#3 - The Art of Being a Wife (Part 7) - Facing the Storms

Barbara Rainey's Top 10 Interviews

Click Here to Listen to the other parts in the series
The Art of Being a Wife (Part 1)
The Art of Being a Wife (Part 2) - Building Up Your Man
The Art of Being a Wife (Part 3) - Praising the Positive
The Art of Being a Wife (Part 4) - Embracing the Differences
The Art of Being a Wife (Part 5) - Leaning on God
The Art of Being a Wife (Part 6) - Being His Helper
The Art of Being a Wife (Part 7) - Facing the Storms

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Facing the Storms

Guest: Barbara Rainey

From the series: Letters to My Daughters (Day 1 of 1)

Air date: December 26, 2018

Bob: To be the woman and the wife that God created you to be, you have to know how to walk by faith on the good days and on the dark days. Here’s Barbara Rainey.

Barbara: Most people who have been through suffering—whether it’s shallow, small things or really deep, tragic things—can say, on the other side, “I didn’t enjoy it; I didn’t like it, but I knew God better as a result.” I’ve heard so many people say that. I would say it’s true about us too. We’ve learned more about God in the valleys than we have on the high places and hills in the sunshine.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, December 26th. Our host is Dennis Rainey; I'm Bob Lepine. We’ll spend time today exploring how a husband and wife can draw closer together and become one as they walk in the valley and in the path of suffering.

1:00

Stay with us.

Welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. Anybody who has ever been to one of our Weekend to Remember® marriage getaways knows that—on Friday night, as we are getting underway—we spend some time talking about the common potholes that can derail or destabilize a marriage relationship. I think there are some things that are pretty standard/pretty common that can cause a marriage to wobble at high speeds.

Dennis: We begin the conference with a message that is really about five threats to your oneness—five threats to your marriage—five threats to your marriage going the distance over your lifetime.

2:00

Bob: One of those threats is a failure to anticipate the unexpected trials that come into a marriage. It’s not a question of whether unexpected trials will come into a marriage—but “How do you respond when they do?”—because all of us are going to hit them; aren’t we?

Dennis: Well, if you think about it—the vows are built—the traditional vows, “…in sickness and in health”—in financial success and in also being poor. I mean, the basis of what we promise, when we establish the marriage covenant, is that we’re going to take the storm, head-on. We don’t know what it will be; but we’re pledging to one another to not quit but to keep on loving/keep on believing and make our marriage go the distance.

Bob: And we are taking some time this week to talk with your wife, Barbara. Welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Barbara: Thank you, Bob.

3:00

Bob: We’re going to talk about some of those valleys and dark places that the two of you have walked together in 40-plus years of marriage and how you’ve not quit in the midst of that.

Dennis: What Barbara has done is—she has taken the past, almost ten years, to complete a book to wives called Letters to My Daughters: The Art of Being a Wife that is designed to be what it is. It’s an older woman stepping into the life of a younger woman with sage advice/with seasoned advice—with the advice that comes after four decades of marriage. The way this book is constructed is—you end it with this subject that Bob’s talking about here—the subject of suffering.

I guess I’d have to ask you, “Is that because of what you and I have been through?”—because we have been through some dark valleys together.

Barbara: Well, that’s why it’s in there; because it has been an integral part of our marriage relationship. It’s in there because I think most brides/most young women get married with some—

4:00

—what I call “fairytale theology.” They get married, thinking that: “Everything is going to be great for us. We’re not going to have difficulties. Yes; there will be some uncomfortable moments, but we’re not going to really have hard stuff. We’re going to—we’re going to be great. We love each other, and everything’s going to be great.”

For those, who are Christians—like you and I were when we got married—we also start our marriages out, thinking: “You know, we believe in God. If we do it God’s way, it’s going to all be good. We’re not going to have any hard things.” That was how I started our marriage—thinking: “A plus B equals C. If I obey God and I do these things that are in the Bible, then God, therefore, will give us an easy, nice life.”

Bob: So do you have a new equation, now, if it’s not “A plus B equals C”? What would you say to a young wife, who says, “If it’s not that, what is it?”

Barbara: There’s a lot of algebra. [Laughter]

Bob: Some calculus—[Laughter]—a little geometry.

Barbara: And I don’t know algebra very well, so I can’t even give you the formula! [Laughter]

5:00

Dennis: We’re laughing, but it’s the hard stuff of life. This is a broken world. There is a heaven, and it’s not here—it’s not now.

Barbara: Yes.

Dennis: God came, in the person of Jesus Christ, to give us an abundant life now and help us face these hardships—but it’s like the funeral you and I participated in earlier this year—a dear couple that we love greatly, who buried the body of their 15-year-old son. It’s unthinkable!

Barbara: Yes.

De...