Cindy Stewart: Welcome to Episode 15. This is a transcript of my Podcast interviewing my husband.

My husband, Chuck Stewart is my special guest. Today we’re gonna talk about what we’ve learned after 38 years of marriage. 38 years.

I’m gonna jump right in, and Chuck has actually made a list of things that he wanted to talk about. Of course, I have some things to add to it.

It’s been an awesome 38 years. Of course, it hasn’t been perfect. Welcome honey.

Chuck Stewart: Thank you. I’m glad you asked me to come.

Cindy Stewart: You know, one of the first things you had on your list was, keeping your life in priority. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that?

Chuck Stewart: Yeah. I think you need to keep things important, important. The way that I list them are, keep God first, keep your spouse second, your family third, and then your vocation.

You know, as far as the first one, God goes. I think you need to spend that quiet time, during the day, whether it’s early in the morning, or late at night.

As far as the spouse, I think you need to pray together every day. That made a big difference in our lives. And then, vocation. You know, it’s very easy to put your work before anything else in your life. I know I’ve gotten carried away with that.

Remember when our youngest son was about to be born? I had just been made the sales manager of a national company. We were living in Atlanta and I had to travel to Louisiana to host this sales meeting. One of the highlights of a career. You were nine plus months pregnant. You went to the doctor that morning, the day before I was to leave. The doctor said, “Go right to the hospital.”

You called me and said, “Come home, I’ve got to go to the hospital.” I sat at my desk and thought, “How do I get out of going to the hospital, when I have to get on a plane?” I really wrestled with that.

That was hard, but I think the Lord showed me that I needed to be with family. That’s one of the four things that I think is important. You just need to keep your life in a priority, and just pay attention to what those priorities are.

Cindy Stewart: That is really funny too, cause I remember that. I was like, “Honey. The doctor said get my bag and go to the hospital,” and you’re like, “Oh. I think I’m flying out tomorrow.” I’m like, “Okay, well, I’m having a baby.”

And you know — It is not an intentional, I don’t want to be there. It’s just we get pulled on. We have careers. We have family. We have responsibilities. That pulling sometimes, shades our perspective in what’s important.

I think you’re right. Us praying together has made a big difference. Even just a few minutes every morning, before we start our day, there’s something our time together. God just directs the rest of our day. The other thing you had on your list was, marriage is your most important relationship, and we should treat it as such.

Chuck Stewart: Right. Well, it is the lifeblood of everyone’s life that’s married. You need to treat your marriage as the most important relationship, whether it’s above friends, or families, brothers and sisters, or co-workers. They should take that priority. If you got a choice to go with your friends, out to do something that you enjoy, and your wife or your husband has something that they would like to do, and would really love to have you with them, there is no choice. You gotta go with the wife.

Cindy Stewart: I know, but you know, I will tell you, in my days of work and being in that corporate life, there were times where the customers were in town and there’s a family thing going on. I remember one time specifically, your sisters were in town visiting your mom. They were all over at the house, and we were gonna have dinner. Well, I had some customer there, that I was trying to get out the door, and trying to get home, before dinner was ready. I didn’t make either one on-time. I finally got rid of my customers, but I was late getting there.

It’s just like, you know, you want to land the customer, but you wanna be home with your family. Sometimes you choose the customer. I was late getting home. We were late having dinner, because I chose to try to land the deal.

I’m with you. I think that is the most important relationship. Sometimes it’s just hard to make that right decision, but the recovery from that wrong decision’s a big part of it too.

Chuck Stewart: Right. Right. I think you need to continue the romance.

Cindy Stewart: Absolutely!

Chuck Stewart: Just because you date somebody leading up to your marriage, it doesn’t stop after your married. I mean, you need to continue the romance and let it flourish throughout your married life, and say, “I love you,” as often as you can.

Chuck Stewart: I know many times, we sit around the couch and say, “Who loves me?” It’s just a fun little thing that we do. It’s awesome. It’s awesome.

Cindy Stewart: We had a challenge trying to find enough time, money, and a babysitter for date night. I know that was a real priority for us, but it was hard sometimes.

Sometimes we would trade off with our friends across the street would watch the kids. Also, we had this little girl across the street that we’d pay and she would come over and watch the kids. We would go for a ride, or just so we would have that hour by ourself, or that two hours by ourself. You know, it wasn’t anything expensive or exotic. It was just so we would have a few minutes we each other.

Chuck Stewart: Right.

Cindy Stewart: I know the other thing we used to do is, soon as you came home from work, we would tell the kids, we just needed five minutes. We’d just have that five minutes, while you changed your clothes, or I changed my clothes, so we could just breathe and talk for just those few minutes. And then the kids could jump all over us.

Chuck Stewart: Right. And then, knowing each other’s love languages. Everybody’s heard of love languages. There’s five love languages. You can take those tests on the internet and find out what they are. Mine is Acts of Service in my secondary is Quality Time. Acts of Service means time working at the church or helping someone else out. The quality time is just being with Cindy, if she’s in the room that is quality time for me.

Her love languages are Words of Affirmation. Her secondary is Quality Time, so you get two people with quality time, there’s gonna be a lot of couch time. As far as Words of Affirmation, my job is to be an encourager, and a pusher, and funder of dreams, and goals. You should always have to have that positive outlook on what your spouses goals are, and help them to achieve that. Words of Affirmations is always important. Communication — as you were saying earlier that those few minutes alone that we had, when we’re changing clothes after work.

Communications is the key to our whole life. You know, we have to talk about finances, about raising the family, about our wants and our desires and our goals.

Chuck Stewart: Finances is important as well. I mean, one of the major causes of divorce, has to do with finances.

If you’re not able to talk about your finances, to share with each other, the good things and the bad thing, then that could be a problem. There’s always something that stood in my mind, that if something would happen to me, there’s one place Cindy could go. Open up a folder, it would tell her everything that was available to her, where all the investments were, where the bank accounts were, where the savings were, where the IRA’s and those types of things are, so she wouldn’t have to search.

I remember a story about a gal that I worked for many years ago. Her husband died, and she was just left in the dark, because he never shared it with her. Come to find out about six months after she had what she thought everything was resolved, she found a million dollar life insurance policy in a bottom drawer. Needless to say she was very happy about that.

Cindy Stewart: That’s probably, you know, one of the biggest challenges in a marriage too, is just taking the time to actually listen to what the other person is saying. And even with the kids. I was brought up in a much more disciplinary home. I always tell my husband, and I tell everybody else. He was brought up in a Beaver Cleaver home. His mom stayed home and made pies all day long, and the dad went to work. My house was much more chaotic growing up. Our rules were very strict.

And so it took me a while, just to relax and not be so intense about right and wrong. One of the best books I read on this subject is called, Loving Your Kids On Purpose by Danny Silk. He teach you how to help the kids to make decisions based on who they are, not based on the rules around them. It took us a while.

We had a few fights over this, a few, maybe dozen fights over this. It took a while. When we didn’t agree on what method, whatever it was, the children either wanted, 100 dollar tennis shoes, or they wanted to go spend the night with someone we did not know.  We did not hold our discussions in front of the kids. We would go into our room, and we would talk through it. When we got done, if we didn’t agree on it, then there was no decision, until we both came to a place where we were comfortable with the direction we were going.

Chuck Stewart: And you know, when disputes arise, whether it’s somebody getting their feelings hurt, or somebody not taking into consideration the other person, when something’s happening, you need to settle your disputes quickly. You know, you always heard the adage, don’t go to bed angry. Well, my adage is don’t let five minutes pass, before you say you’re sorry. That way you don’t have this long lasting fight with each other.

Cindy Stewart: Really, that’s one of the other things is, being able to say “NO”  to things. You both can’t say yes to everything, either together or separately, because everything that you say “yes” means “no” to spending time together.

Now, we understand that sometimes there’s obligations that we have to do, but even this weekend. We could be gone every minute of every day of this weekend, if we would say yes to everything. By Monday, we would be so exhausted, we’d be like, “Oh man. Why didn’t we say no?” We wouldn’t have time with each other, and we would just be running, running, running, and that time of, just separation and saying, “You know, I choose you for today.”

We used to do something with the kids, when we first moved to Florida is, once a month, we would go on a family day. We’d load up in the car and we’d pack lunches, and we’d do an adventure. We’d find something close to us, within an hour or two. We would take a day trip.

We just had that family time of, not only discovering little things in Florida that we didn’t know about. Nobody else went with us. It was just the four of us. It was nice for building conversations and trust and just having fun together.

Chuck Stewart: Yeah, I think so too. We also used to take vacations, you know, right after the school was out, we’d pack up and have a vacation planned for every year. That gave us some extended time in doing some things that we love doing, which is traveling to different places. We’ve been to Paris, to Italy. We’ve been all over the world. It’s been a great experience for the kids, as they grew up, because they’ve been exposed to those foreign countries.

It’s been great for the family, because we learned how to get along with each other, in a foreign land, when we don’t speak french. We had a great fun. Another great thing is traditions. A lot of people have different traditions.

We have our own for birthdays and Thanksgivings, and Christmases and… On birthdays, everybody wakes up to a morning outfit. They get a new outfit to wear every birthday. Funny thing, when Ross was in college, he was in Boston. We had sent a gift up and told him he couldn’t open it until his birthday. We called him at 6:30 on his birthday and he wasn’t even awake. He had two other roommates. He crawled out of his bunk. We told him to go into the bathroom where he opened his present.

Cindy Stewart: I’d forgotten about that.

Chuck Stewart: Yeah. That was pretty cool, so everybody gets a morning outfit. And then Cindy usually tells ’em their birthday story, about how they were born, and what happened on that specific day. That’s always a good tradition.

Cindy Stewart: And you know, that was a tradition that was started in my family, from the time I can remember, my mom always told us our birthday stories. Even though my mom and dad have passed away since then, when my siblings, when we have our birthdays, we all tell each other the story, whether we’re the oldest or the youngest, it doesn’t matter. We’ve heard the story so many times, that we always tell it. Even my birthday was recently. My oldest sister called me and she just went on and on, “I remember when you were born. You were such a good baby.” She just told me all the details.

There’s something special about being celebrated on your birthday. Even since our kids have moved out of the house, we still get birthday outfits. There’s nothing wrong with that guys. Right? We just really celebrate each other. It hasn’t come without effort and intentionality, but it’s been some of the best sown seeds we’ve done with our marriage, and our kids, right honey?

Chuck Stewart: Thanksgiving is a great time for everybody to get together and we usually end up at our house, with everybody pitching in, cooking, and having a great time. That’s a good tradition, which a lot of people share. And then at Christmas time, we still put stockings out, filled with little knickknacks that are useful for the coming years. Everybody gets… Whether you’re 30 or not, you still get a stocking from Santa.

Cindy Stewart: And Chuck always does the stocking stuffers. That’s his thing. You know what? It’s so crazy. He loves to go on Christmas eve, when there’s a zillion people in the stores, that’s when he goes.

Chuck Stewart: That’s the spirit.

Cindy Stewart: I can’t do it. I have to be done way ahead of time, but there he is at Target, and Walgreens, and Walmart, and all those different places, getting just the right thing for every single stocking.

Chuck Stewart: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And then, sometimes we go to a Christmas Eve Service. Then we come home and everybody gets to open one gift on Christmas eve. We always joke about which one is gonna be the one that they open. Traditions and rituals are very important in a marriage and in a family.

Cindy Stewart: Yeah, and as our kids… I’m just gonna interrupt here and interject, but as our kids have grown and gotten married, you know, we have to make adjustments, because they also have in-laws and kids, and stuff that they’re trying to build rituals with.

You know, those adjustments come, because you’ve sewn into them, so they have a passion about having these little traditions that everybody looks forward to, and these little moments of hearing their birthday stories or, you know, playing in the snow at Nanna’s, or whatever it is that they’re developing in their own family. There are times where you miss, not having certain things that you were used to, when they were still at home. It’s that ability to release them in, to developing their own lives, and their own family’s that they can leave a legacy for too.

Chuck Stewart: And then, one of the last things that I had on my list is that compromise is important. It’s not a “yes dear” kind of a thing. It’s, you know, when we’re trying to figure out what to do. Do we go to the movies? Do we just wanna go out to eat? Do we want to go to a concert? That’s a compromise. Where do we want to go? When planning vacations, do we want to go to France? Do we want to go to Italy? Do we want to just stay home and go to the beach? That’s a compromise, and then who to be with. Do we want to go out with John and Joan, or Billy and Jeanie, or, you know, making that choice of who you want to spend some more time with. That’s a compromise too. You know, compromise is part of marriage. You just have to learn to talk things out, and that’s where the communications come back in. It’s fun to compromise. We have a lot of fun doing that.

Cindy Stewart: Yeah. I think we do too. You know, the compromise… You know, the things we listed seem, maybe peripheral, if you’re having to compromise over, do we pay private tuition to send our child to this school, or do we go ahead and send ’em to public school, because in the long run, it’s a better financial decision for our family. You know, those are really tough things. Those are things that, they are made… Those decisions aren’t made over night. Those are things that take time. They take time to investigate, to see what are the long term effects? What are the short-term effects? Do we take a job across the country, or do we stay here? All of those things are just part of learning to fall deeper in love with each other, because when you work through, you pray through, you make the best decision that you can for that moment. And you know, sometimes it doesn’t always work.

We had a business that lost money. You know, at the time we started it, it was a great idea, and the market was strong, but it ended up losing money. We closed it. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was the decision to open it, and the decision to close it was made together. That’s what makes a marriage strong. That’s why we’re still in love, even more than ever after 38 years. That’s why I can’t wait till the next 38 years. I keep telling him, “You know, we’re probably gonna hit the 150 year mark, because we just gotta get it all in.” That’s the excitement about being married.

What we really learned about being married, is that it’s us. It’s me and him. That’s it. And yes we have kids. Yes we have grandkids. We have responsibilities, but when the bottom line comes to it, it’s me and him and we’re a team, so no matter whether we don’t have any money, which we’ve been there many a times. Whether we have money to spend, which we’ve been there sometimes. Whether we have whatever. It doesn’t make any difference. As long as we have each other, that’s all we need. Really, that’s what we’ve learned after 38 years. Would you agree?

Chuck Stewart: And also that 38 goes by very, very quickly.

Cindy Stewart: It really does, doesn’t it?

Chuck Stewart: Yeah.

Cindy Stewart: I feel like I’m 21 again, right?

Chuck Stewart: I can still remember our wedding day.

Cindy Stewart: Me too.

Cindy Stewart: So, guys, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. You know, it is so much fun to think about how long we’ve been married. We just want to bless you guys with that kind of marriage, that you’ll fall deeper in love every day, that even the hard things, are things that build your love, don’t divide it. When you wake up in the morning, all you can think about is, “Boy, I’m married to the best person I could ever be married to.” That’s what we want for you.

If you need some help, working these things out, just drop me a line at Cindy-stewart.com. I have a little connection form. I’d love to start a conversation with you. There’s lots of other things we could have shared. You know, good, bad, the ugly, everything in between. The bottom line is, we’ve persevered. We love each other more than ever, and that’s possible for everybody. I believe it’s possible for everybody. So, remember, you are the best investment you can make. You and your spouse and your family. Take the time and invest in your family today. Until, next time. Thank you for listening.

Chuck Stewart: I love you.

Cindy Stewart: I love you too.