EP 19. The Lover's Dozen, 13 Tips to Develop a Fun and Fulfilling Marriage, Part 1

Welcome to the Merit in Lovett podcast.

We are Greg and Linda Smith, your hosts from Raleigh, North Carolina.

It is great that you are taking time to invest into your marriage by listening to our weekly podcast.

The goal of our podcast is to provide you with a weekly dose of marriage teaching to help you keep focused on your marriage.

See it as a freshening up of your marriage, preventive maintenance, a marriage tune up, or fanning the flames of romance, love and passion.

You could even call it continuing education.

We will be covering everything that has to do with your marriage, including hot topics like sex, communication, love and much, much more.

Our teachings are based on Christian principles plus over 47 years of marriage to each other and ministry experience.

We want to help you make your marriage great by teaching you how to be married and love it.

It is an honor and privilege to to have you join us.

Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode.

Today we're going to be starting on the Lovers Dozen and this is a course that Greg and I developed when we restored our marriage after a near separation back in 1986.

Do you realize that was 39 years ago?

Wow.

And we're still going at this time in life and we're still going, still going strong.

All right.

Wow.

These principles is what we applied that helped our marriage to grow stronger and it, they actually enabled us to stand together all those 39 years right there.

Yes.

And that's when the storms of life and the marriage busters, they came busting out our doors and well, but the result that we got is we drew closer together.

Right.

And a lot of people that just pushes the storms of life has, just pushes them away from each other.

Right.

It's, it's like in the times of conflict or pressures, people dig into themselves and they causes them to turn on each other or to resist each other or because they're just getting so frustrated with life.

And the marriage busters, which, that's anything that comes against your marriage, it could be overworking, overtime hours, kids going to three different sports activities a week or in one night, could be in laws coming into town.

It could be fatigue, sick, sickness, financial problems, anything that's going to come in and rob you, not being able to get a babysitter, waking up all night, new baby parents in the house, whatever it is, those marriage busters are designed to come in and to steal, kill and destroy and disrupt your marriage.

So that's what we're going to be talking about is how to deal with those marriage busters that come in and try to, to rob you.

Of having the, the marriage that God wants you to have.

You see Ecclesiastes 9:9, which we've talked about in some previous episodes.

God is saying enjoy life with the spouse that he has given you every day.

And he says to love them every day of your life.

God wants us enjoying our life.

However life comes in and tries to steal that joy and messes us up.

But God says to love it your life with your spouse.

That's what we want you to be able to do.

And that's what happened with me and Linda when we went through almost our separation.

We allowed the marriage busters to come in.

We allowed our personalities differences to cause problems.

I was putting Linda in a box and.

And stifling her personality.

Was it comfortable in that box?

No.

I was fighting like a mad dog to try to get out of that box.

And the more, the more I fought, the more he tried to close me up.

And he even tried duct tape on that box.

Yeah, yeah.

But I mean I was putting her.

Our personalities were different.

And then I was involved in ministry, so I was even.

We were both.

But I was trying to put her in this box that, that said no, you can't be like that.

You need to be like this over here.

And it was destroying her.

You know, ever seen a Jack in the box?

You just keep cranking the handle.

I pushed her in this box and kept winding the handle, winding the handle.

Then throwing in other marriage problems like maybe we didn't know how to communicate.

We have two new, you know, new kids in the house.

Our own personal problems because we were young and still working on.

And stupid, stupid learning how to love.

All that and me being a people pleaser, pleasing my parents and all that happened.

And sooner or later I kept cranking.

That Jack in the box in 1986 burst out.

And it came to the point where she was ready to separate because I was not doing what I needed to do to be the husband that she needed to be.

Not saying she was perfect either.

I needed you to be.

But I wasn't doing my part to.

Be a leader on my side too as well.

But that anyways, that's why it's two way street.

But I was the.

It was on me with what was going on.

And so God, we're not going to go into all of that all the way.

But God brought us back together.

And with that what we did is.

See, I wouldn't even read marriage books I wrote when she called up, said Greg, I'm going to come home and get the kids and go back down to Florida.

We get this thing worked out because we're in Fort Worth, Texas.

We had three marriage books.

And she said, can we read these together?

Can you read these things?

And I'd say, yeah, I'll read them.

And I never did.

And when she made that phone call.

But, well, also along with that, I would ask all along that way, through our marriage, since 77, I would say, can we go this conference?

That would be really good.

Oh, let's.

Let's go to this marriage conference.

Let's go to this men conference or women conference on, you know, how to learn to be a better husband, how to better be a better wife.

And you like?

No.

Okay.

I'm good.

We don't need that word in the ministry.

We don't need counseling.

We don't need to do this, and we don't need to do that.

And turned out we did.

So I read those three books in, like two days.

And then God worked out Speed Reader.

And got us back on track, where she said, yes, I'll stay.

I don't love you, but I'm going to make the decision to love you.

And over the period of time, we would begin to get our act together.

We begin to understand each other.

We begin to learn how to communicate.

We begin to learn how to prefer one another.

We invested into our marriage.

Yeah.

We began to find out how to be a better wife.

I.

I found out how I need to be a better person about me right there and then.

How to be a better wife.

Yeah.

And so all these things, we learned how to take interest in other things other than just ministry or into each other and get involved in other areas.

So there's a lot of things.

We call it the lovers dozen that we're going to be talking about.

And as we put that together, what happened is as we apply the principles of the lovers dozens that we're going to be talking about, it strengthened our marriage.

And each year that we went by, we got stronger and stronger and our love matured and we were able to walk in love.

And yes, we still had issues.

We still, you know, would have arguments or this or that, but we.

We learned how to kiss and make up.

You know, it's a lot better to kiss and make up and get a hug than the walk around the house not talking to each other for three or four hours or we hear some couples for three or four days.

It's a lot better to kiss, right?

Yes.

All right, good.

I'm glad we're in agreement on that point.

Trust Me.

So what happened through life.

And we were involved in ministry.

We were working together.

We be.

You know, a lot of people say I can't work with my husband or wife.

I don't see how you guys do it.

It is tough, but we're on the same page.

Not so bad when I was your boss.

That's true.

There's one point where she was my boss, where we worked at this point.

We balanced it out.

When I got home, we were husband and wife.

That's right.

I had an affair with my boss.

Oh, you sure did.

Yeah.

With my woman boss.

Okay.

But we learned how to work together and we pursued the ministry together.

We.

We moved.

We made a big move to.

To Raleigh from Fort Worth to do our marriage ministry that we were doing.

We had been traveling, had our own building and doing different things.

We learned to work with each other and yes.

Which we're going to talk about more.

There's different.

Different personalities and such.

And that's going to be one of the topics we're going to talk on.

But we got strong.

So around 2008, her dad passed away and that wasn't a.

It was an awkward time.

And then.

Then my mom passed away and then.

So that brought.

Linda had some minor surgeries and stuff.

So we got through that and then we kind of just got involved in work and kind of not even doing our marriage stuff.

But then around 2012, one morning she woke up and her back was hurting and she couldn't walk.

2010 is when it started.

And then it was like all of a sudden.

Yeah, 2012, one morning it just went boing.

I could walk.

And then the next day I could it.

Yeah.

So we had to find out what.

Was going on then.

So going full of blast into that.

Right.

So from like 2012 all the way up to now, we've been dealing with her health issues with two back surgeries.

The first one was like a six to eight hour surgery.

I think it was nine.

Then another three or four years, she had another back surgery and then hand surgery, eyes dealing with lots of stuff.

And then her heart attack about two and a half years ago.

That rattled us.

So we've had a lot of these attacks.

Marriage busters.

Right.

So I'm just paint a picture here because the vows come in for better, for worse, for richer or poor.

That's it.

And see what happens when you're young.

You don't think any of that stuff's going to happen to you.

No, that's for somebody else.

And a lot of times people don't prepare for the later days.

So back in 1986, we started preparing for the future.

And the future hit.

And it hit hard because during that time we had some major financial things.

We had some stuff going on in business.

And I'll be honest with you, there was one point where we were digging quarters and pennies out of any jar, couch cushions, just to get some money to pay some of our bills.

I mean, we were talking bad situations.

And you see a lot of times people having major health issues drive people apart, financial issues drive people apart, all that stress.

But you know What?

Because after 1986, we were making sure we started praying together, we got in the Word together, we built our faith.

So when she got sick, when financial problems came, we were able to stand on the Word and said and say our God meets all of our needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

Joined together as a couple and had that power of the prayer.

And we, we made sure we kept our foundation strong.

And we're going to go into that more.

But during that time, these, which were, that's what we're going to be talking about.

But we stood on the Word together.

We weren't newbies at it.

We didn't go, oh my God, what.

Do we do now?

We knew what the Word said.

We knew how to reach across the table and hold hands and say, how are we going to get this bill paid?

We knew how to pray and believe God.

Or if I said, you know what, if I hadn't have done this, we didn't get into blame shifting.

We didn't get in blaming each other.

We would sit on the couch or we would, whatever we're doing, we would do it together.

And then in the midst of that time, I was her caretaker.

Lots of times I was home all day long taking care of her.

And see, since all that time she's been in chronic pain.

I mean serious pain.

And when somebody's on pain, do you think they're the best person in the world?

A lot of times.

What do you think they say there?

No, no.

They've got to learn how to control their reactions.

And sometimes it's not controllable.

Right.

And the B word comes in.

Yeah, because it's not.

And that's not you beautiful thing.

It's not the B word I'm referring to.

See, it's, it's, it's that foundation got laid and that's as a couple in the team.

I knew if she was in major pain or something was going on and she maybe responded a certain way that that wasn't her speaking, it was the situation.

And I had that.

I was able not to take that personally.

I mean, so we could go in a lot of more details.

We'll cover a lot.

But we're going to show the Lovers doesn't how it all played in how we've gotten now the 47 and a half years.

And we're not anybody special.

We love each other and we've made a decision to love each other.

But you know what?

We're having fun.

We're still having fun the best way we can.

No, there's a lot of stuff going on in the midst of things, but we're having fun.

And we.

We adapt and adjust.

We don't settle for anything, but we adapt and adjust so we can get through each day.

And it's on purpose.

And it's on purpose intentional.

So we still be best friends.

You know, we're.

We love to work out together.

We haven't been hardly been able to work out together in ages or walk together outside.

We used to do that.

All that was a key.

Walk and talk.

Write that down or make a mental note.

One of the best things you can do is to get out and walk and talk when the weather is good.

But we would walk when it was snowing out in Raleigh.

Sometimes it was very cold because we wanted that time to connect.

So we laid a foundation.

So that's what we're going to be talking about in the Lovers Dozen.

And I just want to know let want you to know God's got a future and a hope for you regardless of what your marriage situation is right now.

But what we're talking about is taking this Lover's dozen, applying some of these principles and it can set you up the prosper in your marriage in all areas as we move on.

Anything else on that you can think of?

We'll get into different things along the way.

But did you want to make a little announcement about our new.

We're going to be putting out a newsletter here hopefully in the next three or four weeks, maybe.

Maybe a month.

But we're getting it all put together and.

And it's going to be talking.

We'll have some articles in there.

Linda might be doing one for the women, I might be doing something for the men.

It's going to have announcements maybe where we're going to go speed our events projects.

We're going to be trying to do and working on doing about podcast information and if you're interested in that and would like to Be on that.

You can go to www.mar.com.

we're going to have that address in the show notes.

You lock, you click onto that.

It's going to take you to our home way web page and you'll see a place to give us your email address and just put that in there and you'll automatically be put on our email time on our newsletter.

Newsletter.

Okay, so.

Oh, we're going to be maybe doing some little freebies out there too.

Yeah.

Like some ebooks or something.

Oh yeah, some ebooks and stuff like that for you.

Yes, we're work.

We got lots of, lots of good things on that.

Also, if you hear any noise in the background, we're having thunderstorm warnings going on and we've got a pretty good room to record in.

But sometimes the wind rattles or the rain hits real hard, so you might hear that.

But we're, we're solid here.

We're on high ground.

We're on high ground.

We're doing good.

And that's a good time to talk about that.

It's in Raleigh and all over the country right now because there's been tornadoes going on all over the place.

But it's springtime and this is an awesome time to be starting the Lover's dozen because springtime is new beginnings.

We want the lovers dozen.

It's a great time for the lovers dozen because you can kind of use this as a little stake in the ground to say, you know what, I want to freshen up my marriage.

My marriage might be doing good, but I like it to be better.

Got a few little rough spots we need to clear up.

We can work on that.

Or maybe it's not doing too good.

It's springtime.

New beginnings.

God is a God of new beginnings.

This is when a lot of people think about cleaning out their closets and cleaning out springtime, cleaning in the house and doing stuff they wouldn't normally do.

So find that one drawer in your marriage.

Yeah.

That's just sitting there.

Maybe the junk jar that everything's gotten dumped into.

Pull that drawer out and do a little cleaning in your marriage.

Yeah, maybe the drawers, the communication drawer.

Maybe that.

That's it.

Maybe it's the boredom drawer.

Whatever it is, pull that drawer out.

But another thing we want to relate to is springtime and yards.

The gardening.

Yes.

Just think if you go to a Home Depot right now or Lowe's or some of those places, people are in there buying flowers, plants, shovels, tools, garden hoses, fertilizer.

Fertilizer.

They're doing all sorts of stuff and they come home, they get all hot and sweaty, and they're out there planting.

Maybe they're tilling up the old.

Yep.

Bringing the old dead grass, trimming the dead bushes and, and such.

And that's what the Lovers Dozen is for.

Springtime, we want to take these principles and get your home garden going.

But you know, if you want a luscious lawn, it takes work.

Right.

Because what happens is the serious gardeners, I mean, they're having fun and there's some people that get their yard looking good just because they want to look good.

But it takes work.

You know, I remember a few years ago, we replaced a bunch of plants in our front area where we live.

And I got all the plants had a little plastic tab stuck in the dirt, and it had planting instructions and how to keep that plant growing all.

Year long and even how to put that plant in the right environment.

Right.

Where to plant if it needs a lot of sun or maybe not so much sun.

Yeah.

And I planted a couple to water it.

I planted a couple where there's not a lot of sun and they're, they're not growing quite as fast.

Yeah.

But you know, our marriages are like that.

That's it.

Our spouse, Linda has a little plastic tab.

It says high maintenance.

No, it doesn't say lots of.

Of tlc.

Lots of tlc.

Listen to her.

Put her in a good environment to grow and to, to flourish.

She's got one same thing on me and it goes into great detail and you can find that information and then you have to do it because you can read what it says on the little thing.

And you just put that plant in the ground and you don't fertilize, you don't put the water down, you don't do maintenance on it.

Good chance that plant will have its growth stunted or it may just fizzle out.

So God's saying you've got just like springtime and planting all these plants and doing your yard that you've got an instruction manual.

Study your spouse, get a marriage book out.

Listen to these next two or three podcasts as we go through the Lovers Dozen to see what you can do to prep your marriage.

So it's the best looking.

You know, there's a yard of the month.

I remember when I was a little kid, my dad get out there and we had mow and edge.

My mom would trim the plants and she trimmed these little plants and the, the leaves would get into the white rocks we had for decorations and oh, I dreaded that because it was so hard to get every little leaf.

I think I need therapy.

Oh, yeah.

Every.

Every leaf out of that flower bed.

But we'd win the yard of the month.

How about having them.

That sign out there in the whole neighborhood would get to look at it and say, wow, how do they do that?

How did their kid do that?

He's like, let me tell you, I did it.

But how about marriage?

How about the marriage of the month?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you know what?

I want to back up.

I just had this thought, you know, aren't there some people that say, well, I just don't have a green thumb, so I cannot be a gardener.

And I would be one of those that say, don't ask me what that flower is, because I sure ask my sister.

She's going to know.

Well, you know, you do know when we.

Even when we have the fake fikie plants, they end up dying.

Tell on me.

Now, that's both of us.

I know both of us.

We're just not good with plants, you know, but that is not an excuse in a marriage to say, well, that's just the way I am.

Yeah.

That is not.

Because we have got everything.

We've got all the tools.

We got everything, though, to read and learn and grow and apply to our marriage so that it does create a good environment, you know?

And you know what?

As a.

As.

Just because you and I, dear, don't have that green thumb, that don't mean we can't hire somebody to do it.

That's true.

That means in a marriage, if we want to relate that to a marriage, then we.

That would be going to a conference.

Yep.

You know, podcast Married and Love it.

Podcast on a regular basis every week.

You know, so there is a way.

Yeah.

To overcome.

Well, it's just like when these plants last year, some we planted, it got extremely hot, and we hadn't watered it and they hadn't.

It hadn't rained, See, and that was our fault.

And they were drooping.

I mean, like.

Yeah, serious droop.

So I had to go out.

Oh, but wait a minute.

Every time we would walk by those plants or look at them, we'd say, you know what?

We ought to water those plants.

But we never did.

Oh, that's right.

You know, that's like.

We didn't get the hose out.

We didn't water it.

You know, we made a comment about it.

We need to listen to podcasts.

We ought to sit down and pray together.

We ought to do this.

But no, you won't Bite.

You have good intentions.

And before happens, those plants get worse.

Yeah, and they work.

But then once I did the work to drag out the water hose, stand out there for 30, 40 minutes and water them really good, you know what happened the next morning?

You'd be surprised.

They look great.

They look great.

They sprung back to life.

Yes.

And that's a lot of times, if things aren't going just right in your marriage, it just takes a little bit.

A kind word here, the 10 second kiss here, a few times, rub on the back.

Just listening to your spouse, helping them do the.

Learning to understand them, do what they need to do.

Husband or wife, putting a little love note here, praying together, say, dear honey, say, hey, let's just join hands and pray about what's going on in today in our lives.

And you know what?

That bush is going to come back to life.

You know, you can drive down the street and you can see the people that got the green thumbs or took the time to maintain their yard.

And then all of a sudden, there's a yard that maybe it's not totally dead, but yet it's just this.

Not a sharp and crisp.

You know why?

The people that got the sharp yards put work in.

They worked at it.

They worked at it.

What does that scripture say?

Proverbs 24, 30, 34.

Oh, do you have that?

You're not being nice now with this scripture.

Well, no, this tells the truth.

It's true.

But listen, it says, I pass by the field of the sluggard.

That would be like a lazy guy.

And by the vineyard of a man lacking sense.

That means he didn't read the sticky note on how to take care of his plants.

And behold, it was completely overgrown with thistles.

And its surface was covered with nettles and its stone wall was broken down.

When I reflected upon it, I looked and received instruction.

It said, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

Then your poverty will come upon you as a robber.

And you want, like an arm, man.

See, that's tough.

If we're not taking care of our garden, our marriage, our family, we sit back.

Before long, the walls start coming down the reeds.

The weeds come in down the.

Down our street a little bit.

There's a house that somebody I don't think had lived in for 10 or 15 years.

At least it looked like.

At least it looked like the Adams family house.

That's another one out here.

But it had trees grown up, grass grown up.

You couldn't even see the front of the House hardly in the backyard was overgrown.

The trees were almost going in.

The gutters are coming down.

Why?

Because of neglect.

That's the extreme.

We don't want you to ever get that far.

That's why we're here.

But when it's time to weed, eat and trim, you do that every once a week or two weeks.

Maintenance.

Regardless, even if you get your yard looking great, it still takes some maintenance.

So that's what we're going to be talking about with the Lovers Dozen.

Yeah.

Like, one of my family members, she.

We just saw where her and her husband went.

They live out west, and her and her husband went to a marriage retreat.

I think it's just, you know, for preventive maintenance.

Yeah.

And they have a great marriage, but you can see that they were willing to invest into their marriage as a preventive maintenance.

Yeah.

You know, like an oil change in a car.

Yeah.

That's preventive maintenance, and that's what we need for our marriages.

Yeah.

And like a lot of times in your yard, you'll see people putting fertilizer or seed or doing things for the yard.

Not necessarily for the season they're in, but for the winter season or the spring season because they're prepping down the.

Road ahead of time.

Even when things look good, you still do maintenance.

You still do things to keep everything running smooth.

So is your marriage fresh and full of life?

Ask yourself this question.

Are you growing strong and vibrant?

Is it beautiful?

Or is your marriage just there?

Maybe got a few brown spots here.

There's some brown spots that.

Have you been.

Ask yourself this question.

Have you been tending to your marriage garden?

What's happening there?

Think about it.

Just take a pause for a minute and think about it.

But regardless of the condition of your marriage, it's a new season.

It's a new beginning.

You can start now.

Like Greg said earlier, you can drive that stake in the ground, and you can follow the principles of a gardener and apply that to our marriages.

And like right now, we're in springtime.

It's not springtime.

Say you're listening to this in the summer or next October.

Make that your springtime for your marriage.

The first time you listen to this, you call it.

Yes.

Yeah.

So let's refocus and strengthen our marriages.

And that's what we're going to be helping you with.

These are the tools we're going to bring to you to be able to refocus.

The Lovers doesn't.

And we're going to be covering those in the next few episodes.

Yeah.

And the Lovers doesn't again, are things that Linda and I applied to our marriage.

Maybe there's something we may talk about.

It may not be exactly what you need or maybe there's something else, but these are things that God used in our life.

So next week we're going to start on the Lovers Dozens.

And the number one.

We're going to number one.

We're going to hit.

We'll probably hit two or three on the next podcast.

But number one is going to be understanding yourself and your spouse.

And that was a real key.

That was huge for me and Linda.

Yep.

And again, before we close, it still is.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Because we're learning along the way all the time.

Every season brings something different.

It does.

And before we get into the homework, the honeydews again, I want to remind you, if you want to get on our mailing list, learn more about what we got going on and begin to get some special articles and tips and what we're doing, go to our website, www.marriedandlovet.com and you'll see a place to put in your email there and we'll begin to send you some information from that.

We look forward to hearing from you that or if you ever have any questions for us.

Sure.

Comments, put it in that things that you want us to cover.

Yeah, that'd be great.

All right.

All right.

So a couple honeydews.

What is number one?

What is something you would like to do in your marriage to spruce it up?

Now realize we haven't got into the Lover Dozens pointers yet, but there is something that might have sparked in your thoughts as we were talking today on our episode here.

So what is something you would like to do in your marriage to spruce it up?

Number two, implement, implement a plan to work on that, whatever that is.

Number three, listen to episode 20 for the lovers dozen.

The beginnings of it.

You know that's coming up.

And what is number 10 second kiss.

My favorite part of the homework.

And you know what that is if you haven't listened to us before that 10 second kisses, find your your honey, pull them up to you, say hey Siri or find the timers for 10 seconds, grab your spouse and just give them a good old kiss on the lips for 10 seconds.

And if you'll do this when you come home or go to work in the morning and do it for just can develop a habit of it, you're going to notice a change in your relationship and you'll enjoy this homework.

Well, all right.

Until next time.

Thanks again.

For joining us.

And until next time, remember you can be married and Love it on purpose.

Thank you for investing into your marriage by listening to the Married and Love it podcast.

Be sure to be a part of the ripple effect of making marriage great by sharing this podcast with other couples to equip them to be married and love it.

Also, subscribe to and follow us on your favorite platform and be sure to check out our website at www.marriedandlovet.com where you can learn more about Married and Love it and contact us with any questions or comments that you may have.

And remember with God that you have a future and a hope.