training on trying to be spiritual when you're talking Army and that's how I used to turn my head just turned that way.

I knew everybody I knew everything that ever done and I married a wife, who is very much in the classical music. She really enjoys classical music classical music to me is strange but you know it's interesting. Those are two very big differences we have. I'm very much a private personally forced home, I do not like to entertain in our home. I do not like to have lots of people at our home. If we never had anybody for dinner, but our family. I'd be totally content and some of you are going. I that's hard for me to believe, but I like that I'm a very private person at home and my home is not a hotel. It never has been, and probably never will be, and I just like that.

Carol loved it when 20 people every night, and it shall be thrilled. She loves people at our home.

She loves that she loves to entertain and she knows that I'm private and she tends not to take much because it but I had to make allowances. There were two very different people.

There and we think differently there. I'm an only child and I never had to apologize very often as a kid, gazing my precious key piece, but I never apologize much care about a family of five kids apologize every day just to survive and were two totally different people and it's very hard for me to apologize. It's very hard for me to say I'm sorry. It's very easy for Carol. Often Carol will make many more concessions to me at that point that I will to her. We talked about. She brought that up recently and was in a healthy conversation. We were talking about this week and I said what are other different she brought that up immediately. She said you only child background you're totally different than I I look back over Mary's eye securely and icily feel we get angry a lot less and when we do sometimes get bugged it's over. More important things than it used to be you know it usually is over an issue. Now some major issue that either has to do with how we feel about a conviction in some area.

We just don't agree, rather than just a little many picky things that come up all the time. We just just get mad for no reason just spread just came in looking funny and I met you know are you sending me home at 57 after not the kind of things you go through.

Sometimes, early in the marriage. I think the maturity of a marriage. Get 10 to make your anger worthwhile.

Not how you handle it, but when it's over, it's over major issues and you tend to find it and major issues you have to talk him through and their critical issues and we been through some tough talk times but boy get time when you talk can't shut doors. You can't let drive around the block for five hours in your car somewhere you got a come back and face it seem people to that's fine except the people are out on the street you know and they may not be thrilled that your other driving.

Okay, next thing he talks about let him who steals steel no longer.

I just try to write down four things that we steel in a marriage, and I'm sure you could add to this list maybe 10 other things first thing I wrote down was time we tend to steal time a great deal little thing that I read recently where a guy wrote down. He said if you put your work factor in the 50 hours a week.

Okay some of you maybe 40 but let's say 50 some of Europe tonight. He and I hope you've got speaks to you why you're here this week you're in trouble, but I see what 50 hours a week unless he spent 10 hours driving to and from work so you sleep 56 hours.

You can adjust that anyway you want to. I don't sleep 56 hours, but you might. That leaves 52 hours I guess my question is what you do that 52 hours. If the average child gets seven 1/2 minutes a week of daddy's time. What do you do with it 52 hours, what you do as a wife was a husband with that time. Time is a thing we can steal from each other very, very easily get bugged your husband little bit so we can always go to be home on Thursday so you plan things so you'll be gone on Thursday. Show him to be home. I'll be gone is always not begun. Husband he could come home at 6 o'clock or 5 o'clock but he chooses to go play racquetball or something weird say see nothing wrong with racquetball but if it's consistently taking time away from his spouse and you're doing it for any of you know we do it for all kinds of reasons. As I like about five times a week because I want to be healthy and his marriage is going right in the pits, seek what you do with your time, we do with those 52 hours that you have that kind of time does your wife get rich that time is your husband to get and how constructive is that time as you spend it together time you children get out of that seat is a lot of factors in their that have to be dealt with. Second thing I wrote down is the other thing we can steal his individuality by allowing our spouse to be themselves. Whichever direction I just wrote these things down and this was just over this last year my wife and I'm not saying anything great or bad about Carol.

This is just Carol. She's an RN and she works usually two days a week at the hospital, sometimes three but usually to she's president of the District PTA which is a very time-consuming thing. She's on the drug abuse counsel for the city of Redlands.

She's in the church choir.

She is a member the missions board of the church and an officer in the missionary society for women, she's a wife and she's a mother that's a lot of things I can respond. Sometimes I respond negatively because she tends to take on tons and she's amazing. She gets an amazing amount of things that, but sometimes I get bugged and I say Hank don't take on one more thing and I get but sometimes but you know something. If I said to Carol tomorrow, don't you know this. Next year you're not going to do any of these. Here are six things seven things I want to do any of these will can I do what don't do anything just I would destroy my wife.

My wife thrives in those areas. Her whole personhood is locked up in that. See, and somewhere in there I have to and she has to make adjustments backward sometimes and she does.

She backs out of certain things because she knows it's robbing time on the other end, but that's her and I want her to be her third thing I wrote down his money.

You know one every now and you get out you get one member of a marriage that will do weird things, you know, the guide buys five cars in one year because he thinks it's funny you know and and they can't make the house payment.

That's crazy. That's just craziness. Some people have the kind of money that by five cashmere doesn't even make their bank account pickup, but there are other people who can't do that, say, mine would do more than that if I got into some weird way of doing things but but how do we handle those kind of think we can rob each other there we can be. We can be very tight in those areas we can be ridiculous in those areas and create so much stress that we cannot hope for thing I wrote down the most important is trust in the something.

I hope you have been together long enough to know the vulnerable areas of your spouse. I I am convinced that every person in this room is fragile in some areas. You know sometimes I see a guy there's a guy that comes before storm. He's not here this week, but he's a good guy and I like, but I've heard him say things about his wife and to his wife or to somebody about his wife and I've seen expressions on her face that are scary big guy and he kinda does everything that way and kill share something that in my mind it's kind of inside marriage stuff and it's kind of ingest toward her and I've been at a table with him on two occasions where I just felt like she died. Take some things are some things that you can know all about the craniums and there are some things you'll never know, and I hope that's true of every couple in this place. There are things that are private to the craniums or things that are private to Carol but I know them, and if I somewhere breached that privacy I can really clobber and rob something that is very very dear to both of us there intimacies in a marriage, and in a love relationship that just ought not to go outside and the longer you're married, the more you are aware of the fragile areas of your spouse and gals. I don't care how tough he seems to be I'll guarantee you he's got some glass sitting somewhere. If you get a hammer to it at the right time you break it, and I think every guy's been right. Any length of time knows that you've got a wife who has some fragile spots. Boys are intimate things that we can rob from one another. I don't care how long we've been married we can rob them and we can use them to cheat and hurt clobber and be very very sexy and sometimes unfortunately very thoughtlessly really not intending to hurt. I hope you know that time, individuality, money, and trust. You can add your list.

10 more things.

Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification to build up to help you know I'm convinced that most of our marriages if we could really guard our tongues. We could sell about 90% of our problems.

It's the little statements that we make. It's the little shops that we take is the little bullets that a lot of the end of the gun that we then have to spend great amounts of time recovering from any words as he warns within the family of God.

Certainly if it's important there, be important in our own homes, little shots. We take our kids sometimes the things that we say to them that are devastating. It's all words and he just reminds us in all that it's very very important words I wrote down words tend to last.

They tend to stay around.

Remember that that person you're married to is fragile. Be careful what you say and then the final thing and do not grieve the Spirit of God, he says, and he comes down he says let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, you know, I think if there's anything that Carol and I have done in 25 years it's learned to forgive and forget. My greatest example probably came from my own father and I will tell you the incident, but I pulled a real Boner when I was in high school and it still stands out in my mind so my father forbid me to do. I did it. It caused some damage it caused a lot of hurt and I remember the night when I had apologize and I was crushed.

After I done it obviously is any high school kid is that I never forget my father standing in front of me and I was sitting in on a chair in the living room. My dad got up and walked across the room stood in front of me and he looked down he stuck his hand out. I was like a junior in high school, he stuck his hand out and he said Bob I just what you know something I don't agree with what you did and you know that.

But he said I want you to know that I forgive you, and you noted from that day to this. I never heard another word about that incident that was the end of the incident and it was major, but once my dad's all repentance.

My dad said you forgiven and never again.

I did other stupid things, but never again did that be his bridge to get at me for the thing I just done or this is just like or remember when never the greatest lesson forgiveness I learned in my life was for my own father when he said I forgive you if you are forgiven. My dad never again sue that up at me, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, I think was anything that Carol I've done. It's been to forgive quickly and get it out of our system and get it over with and make it permanent. And boy, that seems to be critical to me. Learn to forgive and I just wrote down at the end. You know it's interesting when you look back over your years of marriage.

It's basically the good times that you remember it's the fun we take pictures of given notice that you look for pictures albums and see pictures of arguments and you know giant hassles you know hey here's our big we had and 58. You know, here's the husband slamming the door as he walks out the street you know and here's a wife driving car, and anger. You know, is that funny. We don't keep pictures of those things I look through our picture albums the other night we got a stack of them and I flip through some of them and I saw week we spent like have assumed the tent I saw a whole flock of pictures by to kids about that big the first time we ever went snow skiing. I saw triplet Carolyn I took when I made $58 a week and we save the year to go three days. I still have pictures of those of the things you keep pictures of the credit you get through the cracks. So you got 50 years of pictures to look at because those are the things that excite me about your marriage.

Those of the things you laugh about other things you have fun about. I saw pictures of the guys at the University of Redlands and I did the Bible study with for two years, I saw pictures of the five day thing we did at Lake Powell with some friends with all the kids was a zoo but gosh it was fun. That's what's in our book, and that's why you work through your problems and that's why you work through your hassles and that's why you work through the things that are tough so you got good pictures to look at in the times that are good.

I wife and I walked in the room the other night of our oldest boy who's getting married. The 31st, and he's always lived in our house.

This will be the first time he's been gone. We walked in his room the other night and we just looked around the room and all the pictures get pictures all over his walls of his high school football daisies college football days. His friends forced home five summers he worked here eyes that he worked with trophies. He's got a couple shelves a trophy city one plan ball. We stood in their head. We cried a little bit, but we said wow privilege privilege to have 22 years with this kid got tasting tomorrow. What a privilege. We've had to have 22 years with him. Hey that's what our family is all about and that's what I 25 years is all about and that's what our little picture albums are all about, because we work through some hassles and we work through some crab to have the privilege. God help us just to be your people to love and care for one another in a way that makes you know that we love you and that we love each other.

Thank you for the questioning. What a great way to put those conflicts into perspective, and we been listening for the past couple of days now to the wisdom of the late Bob craning as he reflected on 25 years of marriage with his wife, Carol, Bob and Carol were married for a total of 62 years and as Bob said, it's not because they were perfect people.

There's no such thing as a perfect marriage were all sinners saved by grace and were working out our sanctification with the Lord as we go through life in here at focus we hear from a lot of young married couples. John, who say my marriage isn't working out.

I must have picked the wrong person. But there is no one person who is the perfect match for you. Don't let the ads for matchmaking apps fool you.

Often the problem lies in a combination of unrealistic expectations and a lack of long-term relationship skills and if you're disgruntled with your relationship. You might also find yourself attracted to someone else. Maybe someone at the office who gives you lots of compliments that's not the answer. I love that old quote. Life isn't greener on the other side of the fence it's greener where you water it.

That's what Bob saying water and feed your marriage and invest in it and you too can have a rewarding fulfilling relationship that will last a lifetime. I'd also like to point out that we often hear from older listeners who are now in their second or third marriages, and they realize they're having the same problems that they had in their first marriage and if that's the situation you're facing. Let me just say as kindly as I can. The common denominator in all these relationships as you. There may be something that you're not dealing with in your character, and how you relate to your spouse and I'd like to suggest that you work on that. Don't just walk away from yet another relationship and let me offer you a lifeline.

Just call us here Focus on the Family we have Christian counselors right here who specialize in marriage who would consider it a privilege to spend some time with you on the phone and give you some first steps to consider. We would love to help you also visit us online and check out our marriage assessment tool. It's designed to help you identify the strengths and the weaknesses of your relationship with your spouse that will be useful especially if you just need a quick tuneup if you will. And you'll find a link to that marriage assessment it's free. It's all in the episode notes and if you appreciate the help that Focus on the Family provides for marriages. Please make a donation today and let me recommend you join our team by making a monthly pledge. That's what Jean and I do it doesn't have to be a large amount. It's the consistency month-to-month that really does help us when you make a donation of any amount either one time or a monthly gift will send you a CD of this message from Bob craning get in touch with us today. You can reach us by calling 880 family 800-232-6459 or stop by your website and donate online and request your CD all the details are in the episode notes will next time you'll hear how a basketball superstar overcame childhood bullying due to her hearing loss. At that point basketball became everything to me like that was my dad because I can go outside and I can play and practice tonight. Nothing else really mattered on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team. Thanks for joining us for this Focus on the Family podcast take a moment please leave a rating that Apple podcast or wherever you listen that helps other people discover find this great content and then share this episode with a friend on John Fuller inviting you back next time we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. When a woman discovers her husband struggles blogger feet. She needs a practical plan.

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