Hustle & Flow
Join us for the wisdom, humor and insight from a married couple of 33 years on the hustle and flow of life.
We have worked so many types of jobs over 33 years. We have worked in the service industry, retail, corporate and blue collar work. We have been Realtors for 18 years, managing property, flipping houses and owning short term rentals. We have worked staff work which includes everything from Pastoring to Youth Pastoring to Children’s ministry.
We have been involved in CrossFit for over 11 years, owning a gym, coaching and actively working out. We are involved in Spartan races and travel the nation competing.
We own a Dessert Cafe called Crave in Downtown Tupelo that has been open since 2014. We currently have three locations.
We have raised four children and currently have two grandchildren. Family is of utmost importance to us.
We have a life full of stories that we can’t wait to share with you.
Hustle & Flow
Your Marriage Deserves Your Best Work Ethic
Hey, good morning. Good morning, this is Brad and I'm, with my wife, tiffany, the host of the Hustle Flow podcast, excited to be with you this morning. Thank you for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Good morning, tiff, good morning. How are you? I'm great. Well, that's a very broad statement. I'm going to tell you a story real quick about how she's not so great Women get accused of telling long stories?
Speaker 2:I believe you're a longer storyteller than I am.
Speaker 1:Long story short is we were challenged to do something dumb at the gym yesterday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, monday, monday, yeah, a few days ago, three days ago, that's right Monday and one of our buddies said you know one of the old trainers. He put my ex-girlfriend on his back and held a weight on his foot and he did a pull-up. I thought, well, I could do that and we went over and we decided to try it and my lovely wife hopped on my back, locked her legs around me, but she failed to lock her arms around me and all of a sudden we heard kaboom and the whole gym came over and she was upside down on her head and on her neck. Long story short, it's a mild concussion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just a concussion.
Speaker 1:It's just a concussion. So if anything happens today and she says something that may be a little weird, it's the concussion talking, but anyway so it's probably not. No. And then, since we've had all this for three days, she said we're going to do that again and try it again. Oh yeah, we're absolutely going to try it again, absolutely not no, no, yeah, I didn't go through all that, for One concussion is enough.
Speaker 2:Nah, it's fine, is enough, it is enough. So we, we do dumb stuff sometimes, and that is one of those dumb things. Well, yeah, we're the wrong. Both of us are the wrong people to say hey, I bet you can't wait, hang on, I bet we can, or we're going to try.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we're both there and I and we forget that we are not. You know, we were talking about stuff that we used to do in the old CrossFit gym, which was that was 12 years ago, and we just forgot that 12 years ago meant that we were barely 40.
Speaker 1:That's right, you weren't even 40 yet, I was just 41 and you would have still been like 30, 39. So, yeah, a lot of time under the bridge or a lot of water under the bridge, and a lot of time ago we might've done that. I'm not trying it again. Yeah, we're trying. I told you you may just have to find somebody else's back to hop on, but anyway, so that's what we're dealing with this week is a concussion.
Speaker 1:It's been interesting, it's fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Well, good morning. Thank you for listening. We are going to hop into our topic this morning. Our topic this morning is what kind of work ethic do you have when it comes to your marriage and we've been talking about marriage. It's important to us, marriage is important to us. We've had a lot of heart-to-heart discussions, especially over the past few weeks and again at 53, I'll be 53 in a couple weeks. At 53, I'm continuing to learn.
Speaker 2:I still have issues and you could have asked me and I could have cleared that up for you do you want to ask me about your issues?
Speaker 1:no, I'm not interested, but I thought I thought at 53 that I had most of this stuff conquered. But I'm learning. The older I get, man, there are still some holes in me. There's places to where I didn't even know that I needed help or I've missed things. Does that make sense? And so we're going to talk this morning about your work ethic in a marriage, about making a marriage work. We've been together. June 1st will be 35 years that we've been together. We've talked about that at length, how long we've been together, and it has always.
Speaker 1:I wish and you may have a different take on this, and I want you to hop in there if you do it's not always been. It's not easy. Being together 35 years's not easy. Being together 35 years is not easy. And especially we are polar opposites. We're not the same type of personality. We both are wired different. We think different. If you say up, I'm going to say down, and it has not been an easy marriage. Now that doesn't mean it hadn't been a great marriage, but it's not been an easy marriage. So we didn't. Just, you know, look at each other in bad eyes and every night we're watching the same programs because we watch the same TV, we're reading the same books, we're going to the same restaurants. We're constantly having to work and evolve to continue to make our marriage work, constantly having to work and evolve to continue to make our marriage work. And so let's talk about what that really looks like a little bit. A long, successful marriage is work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was thinking about work ethic. When I interview people or before I interview people, sometimes you know they'll email me and they'll say this is my first job, but I have a really strong work ethic. How do you know you have a strong work ethic if you've never had a job before? But sometimes I don't think in marriage that we think in those terms of having a work ethic, Because marriage, when you think about it, I know, when you're young and you're getting ready to get married, you don't think, well, this is going to be a lot of work. You think this is going to be wonderful, I'm going to have somebody to hold hands with and go to TJ Maxx with. It's what a woman is thinking and a man is thinking other things, but you're not thinking about work. I know you and I we flip houses and we will go in and we will look at a house and what do we say if we walk away from it?
Speaker 1:It's too much work too much work.
Speaker 2:But you don't think about that in terms of marriage sometimes, and we'll talk about that later. But sometimes, even just looking at you know, sometimes if we really looked at each other before we got married and looked at all the baggage that's lined up behind each other, we might look and go that's going to be too much work, that's going to be a lot of work. But then, when you're in it, well, you bought the house. That's right Now. You bought it. That's right now. You bought it, that's right. So now you just got to put your nose to the grindstone and go to work. And that's what marriage is to make it last a long time, it's work.
Speaker 1:And you've got to have a strong work, that work ethic, to make it great yeah and that's actually a really good adage when you think about a house that we do walk away from houses sometimes because we do say that's too much work. But there's an addition to that particular phrase it's too much work for the return. The return is not there Now, and this is a side note as a reference. When I buy a house, I try to buy a house at 50% of value of what it would be fixed up, and then I will put in about 20% of work maybe 20, 25, but I will never, ever buy a house, nor will I work on a house if I can't make at least what I'm going to put into it, and so that's how I think about houses. When it comes to marriage, you're right when I met you, you were the most beautiful thing. You still are, but you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. And when I was able to talk to you the first time, I held your hand, the first time, I kissed you, I thought, man, this is awesome. However, year 35, I had no concept what the work would be to get to year 35. Year one was awesome. Year 35 has been way better than year one because of the return, because we stayed vested into the relationship and we did put our nose to the ground and we kept working. Yeah, we both have a good work ethic and and listen, there's times that all of us get tired. There's times that all of us get, you know, whatever weary. But if you have a good work ethic, you need to take that same work ethic and put it into your relationship, and that's what we're talking about this morning. Get in the boat. Yeah, get in the boat together.
Speaker 1:Mel Robbins you may or may not know who Mel Robbins is. She wrote the book Let them and it's a really good book. It's one of those things that you see a lot about, but her and her husband have a podcast as well, and the one thing that she said was is that you want to be in the boat rowing together. So you want to talk about your experience with rowing the boat with me and maybe what that looks like for you. I mean, when I say get in the boat and row together, what does that mean to you? How do you feel about that? When I say getting the boat and row together, what does that mean to you? How do?
Speaker 2:you feel about that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that, especially now you know, I realize that when we're talking about where we're going and where we're heading and we're both rowing to head there, it makes things so much easier.
Speaker 2:And I know too over periods of my life, if I think about it, I can pinpoint places where I was rowing in another direction, and I'll try not to over over um, overuse the rowing and the boat analogy any more than necessary. But it's real hard if if one person's rowing one way and one person is rowing the other way absolutely and it it makes it really really tough. And I know for sure that there's been times in my life when I was rowing in the opposite direction. But when we're going the same direction, when we know where that is and we're both rowing to get there, it just makes it so much easier. Because I don't know I've never read the maybe I have wrote about it's very typical that I probably would row the boat opposite direction of somebody, but I can imagine that that's all that's real hard like when one person is is rowing one way and one is rowing the other. How much harder that would be versus when you're both trying to get to the same place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, and I know that we we've canoed before. Uh, don't go canoeing with your spouse.
Speaker 2:I think I would do better now I don't know it was.
Speaker 1:We ran into trees and we turned over and it, you know, uh, it was such an interesting experience that I don't I think one time is good for me. That's a really good memory and I'll just let it stay there. But rowing and getting in the boat and staying in the boat together this day in time that we live in, it is absolutely easy to get out of the boat.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because, listen, the world will tell you you don't have to stay in this, you absolutely don't have to stay in something you don't like. Now there are caveats, okay, and I understand that. And if you want to say, well, you don't know my situation and I don't Every situation is different. You know, when there's there's abuse, there's there's infidel, there's all kind of things that have variants, okay. So I'm just saying, but, as a whole, if you wake up one day and you think I don't even like you, today the world has made it easy to get out of the boat, because there's life rafts around and it could be friends, it could be your mama, it could be your brother, it could be your sister. They're like, hey, you don't have to put up with that stuff. Why don't you just come get in this boat? You can get out of that boat and we'll just take this boat and we'll go somewhere else, and you don't have to stay in the boat with them anymore. Life has dealt, it's just easy.
Speaker 1:Now, no fault divorces Well, listen, I don't believe in that term. There's some fault somewhere. Somebody quit somewhere. So I think, when you row together, though, there's got to be a common, there's a clear destination, and you got to be on the same page. And what does that look like being on the same page in marriage?
Speaker 2:That's what we were just talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, just go into the same destination talking about where you're, where you're going and where you're heading, and what takes a lot of conversation, though that's not just something that we wake up and we decide, and I won't say anything other than Sunday we were presented with an opportunity, and it was an opportunity that just came out of nowhere, and it's an opportunity that could change our life one way or the other, and so we could just make a quick decision and say we're going to do this or we're not going to do this, but for our marriage, for the next 20, 30 years, ever how long we're together, we have to make a decision together of what that looks like for us, and I think that that's it. If we don't communicate clearly and we don't talk about our goals, we don't talk about our dreams, we don't talk about where we really want to head as a married couple, then then I think it causes you to row in different directions, like you were talking about, you know, and I think that's that's really where that's something that comes in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. And then and then you just can't you know. If you realize, you look up and you realize and you're not rowing why? And we'll talk about some things like deal with work ethic too just that we were thinking about. But if you've quit rowing, why did you get lazy? Did you get distracted? Do you not care anymore? I mean, you know why. Why do you quit? Are you just tired? I've been. I've been coming home with this same person for however long, and I'm just tired, or I'm tired of them, I'm tired of their behavior. I quit rowing because they don't row no more and I'm not rowing no more. I mean, you know, if you realize, when you're listening to some of this, that you just quit rowing, maybe you both quit rowing. You know you have to ask yourself why. Then you know what kind of work ethic? Apparently, I'm going to have a real hard time saying that today but you know what does work ethic look like in your marriage? I know we're big on serving. We really believe in serving. How can I serve you today?
Speaker 2:I've written some notes in my phone because I've been thinking about a post I was putting together about marriage. Because I'm very deliberate in my facebook post. I'll make notes in my notes app and then I'm you know, before I put something out, but I was thinking about um and in my my post will be um. You don't always know what goes on behind closed doors and I've got a picture of us that I love and you think about that one way, right, but you don't know what goes on behind closed doors, because I mean to a lot of people. Let's just be honest. Our marriage looks great and people say that like we think. You know that we'd rather just live in each other's skin and we're always together, and all those you know they, we're a unit. Our grandbaby says that's honey papa's house. Like we're, we're a unit, um but.
Speaker 2:And you know, but you, you know, but you, you look at people like, well, you don't know what goes on behind closed doors, though, but I know what goes on behind closed doors at my house. At my house, my day starts out that you bring me coffee because I'm not ready to come to the kitchen. But then, yeah, and so I mean that's that's then, and I do things for you, and we're constantly saying what can I do for you today? When I just was doing this play that took up so much of my time every day, you said how can I serve you today? Like, what do you need from me today? What can I do for you today?
Speaker 2:And I know that maybe everybody doesn't do that at their house every day, but we work together so we can sometimes say like, well, hey, before lunch can you do this, or can you call about whatever. But even like, I think you can definitely say like, this week, what is there something that's that's that will help you? Is there something I can help get off your back or make your life easier this week? Anyway, but that's just serving, um, that's.
Speaker 1:That's one one thing yes, and for me, that's one of the reasons we've made it 35 years is that we chose to serve each other, and you know, for me I'm a what helps me in my life, because you do we do constantly ask each other how can I help you? Is there something I can do to help you? And the stuff that I need sometimes, honestly, is the stuff you hate. It's like can you do, you mind running to the bank? Yeah, I can run to the bank, but you need to tell me what account it's coming out of. You need to give me the um, so the number, and yeah, which bank?
Speaker 2:because I went to the wrong bank before and they just looked at me like I don't, why are you here?
Speaker 1:this is this is not and so, but for me, errands is serving me, because I may have 14 things I need to do and sometimes just taking the burden of going and taking care of a couple of things like that that's very helpful to me. So serving in your marriage is going to look different. You've got to be attuned to what your spouse needs.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you've got little kids, it may mean, hey, I really need you to give her a bath tonight and put her to bed please. I've had a day at work. I really need some time to decompress. Please take care of that child that you brought into this world, because I just I need, I need some step back. That's right.
Speaker 1:So serving is going to look different for everybody? Yeah, but it's, but it's the same in every marriage. It needs to be done, I think one of the other things that has helped us stay together 35 years. And these are just things that we talk about because this is our work ethic. If you want to know Brad and Tiffany's work ethic in their marriage, this is it Number one. We serve each other. Another thing is we change constantly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I have a new friend and we were talking about marriage and she was saying this is her third marriage. I said, well, I've technically been married three times, it's been to the same person, but I've changed three different times in my marriage. When I was young I was absolutely stupid and I was so stubborn and I was unwilling to bend. I want to answer that and yeah, and so. And then in the middle I was really trying to find like who we were. Our kids were getting older and life was going so fast at that time.
Speaker 2:And then and I think the second, the middle part I was really trying to figure out priorities, right, yeah, and then this I would say this last part you know together 34 maybe or something, I don't know. You know better than I do, but the last part has just been really enjoying marriage and really trying to nail down some of this stuff like serving and changing and saying, okay, what do I need to fix, I need to fix and communicating. And and been okay, what do I need to fix? I need to fix and communicating. And, ben, it's been our marriage the last.
Speaker 1:This third marriage has been so intentional, yeah, that's a good word is that it has been intentional. We have really chose to change. Yeah, and I'm going to be honest with you. You're right, I would say three marriages make sense and I've not. To be honest with you, you're right, I would say three marriages make sense and I've not really thought about it until you brought it up. But for the first part of our marriage and I'm just going to say this, and you always look at me crazy, but I was a religious butthole. That's probably not a real good word, christian word, but I was just a religious butthole I wanted to make sure that I kept all the tradition. I wanted to make sure that it was a line upon line and precept upon precept and that you did everything like I needed you to do.
Speaker 2:Lord bless you.
Speaker 1:You picked the wrong one out of the bunch to try to do that with and I didn't know that at the time, but I was not, listen, I loved God and I did love you, but I was very religious and I was a butt about it when I didn't get my way. And then, you're right, the middle was more about priorities, making a living, trying to figure out how in the world I'm going to pay for college and tuition is due again, dad. And hey, I hit a curb and hey, what's the insurance number? And hey, you know I'm getting married and hey, we're happy.
Speaker 1:So that middle part, you're right, was a lot of that. But then these past few years, once our kids really began to grow up a little bit and they're they're still in that process, that's where marriage really began to happen. And I think that's the hard part for some people is that that that first part is is fun for a minute, then it's yucky, and then the middle part is like, oh my God, we've got kids and high school graduations, and but when you get to that third part part which is where we are now in our marriage, that third life that you want to call it, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah but I don't think you have to wait till the third part. I don't think so. If you start doing some of this stuff early, early on, if you, if you learn to serve because I don't know that we really learned some of these things and knew what a difference some of these things would make back then, if we would have done some of those things.
Speaker 2:Prioritizing each other Okay, maybe my head does hurt a little bit because my words are hard today but prioritizing each other, you know, that's something that we probably because you think you're just raising kids and we've got time for that later, but you don't realize that, like you're it's so important to keep each other first, above the kids, even when you do have kids and you're raising kids. But that's important. Prioritizing each other over other people, over all the things, over work, over everything, over your mama, yeah, and then you know, communicating. Communicating it's, I think, that grows because of, and it grows because of trust too. We've talked about that several times before, about trust, that what a difference it'll make in your marriage when you can communicate and then communicate to the point to where then you bring in the vulnerability right because that's such an important thing.
Speaker 2:you did good with that idea of you know, even admitting, okay, I am working on this, I see it and this is what I see, the you're watching something about jordan peterson talking about everybody has snakes, but being able to tell each other about all your snakes and know when the person's not gonna run away and I might have, like, talked about something that you were, because you know more about that I want to talk about that. But just communicating and keeping communication keeps the weeds out of the flowerbed. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:When little things pop up and you don't communicate, whether it's resentment, whether it's just something that's going on with you personally that you don't communicate about, like, hey, I'm having a really stressful time right now, or you know, I'm just got a lot of big emotions, whatever it is, whatever, and you just don't communicate. Or, hey, I just I feel like you know we, you, you know my love language and I know yours, but, like I, I feel like you might need a refresher course lately, cause I don't feel like you're meeting my needs. Um, but being able to communicate. That, though you know, I think it was at the first of the year we talked about. I said, okay, I need you to be, I need you to be more thoughtful about date nights, because I want, I want, like, even though we spend a lot of time together, I want a date night, but being able to communicate that, instead of just being mad at you that you don't do a date night and I didn't communicate with you, it's very important, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:Because when you communicate clearly, it doesn't mean that I'm always going to be successful, always going to be successful, but it does put it in my eyesight to where this is important to you and I've got to pay attention to it because she's brought it to my attention, Things that aren't communicated or brought to your attention. You you may or may not do, and you still may or may not do when it's brought to your attention, but then at least it's there for you to have in your consciousness. And I think communication is really important and you know we're pretty good at communicating. There are times to where we both probably still, you know just go into ourselves a little bit and we eventually get it out of each other.
Speaker 1:I think the other thing too is that not just communicating but talking. It's amazing to me, and how many people don't just talk. We talk about everything everywhere, all the time. One of us really loves to talk, the other one talks some, but we just talk. There's nothing and I've said this before, there's nothing funnier to me than, as you're pulling out of the driveway, you're calling me. I'm like, oh my God, we just like saw each other, but it could commence into a 35-minute phone call when you're going somewhere because we're just talking. It's one of those things, Did you see? I forgot to tell you, did you?
Speaker 2:oh, my gosh, did you all week long I I try to listen so intently. You've been telling me about all these people that are out there running 200 miles or whatever it is and I have tried to like we're just talking. But I have tried to intently listen and you don't care, do you?
Speaker 2:well, I mean you want me to be honest? No, but. But I have intently listen and you don't care, do you? Well, I mean you want me to be honest? No, but, but I have intently listened every time. I've stopped what I was doing to listen to you. Tell me about these people that are on our whatever and my whatever, because we're just talking, we just talk. But I want you to talk to me, but I don't want to make you feel stupid or say, hey, I don't care about that. If you'd not, it'd be great, because I want you to talk yeah, yeah, because things like that.
Speaker 1:Every person has something that's important to them or that they enjoy, and if you shut that part of their life down, they're going to stop talking to you. Right, and it's fine. Like, yeah, it's, it's the arizona, the Arizona monster. It's a 309-mile run. These people have been running for days. Andrew Glaze, which, if you look at him, he runs 100 miles every week and he's done it for five years. He just took it on. It took him seven days to finish 309 miles. There's people who finish it in 82 hours. There's a lady who finished it in 104 hours.
Speaker 1:But it was amazing to me and I think for me, like that excites me, because I'm thinking how in the world are these people capable of keeping their body moving for that length of time and that many miles? And so, just like anything that you talk about, whether it's cooking or whether it's a TikTok, or whether it's somebody you think is real funny on TikTok, that's not funny to me. Or whether it's somebody you think's real funny on TikTok, that's not funny to me. But if I stop and say, look, I don't want to talk about that, you'll quit talking to me. And I think, for us, the one thing that showed our work ethic is we constantly talk all the time and we try not to shut each other down. We try to listen to each other, whether we're interested or not. We try to listen to each other, whether we're interested or not. We try.
Speaker 2:We try to intentionally do that yeah so I was with somebody I don't remember, who gosh, I hope, I hope they don't listen but I said have you not talked to your husband? They said, oh no, I won't hear from him all day today. And I said all day. It was like a saturday, all day, like I brad and I will have talked 10 times by whatever o'clock, like that just blew my mind. People just not just not out here talking, chatting it up. Um, well, that's that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, because well, and also we're friends, like we right, we're best friends. We know what each other likes, we know all those things Like I know what your favorite of most everything is. Sometimes I get it wrong and that's fun, but you know, like you know what I like and you know what I don't like. You know I will shut a surprise down. I don't care the good intention behind it.
Speaker 1:You shut my surprise down last week, I sure did, and that's the thing is.
Speaker 2:This is good. You need to surprise me with a surprise. Don't tell me there's a surprise coming, because I will shut the surprise down. I do not like surprises. So if you're going to surprise me, you better surprise.
Speaker 1:Surprise me, don't like let me know the surprise is coming yeah, no, I mean, I had it was, it was going to be fun. Oh yeah, it would have been awesome and it would have been cool, but I shut it down, shut it down, but then, as she shut it down, promised me something else, like we'll go by or we'll do something or we'll do whatever. And then she still we had to wind up doing something different, but anyway. So, yeah, yeah, I get it, but we are friends and I think that's one thing that, as friendships take work and you know you don't mind sending your, like my brother and I send memes and reels back and forth all day long. It's just dumb stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's dumb guy stuff, but we are keeping our relationship moving and you'll do that with friends. You'll find something funny, or you'll hear something funny and you'll pick up the phone and call them, or you'll pick up your phone and text them, or you'll shoot them a reel or something funny. It's the same concept in marriage and and I'm just saying I love that about you You'll send me stuff sometimes that I'm like you send me serious stuff and Bible stuff and I send you funny stuff.
Speaker 2:But every relationship I mean. That's why we're different. We're just different.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right. Yeah, my stuff is like heartfelt and it's this reel of old people who are in their 90s and they're loving each other and he's kissing her on the head and she's sending me stuff like people doing so, just funny stuff, so like that. That is, that is your love language and that's how you speak. That's my love language. That is it.
Speaker 2:So talk about your vows, or do you have anything else about your work ethic?
Speaker 1:Well, I think. I think the last thing I would say about work ethic is commitment in marriage is the most important thing. Let me say that you have to be committed in your marriage, but one thing that we've learned how to do is to be compatible. Compatibility is different than commitment. It's a different animal, because I don't like everything you like and vice versa, and even when I go do it, I don't like it. When you go do it and you sit out and do stuff that I want to do, you don't like it. But we've chosen to be compatible.
Speaker 1:You know, you said that when you first get married you think, oh, I got a buddy to go to TJ Maxx with, or Target or whatever, and guys think that too. Guys think, oh, I got a buddy, I'm going to go to TJ Maxx and then we'll have sex. That's the same concept. But you have to learn how to be compatible. If your marriage and I'll say this if your marriage is unilateral and you always get your way but your spouse never gets their way, that is not compatibility, that is selfishness.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you have to learn how to be compatible, because the world, believe it or not, does not revolve around you. It revolves around your marriage and your spouse, and you want to make that person feel good and confident about themselves as well, and so I think that you know that's where I'm at. Compatibility is so important, even as well as commitment. So you were talking about vows. We were talking about vows and how important vows are and the seriousness of vows, but you were talking about new and improved vows for 2025.
Speaker 2:Well, everybody knows can quote some of the vows that people say when they get married for sickness and have richer, poorer, all those things. And I was telling you, you know, in 2025, though and I'm not trying to change the Bible, but in this day and age.
Speaker 1:Let me say this though A lot of these vows don't come from the Bible. Yeah, some man may put it together.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, in 2025 it might look like in mental stability and in not mental stability, in debt, or in got enough money that we can put our electric bill on draft every month, like the different, the different things today, versus maybe of what it even looked like then, because it came to mind. I know a couple who will probably end up getting divorced and it is over mental stability. But you and I both know that the one that's being left was exactly like that before they got married, right, and you know he doesn't like all her issues and he doesn't like all the all the things, and she's had a tough life and she's, you know, and she's brought a lot of baggage and a lot of and, and you know, mental issues stemming from that into the marriage, but he don't want to be there for it. But you know, that's just that's one of those things that in this day and age, we have people who get stressed out, or they, you know, or they have social anxiety or they just have ongoing depression. That's a big one. We talk to couples all the time and they are tired of their their maybe husband or their wife being depressed. They won't go anywhere, they won't do anything, they come home from work and all they do is sit there and they're depressed. And they've tried medicines and it don't work and I'm tired of it. And so in this day and age, that that's something you even have to consider is sticking together through the different things Right, the being in debt up to your eyeballs, because you know, our great-great-grandparents were not necessarily, they didn't have credit card payments and payments for everything and timeshares and all those things.
Speaker 2:They just they worked on cash, that's right, and they did all those things. But now you know you can be in debt and that gets really stressful Student loans and all the credit card payments and all those things. But now you know you can be in debt and that gets really stressful student loans and all the credit card payments and all those things. So vows look a little different now of what you're signing up for and what you're agreeing to, the debt you bring into a marriage.
Speaker 1:But that's one of those things. You knew that person had this kind of debt when you got married. If you didn't ask that question, that's your fault. You need to ask those questions. Hey, I you know, I'm not trying to look at your credit report to see if you got a perfect credit score, but like I need to know what we're getting into here, because then it's like sucks to be you. Good luck with all that. You know, and it's one of those things. I said this before Sometimes marriages really fall apart because if your partner's drowning, if you go out on a boat and we can start finishing up with this if you go out on a boat and your partner can't swim, but they jump in the water and you stand on the boat and you've got a life preserver and you are a trained lifeguard and you just watch them drown while you're standing up on the boat saying you knew you couldn't swim.
Speaker 1:I don't know why you jumped in the water. You know good and well you can't swim. You've never been able to swim. Your mama couldn't swim, your daddy couldn't swim. None of those people could swim, and and and I told you when we went out on this boat there's a possibility the boat could go down. You said you'd be fine and but I told you that you probably drown.
Speaker 1:If you stand there and you watch your spouse continue to drown and you don't help, like that's where it gets weird, man, that's where there's a problem. And that goes with debt, that goes with anxiety, that goes with family issues, that goes with kid issues, that goes when church goes crazy, that's all these things. Listen, it does not matter. You can stand there and spit facts all day long about why they're in the situation they're in, and the truth is, people who are in those situations probably already know why they're there. They don't need facts. Sometimes. They need you to lend a hand and say you know what? I'm going to help you. We don't want to be here, I want to stay near to you, I want to stay committed to you this is my vow I've made and continue to work.
Speaker 1:It takes two people. The old song is Rob Bass. It takes two to make a thing go right. It makes two to make it out of sight.
Speaker 1:I can't work by myself in marriage, and if you choose not to work, then the marriage can be in trouble. But I can tell you one thing that I know from 35 years If you both will work, even when you get tired, don't quit. Even if you can't row as hard, I'll row hard for you, even when you don't feel like you can breathe. One day I'll breathe for you when you don't feel like you can make it. I'm going to do it. And we found seasons in our life that are like that, to where one of us is vibing. One of us is strong, one of us has it going on as far as just being able to have our life together, and the other one's struggling a little bit. But that's what marriage is is bringing your spouse along and working double time. When your spouse don't feel like they can work as hard, you work till they come back to an even keel, to where you're working together. Any final thoughts there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's good. You know, if you feel like your spouse has given up or they're tired, just have the conversation. Hey, like this is what I want our marriage to be, and I know it can be Like what can we do, what can we fix, what can we make better so that we're both rowing in the same direction and getting there, and I think it's important.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. As Beyonce says, work, work, work, work, work. Get off your butt and go to work in your marriage and I'm telling you, you can have the marriage of your dreams. So thank you so much for listening this morning. When you find somebody who's going in the direction you want to go, hop in the direction they're going and go there with them and you'll find a beautiful life. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great morning for listening. Have a great morning me. Brush it off, pick myself up, moving on to the better. Okay, hey, yeah, ain't no errors. Baby, it's a new era. I wake up early feeling rich, like I'm cash. I get to the paper.
