Hey Folks, I am so happy and blessed to be celebrating our 33rd anniversary with my amazing Wife, Barb! In this episode, I share my thoughts and excitement as the Love of my life, and I reach another amazing year of life together.
Kingdom Community TV Podcast
Married For 33 Years? Seriously!
[music] Welcome to "Relevance for Today," a show where you will be encouraged, inspired, and fed through the Word of God. You will find relevant teachings, tips, discussions, interviews, and more for both believers and even non-believers who are considering salvation through Jesus Christ. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. [music] Hey, folks, Steve Lewis. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of "Relevance for Today." It's great to have you on the show. And as of two days ago, we just celebrated 33 years of marriage. [cheering] Yes. [cheering] Yes. [cheering] That's awesome. So that means that my lovely wife and I, Barb, shout out to you. Thank you so much for 33 amazing years. You didn't take me out while I was sleeping. My joke is my wife's a nurse. So I'm on my best behavior all the time because you never know, right? You wake up to another day and you're like, "Praise God, she still loves me." Now, on a serious note, 33 years, truly a blessing. You've got two wonderful children and long with their loved ones as well as grandchildren and son-in-law. And my son's better half Cynthia and Tony. And yes, Xavier, Samantha, and Andrew is such a blessing. And of course, we've been reminded by other young people that we have quite a few children that we've helped raise. So they look at us also as being mom and dad, which is a blessing. Barb will have different young ladies chime in and say a word or two to her about how much she's been blessed. How much they blessed her in their lives. Same thing with me. Different messages saying that, "Hey, you know what? Thank you, Steve, for all you've done in my life. I looked to you as a father. My father was never there." And so forth. So it's such a blessing. So you could say we also have spiritual children. We also have other children who aren't ours, if that makes sense. And for those of you who know me, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But it's a blessing. And you'll have those moments where you're sitting back thinking about life. Then all of a sudden a young person will write you that you haven't heard from in years. And they'll just start sharing and pouring into your life. And it's amazing how God can use other people to bless you and encourage you in ways when you need it. Mother's Day, Father's Day coming up. Sometimes we'll hear from other people's children about our lives. And so that's truly a blessing. And if you have a spiritual mother or father out there or a mother or father out there, even if they're not a Christian, someone who's poured into your life, make sure you talk to them. Thank them. You know, Mother's Day, Father's Day come up. Make sure you send them a message. Encourage them. Strengthen them. It's great to hear. I mean, it's great to hear from your own children. It's awesome, also great to hear from children who you've poured into their lives. And Barb and I hear from them all the time, which is neat all throughout the year. Not all the time, like ring, ring, ring. No, but just it seems like when we need it the most, we'll be sitting back thinking about life. And then all of a sudden poof. We'll get a message from someone and encourage us. So that's awesome too. So I'm going on a spill here, but that just gives you a testimony about Barb and I. 33 years of marriage. And our children are in their thirties this year. So that's really a blessing. And of course we joke back and forth because I die my beard. Normally my beard's gray. It's coming in gray. And I know some people say embrace it, Steve. You're 54 years old, but you know what? Hey, I like putting a little black on there, you know? And so sometimes people will say we look younger than we do and Barb and I have this little joke. We go back and forth when someone cards us for going and buying cough medicine or something like that. And they're like, uh, we need to see your ID. And it's like what? For Robitussin or whatever. Yep. Yes, we need to see it. It's like great. Go for it. So it's a blessing, but I'm getting off on a rant. But I wanted to just say today and this month going to be dedicating relevance for today shows to married couples to those who are thinking about being married. We're going to be talking about and I've got my little piece of paper here. We're going to be doing. It's called what's your love language? And that's by Dr. Gary Chapman. And I encourage people to check it out. The episode's coming up. In fact, we're almost to episode 300, but I'm going to be doing this whole love series for the month of June. So I don't want to break it up and say, Hey, episode 300, woo hoo. We celebrate and do some giveaways and things like that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to wait till after we get the love series done. And then I'm going to do the giveaway and we'll go from there. I know I'm always talking about doing giveaways and then something comes up. We just got done traveling, had to trade our vehicles out and things like that. So things have come up, but I'm going to do it. Hold me to it, folks. For those of you who are listening, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for tuning in for my locals. I found out at a funeral the other day that there's amazing local families that have been listening to my podcast shows and I had no idea. So shout out to you. You know who you are. Thank you for taking the time to listen to the show and not just locally, but there's some places that are blowing up relevance for today. Ohio, whoever's in Ohio that's listening to the show. Thank you so much for listening, whoever's in Northern Maine. Thank you all for listening to the show, South Carolina, Texas, Missouri. Shout out to dad and family, whoever's in Maryland, whoever's in all these different locations I've noticed overseas, India, different places like that. Countries in Africa. All over the world, New Zealand. Some of our biggest listeners are in Japan and New Zealand. So that's awesome as well. So thank you all for tuning in. I really appreciate it. And if you get a chance, leave a comment or something if you can. And also leave a rating for us so more people can get to see the show as well. But I wanted to get on today because I just want to talk about how thankful I am for my amazing wife and how we've pulled off 33 years. Well, first of all, we've pulled off 33 years because of this right here. And I'm holding up my Bible, the Word of God. Because without God in the center of our marriage, we may not have made it. You never know. All I know is we kept God first. And when you get into the Word of God, you read like 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 7, right? Which talks about love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous for both for the proud of rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable and keeps no record of being wrong. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth runs out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. And that's key. Love endures through every circumstance. When Barb and I made those vows, we did it for life. That was it. We were going to be together. Good times bad. We're going to make it through. We're going to keep God first. And we're going to go from there. And it's life is easy for us. We enjoy each other's company. We enjoy being with each other. She's my best friend. I'm a disabled veteran. When I got sick, she stepped up to the plate. We reverse roles and I ended up being a stay home dad. And she went out and became a nurse. And I'm telling you folks, you know, as a disabled veteran and husbands out there that are stay home dads. You probably know this struggle as well. And I don't want to call it a struggle. But you know everything that your wife or even with wives, stay home moms. You know everything that your spouse has done for your family. Everything. The sweat, the blood, the tears. You know they worked the extra hours to make sure the kids had this or the kids had that or the kids were going on trips or pageants or whatever it might have been. Vehicles, whatever. The bottom line is for me, I look at Barb and I say, thank you so much, hun. For everything you did for us because you went out there, you became a nurse. You made some sacrifices. I had to become the stay home dad. You went out and became the breadwinner. Yes, I had my disability and things like that. But you were the main source of our income when the kids needed something you were there. You pulled off some stuff like Andrew would say, I had no idea we were low income at one point because of the way we were being blessed all the time. Like Barb would go to auctions at her workplace and because of the amount of hours she had, she had the little auction bucks and she would bid on all the toys and things like that. So every Christmas, birthdays, our children never had a need or a want. They always had something so they never knew any different. But God always opened up opportunities for us whether we were getting blessed with a vehicle or our bills were lower, whatever it might be. You know, I worked in the food pantry and then I ran a food pantry and so forth. We were always doing things about the father's business. And so God took care of us. Barb worked hard. She did more for our children than they even know. If we had to write it all on paper, it'd be a small book. The kids would probably be surprised because I don't think they know all the details of everything that their mother went out and did for them. But Barb, I'm telling you, right now Mrs. Lewis, you're an amazing mother. Amazing mother. And you've heard it said about you by people who aren't even your children. You've heard it said by young ladies. You might as well say their daughter figures for you where they've looked at you and said, Barb, you're like a mom to me. You're amazing. You're awesome. You were there for me. I see how you are with your children. I grew up with your kids. We've had a lot of other grown adults who were with our children, our daughter and our son, who saw how we were all the time. And that's one thing one person said was, you guys never changed. You're always the same people, loving, caring. We've seen how you take care of your children. We've seen how you took care of us when we were around your children. We saw how everything went. And so it's really neat when you hear those things. And sometimes it's a breath of fresh air because sometimes you might have doubts and think to yourself, well Gee, did I do everything right as a parent? Well, of course not. Nobody's perfect. But we gave what we had. We represented Jesus Christ and we went from there. And now looking back 33 years of marriage. Wow. You know, I'm sitting back sometimes and I just take it for granted. You never want to take it for granted, but I take it for granted, which is hanging out doing our thing, doing marriage life, hanging out, laughing together, traveling together. You know, I take Barb to work every day. That's our extra time we get together. I enjoy being around my wife. Is that a crime? Heck no. That's my best friend. I love being with my best friend. I take her to work. She works 12 hour shifts. So, of course, being a nurse, she's tired at the end of the day. It's nice to have somebody come and pick you up. So I'm able to come pick her up. I don't have to worry about her being out on the road, being tired. That's what love's all about, right? And that's the most important person in my life. I want to spend the rest of my life with her, of course, 33 plus years coming. Bam, bam, bam. But the bottom line is, that's what we did. That's what we do. We're there for each other. We love each other. And, you know, this is a shout out to all the couples who enjoy being married to each other and who look at their marriage and say, "We've got a great marriage. We're doing fantastic." Do not, I repeat, do not feel like you cannot be happy or happily married because of the way the world makes things sound. As soon as a person says, "I'm happily married. I'm having a blast." Someone always has to insert, "Well, nobody has a perfect marriage. There's got to be something wrong." Everybody's, "No, there's something wrong with it." And it's like, "Why would you tear down something beautiful that God created?" You know, do we have a situation that happens? Every once in a while, Barb and I came from two different households. My parents never argued, like literally, put my hand on the Bible. They never argued. We'd never heard them argue. Did they probably have the heated discussions when we weren't around? I don't know because Dad was a peacemaker. Mom was a peacemaker. There was peace in our home. Dad worked for the government. Mom was a stay-home mom. And everything just flowed. They discussed everything in the early years. So while we were growing up, we saw nothing but love, except for when we got in trouble. And we still saw love, you know? Getting a spanking on the butt never hurt us. In fact, it made me help make me the person I am today. But I'm just sharing that because we've been in circles before where Barb and I are sitting back and it's like, "You know what? I can't wait to go home back when I was in the Air Force. I would tell guys the awesome part about being married is that the end of the day, no matter how terrible your day was, there's this amazing woman with children waiting for you to unlock that door and step into that house and you close the world behind you. And there's this beautiful family waiting for you, hugging you, grabbing a hold of you, wanting to know how your day was. That's what being married is all about. The relationship, the connection, like God says in Genesis, the two became one flesh. Bone of my bone, right? The two become one. You do life together. Don't be ashamed or afraid to say you have a good relationship. I mean, you don't go around bragging about it. Let people see your fruit. When people see us, there's people that would definitely speak up and call us out who've been with us in the good times and in the bad back in COVID and all these other different times that will literally tell you to your face whenever I was with Barb and Steve and I've spent time in their home and so forth. Those two get along like best friends, you know, and I'm not pumping myself up. I'm trying to encourage you as a married couple, whether you've been married five days or you've been married 40, 50, 60 years, you know, hey, I'm all about listening to a 60 year, 60 years of marriage, soak it up. I want to learn more about that. Don't sit back and say, oh, there's got to be terrible times. People always go to the negative like a talk show. You know, you can't just say, oh, wow, you're celebrating 40 years. That's wonderful. Tell us about the good times. How did you do it? Instead, it's 40 years. Oh my gosh. Tell us about all the problems. How did you get through the problems? I'm sure it wasn't a perfect marriage. Did you guys argue and fight all the time? You know, what happened with me personally was when I got sick. So I won't get into details, but I got sick while I was in the military. And then we literally thought I was going to die. So Barb sitting back looking, we've got two children. She doesn't know what tomorrow's going to bring. Her husband's dying. I better go to nursing school. It went from there. But that changed my mindset. And that was years ago because it made me realize how life is too short. So once you realize and get it in your head that life is too short. You know what you end up doing? You end up saying, is this worth it? Is it worth it that Barb wants a black hair brush and I want a brown one? What the heck does that matter? Does the brush still do the job? Yes. Am I going to fight and argue and say, no, I want a black one and I'm not budgeting. And then we go back and forth for days over the color of a brush. Or even the color of paint on the walls. I've talked to people before where that was an issue. She wants the walls white and I want them this color. And it's like, well, who's in the house the most? Well, she is. She's home with the kids. We'll let her pick the color. It's not going to change the house. It's not going to change the room, right? Kitchens, different things like that. I tell Barb, we get in the kitchen renovated. I said, as long as I can still cook and I don't get blinded by the lights. I'm happy. If I can still reach everything that I need to reach to get a meal, I'm good to go. If it affects me trying to cook my food and things like that, well, then that changes everything. Then we're going to be discussing, well, Barb, I need to be able to do this, this, this, and this. If I want to come eat dinner, I'll cook dinner or whatever. I want to be able to reach everything I need to get. Boom. You work on a compromise and you teamwork it. Because if you argue and fight with the one who's the other half of you, that takes something out of you. You end up arguing and fighting over something so silly. And then you're not speaking to each other for a day or two. And then what good does that do? That's your best friend supposed to be your best friend. Love is patient and kind, right? Love conquers all. So I say that to say this. Yes, of course you may have a discussion. You know, if you start yelling at each other, then there was a video we saw, Barb and I were watching. It was talking about something, but it was like when two people start fighting and yelling at each other, it's a hard thing. It's because they feel like they're not being heard in their heart, not their head. They feel they're not being heard in their heart, so they raise their voice above the other individual because they personally feel like their way should be done or whatever it might be. And of course you're going to meet some personalities where it's their way or the highway. You're going to be other people where you can't even get suggestions. We all know people where you cannot make a simple suggestion without them getting offended and getting on the defense. And then once you learn those people, you know how to treat those people. Okay, I'm not going to let them into the circle. They're going to stay on the outside of the circle, but I'll still communicate with them, but they're not coming into the Stephen Lewis circle where I can sit down and talk to you about all kinds of things. I have a circle where we're teachable. We call it. I learned that in ministry school about being teachable. That's where if I've been married five years and you've been married 20 years, I'm going to sit there and listen to your suggestions and ideas. Give me some tips. It doesn't matter what you learned in high school or what you learned in college. I'm going to ask the person who's actually living out the marriage. Because you can get all kinds of special books and things like that until you sit down with that individual and say, okay, I read in the book about arguing and I should do this, this and this and then the person goes. The book must have been awfully big because having an open discussion about certain things, there's multiple facets to that. It could be because of this. It could be because the person's tired. What if the person's sick and they just don't feel good and that's what's happened with Barb and I. If one of us gets snappy, the other one goes time out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. All I asked you was, honey, do you want me to make you coffee with milk or cream and you're like, just, just make it. I don't care. It's like, okay, what's going on? That's not like you. Well, I had a bad day today. This happened. That happened. Someone passed away. It really bothered me a lot. I'm sorry for being snappy. I was just upset about that. And then you say, hey, well, I figured something was up. Boom. Good to go. What would you like? Go ahead and do cream, babe. Sorry. Love you. Smooches. You know, and you go from there. But being teachable once again allows a person to get in that circle because now I can share things with you. You can share things with me. I may ask you something. You may ask me something. I'll ask you for advice. You share it. And then you may come to me. Sometimes they Steve. You've been married for 33 years. How do you do it? I've been married for 10 years and this is what's happening. And I can sit down and say, okay, try this, this, or how about this? Or how about writing a love letter? Write a love letter about how you feel about her and go from there. Or how you feel about him. For you wives out there. You know, same thing. My wife and I have done marriage counseling before. No, we didn't go to college. Real life. We studied. But then we've done 33 years of real life marriage. So that means I think we have a little bit of experience in there somewhere. But we've helped couples before. We've done premarital counseling for people for before they got married, which is very important. And you just learn from each other and clean up each other. If you know a couple who's successfully married, they're not being each other up and fighting all the time. You can hear them outside their house yelling. And even when you see them in private, they're still acting the same way. Get around those people, learn from those people, glean from those people. Because marriage is supposed to be a beautiful thing. God created it. God ordained it. Marriage is supposed to be a beautiful thing. It's not supposed to be stress and fighting and craziness. It's supposed to be about loving one another. And getting along and living together and doing life together as one. Right? And so keep that in mind. Folks, if you are happy and you know it, clap your hands. No, on a serious note, if you're happily married, praise God. That's awesome. That's really awesome. It's wonderful. That's the way it's supposed to be. Are you going to have a disagreement or two? It might be even something about, Hey, you know, yesterday. You left the toaster plugged in and there was a piece of paper on top of the toaster. Oh, shoot, babe, thank you so much for telling me. Hey, I appreciate that. I'll make sure I pay attention instead of. Well, the other day you left this on that and then it turns into a bickering thing back and forth and it's like time out. What are we doing? I love you. Sorry about that. Thanks for the toaster thing. Dr. John Eckhart said something amazing. We were in a conference and he was talking about marriage and he said, marriage is a man and a woman who both have the same authority in a home coming together and allowing to release that authority and like I'm not going to get it word for word. Having authority in the home, but yet willing to work together, like the wife is in the house cleaning, for example, the husband's out cutting the grass. He comes in to grab a drink of water. The wife looks at him and says, Hey, honey, you mind grabbing the trash real quick? And he goes, the guy could say, woman, don't you know I'm out there working in the weeds and stuff and cutting. And then it returned to, you know what, just forget it. I'll just do it myself. I'm in here trying to work and clean the house and get laundry done. Never mind. Or you could say, sure, babe, I got it. You're taking the trash out of the trash can while she's coming around the corner with a trash bag to put a new trash bag in and you guys just teamworked it. You know, households that have a husband that's working full time and a wife that's working full time. And you have children. And even if you don't have children, you've got to team up and get together. And I'll be talking about some of that things in the upcoming messages. But you still have to team up. The husband can't come home and put his feet up and relax and crack a soda or a beer like the traditional guy on the TV shows while the wife is now just got home from work. She's got to make dinner. She's got to attend to the kids. The husband sits there and feels like he's entitled just to sit there on his butt for the rest of the day. No, it's not supposed to work like that. It's supposed to be a team effort. And the way I tell guys is this. You worked all day. She worked all day. You come together, get everything done real quick, and then you get more time together. Dads, don't be afraid to put the babies to bed. Have that fun time. You know, your children look forward to that when dads upstairs acting goofy and all of a sudden you hear mom say, all right, they're supposed to be in bed and you guys start laughing upstairs and then you put them to bed pray for them and go from there. But you just tag team it. That's, you know, learning each other's love languages. That's why I'm doing the love language series in June right after our anniversary because it's going to be able to show you how to love each other, what your personalities are, why you're bumping heads at certain times because this one's personality is words of affirmations while this personality is acts of service and so forth and I'll explain all that to you and we'll do the questions because it's going to be a short series from outlook for a brighter day when my wife and I were doing that podcast show. So that's what I wanted to share. I just want to talk to you guys about that. Just rattling stuff off. You know, thank God for creating marriage. Male and female. We created them and we've been married 33 years a lover. I went to the Gulf War in 1990. We wrote each other for eight months. We got to learn each other and got to know each other through writing letters and I called once or twice a month every payday. I think it was $100 to talk for half an hour. And so, yeah, it's expensive. So we were on in Diego Garcia in the middle of Indian Ocean and the British owned the phone lines and I've got the little phone cards around here somewhere where I've got $22 of those $2,200 worth of phone calling cards. And so, we talked on the phone. We wrote each other almost every day, literally. And the male would come in and have like 18 envelopes or something like that and sit back and read them and she'd have a little perfume on there. Then I would write her and we got to know each other instead of being physical touch right there in each other's face, we were away from each other and that's how I knew she was the one and she knew I was the one. And it's been all about love. We tell each other, we love each other every day. I read the word to her in the mornings while she's getting ready for work. We pray together. That's what it's all about. The foundation is Jesus Christ. Without Him, you're going to have a rough go of it. Trust me. If you do not have the Lord in your life, when it comes to marriage, you're going to have a rough go of it. But when you have the word of God, you can look at the word of God, you can read it. You can remember what it says about love. You can remember what it says about wives submit to your husbands. But then it also says husbands love your wives like Christ loved the church. Christ was willing to die for the church. Are you willing to die for your spouse? You're willing to die for your wife. And that's the way you look at it. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I would lay down my life for this woman. I love her so much. I would do anything for her. If anybody hurts her, it breaks my heart. You know, Andrew, if you're listening, I remember a time when Andrew was bumping heads with his mother and she ended up crying. And I called him. I took the phone and I said, you know what? Let me tell you something. That's my wife you're talking to. And it really put a different spin on it. Because I stopped saying, hey, don't talk to your mother like that. I started saying, that's my wife. That's my woman. Don't be disrespected my wife. And that all of a sudden the light bulb went off. And of course, this was a long time ago. But it's one of those things where my heart breaks for my wife if something happens with the children because I know what my wife went through their mother. I know what she went through and did for them that they have no clue. She even did. And you all know what I'm talking about. There's many parents out there who you've been over backwards for your children. And your children might paint a different picture about you and act like you're this and act like you're that when come to find out you're not. But you have to just stay focused. You keep God first, no matter what, keep God first. Be the best that you can be as a parent, as a spouse and go from there. When they become adults, it's on them. You know, you did what you had to do. You did the best you could do. Who knows the true story? You and God. Your children will never know the true story unless you sit down and made a list, which you shouldn't. You shouldn't sit down and go, "By the way, did you know I did all these things for you and you're treating me like this?" No, you don't even waste your time. Stay focused because there's some Bible scripture in the Word of God about the end times and children turning against their parents when their parents are believers. You'd be surprised. It's a wake up call. But I just wanted to share because I could talk about this for days. But happy anniversary to my amazing wife, Barbara Lewis. I love you. I appreciate you. I thank you so much for all your support over the years with ministry, with me going to ministry school, with me teaching, with me running the food pantry, with me just being the stay home dad and not just being the stay home dad, but being the stay home dad and running the kids all over the place and everywhere. And you, when you were able to, you were able to go on the trips and all kinds of stuff we did. There's so many things, pageants, sports events, you name it, we were there, weren't we? Thank you for all you've done for us. And thank you for being my wife. So with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and pray folks. Thank you all for listening to me talk about 33 years of marriage and a few tips. So Heavenly Father, I just thank you so much for the blessings. I thank you so much for my amazing wife and best friend. Thank you, Lord, for blessing me with an amazing wife and amazing mother for our children. Lord, I just ask you, bless us, protect us and keep us safe. Not only bless our marriage, but I pray for all those who are married. If they're going through things and even if they're not, we pray for them for peace and comfort and love in their homes, for their children to be obedient, for all of them to come to know Jesus Christ, their Savior and Lord. And Lord, I just ask that you just put the right people around folks. May they open up their hearts. May they open up their spirits to you, that if they are having problems in their marriage, they can talk to someone that the right couple will be around them. Not scholars and I read a college book, so I'm a genius. No, married couples who have been married for quite some time, 20 plus years, who have more experience than they can even imagine, that they can sit down with and just talk to them and that people's eyes will be open. That marriage is the way God created it that way. Male and female love one another become one. So Heavenly Father, I pray for all my listeners out there as you watch over them, protect them and keep them safe. And I thank you so much for the blessings in Jesus name. Amen. Hey, there you have it folks. Thanks for tuning into this episode. Thank you for sharing my little spill about being married and 33 years. Very excited. June 1st, 1991. Wow. What a blessing. Hey, with that being said, don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to share with friends, family and even the stranger. Also, keep this in mind. The next few episodes, and they're going to be less than 20 minutes, some of them, but they're going to be about, what are they going to be about? What's your love language? It's going to be about love language. That's important folks. If you learn your love language, your marriage will change. Trust me. If you let it, if you're too stubborn, it won't. But if you're teachable and you're open to change and learning about your spouse and wanting to make your marriage work, then you learn about each other. Never take your spouse for granted. Love them. Take care of them. Don't lord it over them. Whether you're a wife, lording it over your husband, bossing them around your husband, bossing your wife, remember equal authority under the same roof. You are one, so love each other. Hey, with that being said, God bless you all. Take care of yourselves. Happy anniversary, babe. Peace. (Music)