EP 51. Lessons From Our 48 Year Marriage Journey; Your Still the One; Part 1

Foreign.

Welcome to the Married and Love it podcast.

We are Greg and Linda Smith, your.

Host from Raleigh, North Carolina.

It's 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 stay focused on your marriage.

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

Well, you can 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 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.

Have you join us.

We're glad you joined us today to get the weekly dose of Married and Love it your Marriage Booster Shop for the week.

Now we previously planned to continue with the topic of communication and marriage in marriage and the do's and don'ts to becoming a skilled communicator, but we're going to pick up on that in a future episode.

On this one though, we're going to be talking about you're still the one Lessons from Our Journey now first of all, let me apologize.

Greg and I both want to say that we apologize for the delayed podcast release because I had a medical procedure done and I've been in recovery from that, plus healing from a broken foot and another surgery that was just done a few weeks ago.

So there's been a slight delay.

Yes, there's been a slight delay and we are getting ready to give you some good information about our journey.

But first I just want to brag on my my wife Linda because she just mentioned all the things that she has been going through with her healing and we got right she says, I think I can record.

And so we got her up to the table and she couldn't get close enough to the microphone for it to work because in certain positions it hurts.

So we had to get very creative on how we positioned her microphone and it's quite a set up here.

But I'll tell you what, she is a trooper.

She is a trooper and she's a blessing to me and I believe she's going to be a blessing to you today as we talk about our journey.

So what we're going to talk about is our journey as a married couple.

And this past Wednesday was our 12th.

I mean on the November 12th was our 48 year anniversary.

And that was two days after she had her last procedure.

And, and so what we're going to do is look at our 48 years.

And we titled this 48 year anniversary, you're still the one.

Because I can look at the crosses table and Linda can look at me and we both are able to say, and it's not a faith statement.

Now, sometimes it may feel like it, but it's not a faith statement that we can say, you're still the one.

And we're going to talk about lessons from our journey because we've been through a lot of stuff, but we're still pressing on.

And a highlight of our anniversary, since she was still recovering from her procedure and all the other stuff is I cooked her some chicken soup that day and I put my apron on.

And we like to get in the kitchen and cook.

I'm usually the sous chef and the dishwasher, she did just very little because she could not stand very long.

But we got in there and, and played some love songs.

Linda said, hey, let's put on some love songs.

So we got love songs playing and we just had a nice time in the kitchen cooking and making some soup.

And actually the soup came out pretty good.

So that's where we're at.

So this, this episode, we're going to take time to talk about how we met and what's happened since we met back in 1975 all the way through to today.

Because this is what Mary to Love is about.

Because you're going to have a journey in your life.

Maybe you've been married six months, maybe you're a newlywed, maybe you've been married longer than us, but your marriage is a journey and God wants that journey to be awesome.

And yes, you're going to have ups and downs and you're going to have tests.

And that's why a lot of people don't make it.

They don't make it out of the gate or they don't make it for six months or maybe after 12 years, we want you to make it until one of y' all goes home to heaven or we all get raptured together.

So we're gonna, we're gonna, that's what we're gonna talk about.

Our life.

This is what we've lived.

So we know what works for us.

But I want to point out something I heard somebody say the other day that just because, say we've been married 48 years or somebody's been married for a long time, doesn't us doesn't necessarily mean they got this awesome marriage.

It may be they just didn't have the energy to kill each other.

One of them's dependent on the other.

Social Security check.

You don't know why, but not all marriages make it happily.

48, 50, 60 years.

But in today, of all the marriages out there, 7.7% of the marriages have reached 50 years.

So that's quite a milestone.

We've got two more years to go.

All right.

And then the research said over half of those that do reach 50 will say their marriages are not what they would like for them to be.

And they're not thriving in their marriage.

Now, that's sad.

And that's why they say the new divorce is the grain divorce.

So, yes, you may see somebody that's been married a long time, you know, check them out, ask them, how's your marriage doing?

And I'm sure if they're doing good, they can share some nuggets.

And that's what we want to do.

And Linda and I are not perfect.

We have our moments.

But I tell you what, we.

We're still the one because we've learned how to overcome.

And I want to read this article that's from Ann Landers.

I like to read these old inlanders from years ago, but it's talking about a 40 year marriage.

So just listen, okay?

They go, Darian Landers, the.

The woman from Louisiana who offered her husband to anyone who would take him, described his virtues.

He was a good family man, church going, in excellent physical condition, who doesn't drink, smoke, or gamble.

Then she listed his flaws.

And we need to take a reality check in our lives to see how the fruit of the spirit's working in our lives.

She listed his flaws.

He was mean, selfish, critical, deceitful, miserly, demanding, rude, vain, inflexible.

But he was a good, good family man.

And he went to church.

He was unforgiving.

And she added, this is the tough part.

He sucked the joy out of life on a daily basis.

She said she stayed with him for 40 years.

And then she says, anyone who wants this man's twin brother can find him in Cleveland.

I married him and added the incentive.

He plays the piano.

No notice necessary.

I can have them packed and ready immediately.

One caveat is no deposit, no return.

Married 40 years and the husband.

And it could be the wife sucking the life out of their marriage and the joy.

So we don't want you to be like that.

Lynn and I don't want to be like that.

So we're talking about lessons we've learned to help us get to where we're at.

So that's what we're going to be going over.

And so we're going to start out back in 1975.

That's when our journey began.

I was a year out of high school.

I was working for my dad or working some type of part time job, going to University of Central Florida which back then was called ftu.

I'd go surfing every day whenever I could at the beach because we were in Orlando, Florida.

And so I had a tan, I had dark long hair.

And we would go to this place, me and my buddies, we were Christians so we wanted to date Christian girls.

So we went to a place called Rated G. It was an under 21 disco.

This is back in the John Travolta days and all that.

The lighted dance floors that lit up when you danced.

And I'd hate it to dance.

But we'd been in there two or three nights kind of checking out the girls and, and all that.

And I noticed this one hot looking blonde haired girl, tan, blonde hair, two or three times but it never worked out.

To be able to ask her to dance.

I was probably chicken.

Well, this one night we got there and the line was long, we almost didn't go in.

But finally we got in there and my two or three buddies were sitting there talking, checking everything out and all of a sudden this guy comes over and he says will you please go ask that girl over there to dance?

Well, what, what you didn't know.

What Greg didn't know was I've been eyeing on him on all those nights and he was in my opinion, so slow.

Why, why isn't.

He didn't want to ask me to dance so I would hang out with.

Hanging out with the guy.

I do, I hang out with guys.

So he thought that was my guy friend, which it wasn't.

We're just, I just was normally hanging out with guys.

I didn't like hanging out with the girls, they were too petty.

And so I sent my friend over to Greg and I said will you please, you know, he said will you please ask her to dance?

She won't leave me alone.

And so finally we hooked up.

Well, they got my friend next to me, he was standing there, her dad and he says if you don't go ask her, I will.

And so Greg hopped on it and Greg did not know how to dance.

He, what I called it all the time was the grind.

So he get out there and do the little grind and I dance and we just had a blast together from that point on.

And, you know, so he was looking for a Christian girl.

And I think the question came up.

What was it?

You asked me?

Yeah.

After several dates, we were sitting in the car talking, and I said, I got to ask her if she born again.

So I said.

I think I said, are you saved?

Yeah.

And what'd you say?

Yeah, because I didn't even.

You said, I'm Catholic.

Yeah, I said, I'm Catholic.

And I said, that's good enough for me.

So that worked for him.

And here.

Here's our date.

Nights that we would meet at rate a D. Then we, after dancing, we would go to Steak and shake.

Y' all probably heard of that.

And then that's when they were back on the roller skates.

That was a long time ago.

Remember that, Derek?

And you know, the way I knew that she was the one.

Because eventually we sat in the car one night and I got up the nerve to kiss her.

So I gave her a good kiss.

And the song Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin came on.

And that's like a seven minute song.

And I think we lip lock for seven minutes.

And the song was Stairway to Heaven.

So I knew that was a sign from God that she was the one for me.

So we dated.

I think she broke up, went back with her old boyfriend for a short period of time.

But I won.

Well, I was still in high school.

Yeah.

I mean, first year, she was still in high school.

Yeah, that summer.

But that summer, Greg took me to his church, and that's when I actually really did get born again.

Yeah.

And so throughout my whole senior year, he started coming to.

I was a cheerleader.

And so he would come to the games and be right there to support me and all that.

But she looked pretty good in her little skirt, too.

That was kind of fun, right?

Yeah, but we got involved in the ministry right away, didn't we, dear?

Yeah, I was already involved in some youth ministry with high school, working with the.

The.

The youth there.

And so she came right along.

She got born again a little bit after that.

She started coming to the meetings I would go to for leadership.

And we started our ministry before we.

Together.

Not a, quote, a ministry, but started ministering together before we were even married.

Yeah.

You know, y.

So we got married back in 1997.

1977.

So, yeah, 1977, after 50 years, getting older, all it runs together.

But I can still remember that day.

That's the day we started our journey together.

And the guy who sang our wedding Song.

One of the songs I can remember.

We both have a joke about it.

It.

The song was Let Us Climb the Mountain Together.

Yeah.

I don't think I have forgiven him.

For that yet because we didn't realize what that of course we were just.

What do you think about it?

Back then we were just in love and such.

Yes.

We were considered the all American couple.

You know, it was crazy.

Yeah.

We would very involved in the.

The high school youth ministry there and they started calling us the all American couple and all that.

And then.

Then we got married and our.

So the journey really took off and that's what we're gonna get into more about lessons we learned along the way.

Yes.

So right after we got married, we were there for a little bit and then we got ready to move to Charleston.

But Linda, talk about some things we had to face in that first three years.

Yeah, the first three years I got in a grease fire and burned my arm so bad and had to have several skin graftings done on my arm.

And even in that time I had a miscarriage.

Yep.

And you know, between all of that, then we moved away from my family and.

And when she had the.

The burned arm, I was.

My aunt lived there in our.

This is in Winter Park, Orlando.

I would come home from work.

She had to stop her job she was working in and come home and take care of her, feed her.

And I had to help her do every.

Both hands, everything.

You're Talking about a 21 and a 2019 year old going through this stuff.

Yes.

You know, so I learned back then being a servant and taking care of her.

So we had to get through that.

And then like she said, she had a miscarriage.

And I believe it or not, I.

Didn'T have much in feelings back then other than for her.

So it didn't even dawn on to me back then what was really going on where I could even incur.

I'm sure I encouraged her some, but it didn't.

It didn't wipe me out.

And I wasn't.

I didn't really realize what was going on back then.

I was.

Guess I was young and dumb.

Young give as much support.

Yep.

As what was exactly right.

Well, once we got through a little bit of that, then we moved our first move away from all my family to Charleston.

Yeah.

And then we did a second move.

Well, we moved to Charleston to work with junior highs with our youth pastor who moved up there.

I was pregnant with Tiffany.

Yeah, we had Tiffany there.

So we had our first daughter all this time.

And that Puts a whole new strain on your marriage.

Oh yeah.

And most of y' all can relate to that.

And then I got the call.

We needed to go into full time ministry and I needed to go to Bible college.

So we packed up from Charleston and moved to Fort Worth, Texas.

Yes.

And then I went to Bible college.

So further away from my family.

Yeah, even so.

And I didn't realize back then how much family and how much she was with her mom and she wanted to be around family because I had no brothers and sisters and I was, I'm.

From a big family.

So we came from.

That's one of the things since going against us.

I'm a single kid, but I was not spoiled.

And basically.

And she had a big family and we moved to Fort Worth, Texas, went to Bible college.

I was a youth pastor, full time youth pastor before I got a Bible college.

Basically broke then.

And during that time we, we, we went to it.

We left youth pastoring, excuse me, there.

And we went with a church and we pastored for a little while.

And then we had two kids.

Linda.

We had two kids.

Yeah.

And what happened there?

Well, we had two children, Tiffany and Jason.

And Jason was a twin.

And I carried, without knowing it, Jason's twin, full term.

And then afterwards he was kind of, I don't know that he was small so they, you know, he did.

But you know, that's kind of normal for child.

But.

Well, it was a surprise to us because we didn't, back then we didn't have all the sonograms and stuff.

And so we lost Jason's twin.

And that was very traumatic for me.

But still, again, Greg kind of was feelingless.

He never, he never had a clue.

He wasn't there during it all and it was just kind of a mess.

But to say the least, there was a lot of emotional trauma that had gone on back in those days.

Yeah, we had a lot of different things hit, of course, just having two kids less than a year and a half apart.

Yeah, that puts strain.

Although I think we came through that pretty good.

You know, we had to come up with our parenting skills, but I think we, that was a good time in our life.

And then while I was in Bible college, we had this, this word that came to us from.

Linda was in there and the lady started, said this couple in the back, she was.

Went around ministering to people, kind of like a word of knowledge or something.

And she actually read our mail about what was going on in our marriage, about me and our differences.

And I'm not Going to go into all that.

But she said, your love that you have for each other, primarily, if you get this other stuff under control, you're going to be called out to teach.

And I remember that word came to us and we looked around and thought they were somebody behind us, but it was us.

And she said, you're going to be called out.

The teaching on marriage.

Well, at that point, I was my goal as a full time youth pastor.

We said, I don't know where she got that from.

And we just went on and never thought about it again for several years.

But during that time when we had the kids, like when we got ready to have Jason, we got pregnant, we decided we wanted to have another, another child.

And that was right after we moved to Fort Worth to go into Bible college.

And so we Faith plus works.

Jason came along and I remember telling our kids, I mean, remember talking to my parents and said, oh, what are we going to tell our parents?

See, I was real.

I was controlled in a sense, parents pleaser or whatever.

I was concerned about what they thought, what they did or what, what I didn't, how well they were going to think about it.

So I thought they were going to be totally mad at us for having a kid, for having another child.

So I kind of said, what did I say?

You lied.

I lied.

You just totally lied.

You know, we told them about me being pregnant again, and they're like, what?

What are you guys even thinking?

And Greg's like, no, no, I. I didn't even know about it.

And I looked at him like, are you kidding me?

This was a decision we made together.

Yeah.

I was aware of kids and I wanted a bunch of them, but here we are.

So I'm thinking, why you got to be kidding?

Well, as moving forward, that was a.

Major knife in her back.

Oh, yeah, that was rough.

So back in 1986, and I had left to go home to visit my family, which I had not done in, I can't even say since we left, since from the very beginning, that move out of Orlando.

And I got home and I'm like, I am not gonna.

I'm not gonna do this anymore.

Because Greg was pleasing everybody but me.

I put everybody else first.

Yeah, we didn't understand our personality types.

We didn't understand each other at all.

And I basically put her in a box, big time, into my little box.

Mothered me.

Yeah.

As a youth pastor and be involved in the ministry.

I said, she should act like this and not like that.

And Linda's back then, her personality, she's a real outgoing person, but she was probably.

She had her differences stuff.

So I would try to put her in a box regardless if it was right or.

Or what she was doing.

And that just crushed her.

And.

And with all the past things that had gone on, I. I had decided, no, I'm not going to do this.

It went against every grain that was in me because I just, I. I. Divorce is not a word that would even cross my mind.

Once you're married, you're married for life, till death do you part.

But we went.

I just had gone home and I'm like, okay, I'm not going to live like this anymore.

And so I just let him know I'm not coming home.

You know, that's it.

I came home just to pack up my kids and all of our stuff and moved.

I had already gotten everything all settled out, had them arrange to go to a certain school, the whole bit.

And Greg's like, at that point, what were you thinking, dear?

She called up and said, I'm coming home to get the kids.

This was out of the blue.

I was.

I had the kids, but just all.

Our stuff, all the stuff.

This kind of came out of the blue.

I mean, we knew we were.

Things weren't always the best, but I was just blown out.

And I said, this happens to other people, not me.

So I found every marriage book was three of them we had on our house on Marriage that she had been trying to get me to read for several years.

Yeah, can we do a conference?

Can we read the conferences?

I wouldn't read the books.

I wouldn't do anything.

But I read them all in about two days.

And then she got back for a day and we talked.

And then I had to do a wedding ceremony for somebody, some friends of ours.

And so I'm up performing a wedding and looking out in the audience.

And there's Linda, who she was helping there, too.

And I'm thinking, what a hypocrite.

My wife's getting ready to leave me and I'm performing these people.

But that afternoon, what happened?

Well, a gal that, from Bible school that was mentoring, she was like a really close mentor for me.

And she said, linda, come over.

Let's just talk about this and see.

And I'm like, you're not.

You're not ginger.

You're not gonna get me to go back with the dude.

And so we.

I was home praying and fasting may have only been for an hour that I need, but.

So I went to her house, her and I crawled up in the bed together.

I know that sounds weird, but, you know, it's kind of like your mom, you know?

Did y' all have ice cream, too?

No, but it was, you know, it's like crawling up in the bed with your mom and just pouring your guts out to them.

And so she's like, just give the guy a chance.

And so after we got done talking, I decided, okay, God, what do you want?

What do you want?

And of course, the Lord say, if his heart has turned around, which at that point, he really did have a desire and a heart to make things work and to change the way that he had been.

And God even gave me that scripture out of Ephesians 3:20, that says, Linda, I'm gonna do above and beyond all you can think or ask in this.

You know?

And then I knew this scripture, Jeremiah 29:11, that says, I got a plan for you and it's for good.

So that was the point.

I decided, okay, I'm gonna stay.

And we have.

We do a whole.

We're.

We're doing episodes on all of this about what we learned through all this.

It didn't happen overnight.

It wasn't an immediate change.

It took like, two or three years.

I remember laying in bed about three years.

She came back.

We were laying in bed.

I can still remember the house where we were laying.

And she told me what happened.

And.

But she looked at me, and there's a lot of people that hear the statement through the years.

I figured I'm.

I'm not the only person that's heard this, but she just looked at me and said, I don't love you anymore.

I don't love you anymore.

And that.

That.

Those are powerful words when they're told to you by someone that you love.

Well, my heart had turned to stone.

Yeah.

You know, and, you know, God had to take and melt my hard heart.

He had to take and turn me around.

Yeah.

And.

And he did.

He started doing.

But see, what happened is I had to focus on capturing Linda's heart again.

I had to remember what I did, what I needed to do.

And so I began.

Get me back to steak and shake.

Right?

Yes.

Take me back.

But I had to get that.

And the point being here is, on this part of our journey is a lesson, husbands and.

And wives, you need to be investing into your marriage.

Yes.

On a regular basis, it'll be really imperative for you to get some good marriage counseling so you can get some of these issues working on.

Because you never even go to marriage counseling.

That doesn't.

Before you get married, doesn't guarantee anything.

But again, it starts.

Your foundation.

Yes.

And like I said, we were.

We were involved at ministry.

We had a great group of people when we were kind of like volunteer youth ministers and stuff with other youth pastors where we went.

We had a great environment.

But you know what?

We never in.

Linda wanted to, but I said, we're too committed to our ministry.

We got to be at all these meetings.

I don't need to.

I don't need to change or.

Oh, here it is.

I'll change.

You'd tell me something.

Oh, I'll change.

Yeah, yeah.

Three days later, back to that.

How long does that last before somebody's heart begins to get hard?

It's like, seriously, let's go to a marriage conference.

Let's.

Let's do this.

Can we just go to the young couples meeting one night?

No, we can't do that.

We got to be here.

We're committed.

I was committed to everything but to our marriage.

Yeah, so let that be right now.

No matter how long you've been married, are you committed to your marriage?

Are you.

Think about it.

Are you listening to anything that's going to strengthen your marriage, even if your marriage is doing good?

Right there.

There's a lot of people.

We've been along, been Christians for a long time and a lot of stuff going on, but people will listen to.

To tapes on healing.

They'll listen to tapes on how to be a better Christian, how to build your faith, all these things.

But you mentioned anything to them about listening to something on marriage.

Oh, I'm good.

I'm good.

I'm really good.

We're.

We're doing okay.

But what it is.

But are you?

Are you.

But what happens even if you're doing good?

You can listen to us or somebody doing a teaching, or you.

You get a book, and maybe they bring out something on communication or something on sex or maybe how you're raising your kids.

You can go, you know what?

I've heard this before, but I haven't been doing that.

See, it stirs up your mind.

It renews your mind to things we've done, forgot about, or how to respond to somebody or how to romance your wife or how to respect your husband and take care of him.

So we got to have a way remembered since.

See, that stuff, I. I wouldn't open myself up to, and it almost cost me my marriage.

It put Linda in a box and almost destroyed her.

So.

So that's what we're talking about.

We started learning, then we started Both learning how to understand each other.

Yeah.

Because.

Because I knew I didn't really care for my personality being like it was.

And.

And Greg was so stable and so calm about everything.

It made me want to just slug him upside the head.

Yeah.

We both had good traits going on, but we just didn't.

We didn't understand things.

Right.

And like Lynn said, we began to understand each other.

Yes.

And personality styles.

And what we started doing was we started building a foundation.

That's the whole key.

That's what our goal.

Yeah.

The God factor.

Yeah.

And Matthew 7, 24, 27 says, Everyone who hears these words of mine, that's talking about God.

And a lot of time we just think about the word.

But if you.

He.

He tells us how to be a husband.

He tells us in the Word how to be a wife, how to walk in love, how to do forgiveness, how to turn the other cheek, how to treat one another.

And so he's saying, if you'll listen to the teachings about how to be a better person, just be kind to one another.

Yes.

As you do this.

When the storms come.

See, we had the storms come of a miscarriage, of having kids, of moving across the country and leaving family behind, of financial situations.

But those storms came and that caused erosion to happen.

So what we started doing was building a foundation.

We.

We said, all right, Greg, Linda, to each other, what can we do this?

I don't know.

We use these exact words.

But what we did is we begin to build that foundation because it says, a foolish man, if he doesn't have a good foundation, his house is going to come down.

So we started going to marriage conferences.

We started reading the books together, we started praying together more.

And there's a lot of things we're going to share about that we did, but it got us back together.

And Linda says, you know, my heart was ready to go day one.

But she said it took about two or three years, I think.

Right.

Yeah.

For her to get back.

It was a length of time.

But I remember on this one little part here, I remember we went to this marriage encounter weekend with the Catholic church.

I remember I. Linda got back in town, I said, we need to do something.

And back then, there wasn't all the stuff we have today.

I mean, there wasn't nothing on tv.

You didn't have audios, you didn't have the Internet.

You didn't have.

You can't even record your TVs unless you had a BCR.

And I called him up, said, you guys got anything going on?

She Says, yeah, in a couple of weeks we're doing a marriage encounter weekend.

I said, great, we want to come.

She goes, well, if your marriage isn't doing really good, it's probably not the best thing to come to.

I said, we're coming.

And we came.

And the big thing they had us do was talk.

We would listen to a person talk, maybe have a little small group.

They send us back to a room and we talked, talked, talked.

So communication is there.

So we're going to stop there.

Talking about building a foundation and then we're going to take the next episode and we're just going to talk about the next few years are our life and things were learned and where we've been and then we've got.

Then we'll get into the last 12 or so years where it's like the marriage busters came at us.

But because of what we've done and built in our marriage, it's allowed us to get through them.

That mountain that that guy sang about.

And yes, Bible says, give me my mountain for Caleb.

Well, that's what our goal is.

We want to take the mountain because they're going to come.

So any things you want to say, Linda, before we close up?

No, just that, you know, what, you know, we.

We had.

Well, we'll cover a lot of it.

Yeah, we're gonna cover it.

So.

Yeah.

No, I don't.

You know, things that we had to start building.

Yeah.

How we prepared us for the storms that were ahead that we had no clue was coming.

Yeah.

You know, what did we do through.

The next few years?

We had a lot of good stuff happening and different things, but we're going to get in there and then.

How the enemy can come in and try to steal cone ready for it.

The thing is, it wasn't necessary.

He got us to be jerks and not be husbands and wives now.

It was like since we had our foundation life hit and that's where the rubber meets the road.

But if you don't have your relationship in order.

Walking in love when the storm said it magnifies everything.

So that's what we'll talk about next time.

And yeah.

So some honeydews or you want to talk about our giveaway?

Because it has been our 48th wedding anniversary, we decided to do a married and love it coffee mug giveaway.

And here's how you guys can participate.

So we're giving away for the married and love it coffee mugs.

And if you're currently on our mailing list and you send in a comment or question or prayer request, then you're going to be entered into this drawing.

And if you have not already signed up for a newsletter, well, then click onto the link that's below and sign up and then we'll pop your name into the drawing.

The deadline to do that is November 30th and the drawing is going to be on December 1st.

So just go to our website and the link is going to be in our show notes on how to click on our website.

You'll get to see a picture of the coffee mugs and we look forward to, you know, seeing a text or an email or voicemail.

Any comments or questions or topics that you want us to cover in the podcast or any prayer requests to send us your prayer request for your family, for your marriage.

And then let us know how much.

You like the podcast and our email and you can go through the website or, or call us and leave a met.

We got a phone that you can just leave a message on or text, say, hey, pray for this.

Here's a topic I'd like to hear and we'll be glad to hear it.

Or say, hey, you know what?

We're really enjoying your podcast.

We like this, what you shared.

So this.

Yes, just do that.

Well, some honeydews before we close up.

Yeah, well, think about your a little bit.

Start thinking about your story and journey and are there any adjustments that you might need to make?

But we didn't get into how to make those adjustments.

We'll do that next episode, but start thinking about it.

And then we have our signature honeydew.

What is that?

Number two is the ten second kiss.

And before I say that, I mentioned something earlier about playing love song and maybe that's something you can do.

If you guys haven't got some of your old love songs out, make up and take a tape or look, good gracious, look at that.

A playlist on your, your phone.

Sheesh.

And sit around sometime, listen to some love songs while you're kissing or kissing or yeah, hopefully you'll be kissing, but around the house you're doing some chores and different things.

Get creative.

Bring back some, some memories.

And you know, some of you guys to me can be a little spiritual sometimes say, well, that's not a Christian song.

It's about love.

What's God about?

It's about love.

So.

So loosen up a little bit.

Some of y' all need to loosen up.

Loosen up your.

Tie your apron and just have some fun.

Get, get frisky.

And then do the 10 second kiss, you know, the 10 second kiss.

What you do is you call your spouse over to you or you pull them over to you.

And you a lot of times a good time to do it is in the morning.

Say come here and you can say hey Siri, set my timer for 10 seconds or whatever way you want to do it and just give up.

Plan a good one on them.

Give them that kiss.

It can set the atmosphere for your day.

Who knows, if you don't got to go to work right then what could happen?

And it may just be a little I love you type kiss, but nothing happens if you don't do something.

All right, well, I hope everybody has been inspired by today's message.

I know I have.

It just brings back good memories for me and our good rated G days and our Steak and Shake days.

And so if you know anybody that you think could benefit from the podcast, we'll pass the word along to them.

And with that in mind, we're gonna see you next week.

And until then, remember this, 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.

Also, subscribe to and follow us on your favorite platform and be sure to check out our website at www.thatriedandlovet.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 and you can be married and love it on purpose.