By Barbara Rainey
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What are some of the practical life skills parents can help their teens develop as they anticipate leaving home for the first time? Dennis and Barbara Rainey answer that question in this podcast episode.
How Empty is Your Nest? (Part 1) - Mixed Feelings Stirred Up by the Empty Nest
How Empty is Your Nest? (Part 2) - Changing Relationships
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
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Mixed Feelings Stirred up by the Empty Nest
Guests: Barbara Rainey and Susan Yates
From the series: How Empty Is Your Nest? (Day 1 of 2)
Air date: August 1, 2016
Bob: There was a moment in Susan Yates’ life when, as she looked at her empty nest, she started to think, “What’s my purpose anymore?”
Susan: I remember the day after Libby’s wedding—she was the last to marry—going up to the girls’ room that they’d grown up in / that they had shared their whole life. As I stood in the room, I looked around at the walls, and there were lines where the pictures had hung. There were pieces of little scraps of paper and, as I looked at these bare walls, I noticed that the closet door was ajar.
On the floor of the closet I saw a rumpled, old, blue prom dress. It seemed out of place—it was all alone / it was not needed any more. It, in a way, was out of style. As I looked at that prom dress, I thought, “That’s just how I feel.”
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Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, August 1st. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We’ll look today at the realities that begin to set in as the nest starts to empty out. Stay tuned.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Monday edition. I’m just sitting here, doing the math. What’s it been? It’s been more than a decade, now, since you guys became empty nesters?
Barbara: That’s right. [Laughter] Are you going to—
Bob: Are you still trying to figure it out? [Laughter] You’re kind of silent there!
Dennis: I told you—
Barbara: I guess I’m a little slow on the math. [Laughter]
Dennis: No; that’s not so. No; I’m just trying to realize when it was when you and I finally determined we were empty nesters. [Laughter]
Bob: So there was this process, you’re saying?
Dennis: I think there was. I think it took us two or three years to come out of—how many years of childbearing and child rearing?
Barbara: I don’t know—a lot.
Dennis: Twenty-eight, I think.
Barbara: I think so.
Dennis: I think over twenty-eight years.
2:00
Barbara: I think so. It doesn’t happen automatically.
Dennis: No; I mean, it was—
Barbara: It was a transition.
Dennis: It was all “Hands on deck!” raising children. It took us awhile to get out of the mindset and to finally realize: “You know what? We can kind of enjoy each other now and focus on one another.” It hadn’t been that we weren’t doing that before; but when you’re tending to children, there’s no question—they drain you.
Bob: Our listeners are obviously aware that your wife, Barbara Rainey, is joining us today. Good to have you here.
Barbara: Thank you, Bob.
Bob: We are going to be hearing a message that you and your friend, Susan Yates, did, talking about empty nest issues. But I need to start by saying we got a very nice note from one of our FamilyLife Today donors, who wrote to say: “I’ve been reading Barbara’s empty nest book. I was encouraged to hear about your daughter, who rebelled, to find out that we are not alone. Barbara is so right—we just need to choose our words carefully and to pray, pray, pray. God is faithful and He cares about our children more than we do. Thank you.”
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I imagine you’ve heard from a lot of folks, who have read the book, who have written you personally to say, “Thanks for capturing in this book what we’ve been living through and couldn’t put words to.”
Barbara: Yes; we’ve had great feedback from women who’ve read the book because they understand, by reading it, that we get it—because we’ve been there and we’ve felt those things—and we’re trying to help them know that they’re not alone.
Dennis: When Barbara and Susan wrote the book, they didn’t offer a “pie in the sky” type of picture of the empty nest. They painted it—flaws, blemishes, warts, and all—because it’s a process that isn’t necessarily neat and tidy as you raise children who become adults.
What this lady is referring to there, Bob, is—she just appreciates somebody being authentic and real. I just want to say to this donor / this partner in ministry:
“Thank you for being a part of this ministry.” You know, I was thinking, when you read that Bob—that David, when he went to war, had his mighty men.
Bob: Right.
4:00
Dennis: Well, we have a group that supports this broadcast and the ministries of FamilyLife. They’re not just mighty men—they’re mighty men and mighty women.
Barbara: Yes.
Dennis: And they’re mighty because they care about, I believe, the oldest institution in the world / the most powerful institution in the world. They’re investing in a ministry that’s bringing good to marriages and families and bringing hope to people in a culture that, frankly, is trying to undermine and do evil to families. I just want to say, “Thanks,” to those of you who are donors to FamilyLife—you’re needed, you’re appreciated, and God bless you and your legacy.
Bob: Yes; I agree—“Thanks.”
Barbara, you and your co-author, Susan Yates, had an opportunity to speak to a number of women—I think it was in Dallas; right?
Barbara: That’s right.
Bob: You spoke on the subject of the empty nest. This was a number of months ago, but we’re going to give our listeners an opportunity to hear what you and Susan shared with those women.
5:00
We’ll just dive right in. Here are Barbara Rainey and Susan Yates, talking about the issues women face as they face the empty nest.
[Recording]
&...
How Empty is Your Nest? (Part 1) - Mixed Feelings Stirred Up by the Empty Nest
How Empty is Your Nest? (Part 2) - Changing Relationships
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.
Changing Relationships
Guests: Barbara Rainey and Susan Yates
From the series: How Empty Is Your Nest? (Day 2 of 2)
Air date: August 2, 2016
Bob: If you work for Hallmark, keep listening. Susan Yates may have a suggestion for you here on a whole new line of party invitations.
Susan: I would like to know, with a show of hands, how many of you have ever been to a party to celebrate the beginning of the empty nest? [Laughter] One, two—
Barbara: Three.
Susan: —four—oh, yay! [Laughter] Good for you all! You may be on the cutting age of a new movement in America. [Laughter] We hope so because we feel like this is a season, not to be dreaded, but to be celebrated—and oh, how we need to celebrate in the seriousness of life today.
[Segment of I Just Want to Celebrate]
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Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, August 2nd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. I don’t know who’s version of Celebrate that was—was that Rare Earth?—I think it was; yes. Celebrating the empty nest may sound like a paradox / a contradiction in terms, but it’s actually not. You can do it! We’ll talk more about that today. Stay with us.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Tuesday edition. You said it was a while before it dawned on you that the empty nest had finally arrived.
Dennis: Yes.
Bob: But I mean, you knew—
Dennis: I really had all these grand plans of how I thought we would—
Barbara: Yes; he did. [Laughter]
Dennis: —disengage from being parents. We would flip a switch—in true male-style—
Bob: Yes.
Barbara: He did.
Dennis: —and we’d just be driving off into the sunset in a convertible, laughing and having fun.
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Bob: And the switch didn’t flip? Is that what you are saying? [Laughter]
Dennis: Oh, my goodness! [Laughter] The switch may have ground its way to the other side—it took a couple of years, Bob.
Bob: Barbara, let me ask you—and by the way, welcome back to FamilyLife Today.
Barbara: Thanks.
Bob: If you could have flipped the switch, do you think Dennis could have flipped the switch?
Barbara: Oh, yes.
Bob: So he was ready. He didn’t have the emotional processing moving into the empty nest that you did?
Barbara: Well, he had more than I expected. I was kind of surprised because every once in a while he would walk through the house or walk around the backyard and go, “Gosh, I really miss those years with the kids.” It would surprise me because I didn’t really expect him to feel those things that I was feeling. I knew I would, but I didn’t expect him to do so.
Dennis: I’d come home from work and the car would be surrounded, like it was being invaded by a group of—
Barbara: Yes, all those years our kids were home.
Dennis: Yes—bandits. All of a sudden, you pull up in front of the house and—
Barbara: Sometimes, nobody is there because I wasn’t always there. [Laughter]
3:00
Dennis: —there is nothing happening!
Barbara: I didn’t have to be home—it was great!
Bob: I remember you talking—you’d come into the office. The way you described it—you said, “There’s no tension against the muscle,”—this muscle you’ve been working out with for 20-plus years.
Dennis: Oh, yes. It’s called the Daddy Muscle. I mean, you’ve had to be a daddy—now, I’m still a dad / I have adult children—you know, you go home, you leave work, you pull up in front of the house, and you get ready for your second job—being a husband and being a father. Well, all of a sudden, the father-thing is out of there—I mean no tension against the muscle.
Bob: You [Barbara] spent the first part of the empty nest years together with your friend, Susan Yates, who is a pastor’s wife—lives in the Washington, DC, area.
The two of you collaborated on a book called Barbara and Susan’s Guide to the Empty Nest. Then, you’ve had the opportunity, in a number of settings, to speak to women on this subject. You were at Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas, a while back, and spoke to a group of women.
4:00
You outlined the key questions that women ask themselves during the empty nest years. Already, this week, we have heard you address two of those. Refresh us on what those were.
Barbara: The first two questions are: “Am I the only one who feels this way?” The empty nest can be a very lonely time for women, and you are feeling things you didn’t expect to feel— and, maybe, some of them that you did. There is a real isolation factor in the empty nest. So I think most women are asking the question, “Am I the only one who feels this way?”
Dennis: It is back to what Susan said at the beginning of the broadcast—there aren’t celebration parties, announcing to the world: “I’m now transitioning into this new calling and season of life.”
Barbara: Exactly. The second question is: “What is happening to my relationships?” because you kind of look at each other—the kids are not there—and you think: “Okay; who are you and who am I? What is our relationship like?” You realize that you need to, perhaps, do some renegotiating and...
Three Essentials For Every Married Woman (Part 1) - Priorities of a Christian Woman
Three Essentials For Every Married Woman (Part 2) - Being a World-Changer
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.
Priorities of a Christian Woman
Guest: Barbara Rainey
From the series: Three Essentials for Every Married Woman (Day 1 of 2)
Air date: September 1, 2014
Bob: Want to do something that would really help your husband today? Here’s counsel from Barbara Rainey.
Barbara: One of the great callings of wives is to intercede and pray for our husbands. When we pray for our husbands, and for all that they’re facing and all that God has called them to do, we are imitating what the Holy Spirit does for us in our lives. It’s how we can help our husbands. It’s one of the greatest gifts we can give them in our role as helper.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, September 1st. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. We’re going to hear today about a number of ways wives can lovingly support their husbands. Stay tuned.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today.
1:00
Thanks for joining us on the Monday edition. Whenever we are with a group of couples—in just about any setting we’ve ever been in—the women in that group are always wishing that they could get a little extra time with your wife.
Dennis: I do too! [Laughter]
Bob: Well, you’ve got her all the time! But these women really look forward—
Dennis: Oh, yeah.
Bob: —to getting some mentoring / some coaching.
Dennis: My wife has good economy of words. You know, there are some people who talk a lot and don’t say much.
Bob: And only say a little.
Dennis: She doesn’t use a whole lot of words, and she gets a lot said. I think because of her stage in life and because of, frankly, some of the hardship we’ve endured—as a couple, as parents, and as a family—I think she’s got a lot to say. It’s not all out of our success. It’s not all out of some cookie-cutter perfect home.
2:00
But it’s out of a biblical grid from a woman who’s walked with Christ for, well, almost 40 years, and been obedient in following Him—not perfectly, again—but she does have a lot to say.
Bob: And some of our listeners have had the opportunity to hear Barbara speak at one of our Weekend to Remember® marriage getaways. In fact, I wanted to mention, Dennis—that this week and next week—we’re kind of kicking off our fall season for the Weekend to Remember. We have 14 events coming up this fall. We’d like to encourage our listeners to attend one of those events—in Florida, or in Texas, or in California, or in Missouri, or in Tennessee, or Colorado, South Dakota, Iowa, Idaho. You can go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click the link that says, “GO DEEPER.” You’ll find a list of dates and locations for the upcoming Weekend to Remember getaways this fall.
And this week and next week, we’re making a special offer to FamilyLife Today listeners.
3:00
You can sign up for one of these events. When you pay the regular price for your admission, your spouse comes free. It’s a buy one/get one free opportunity for the Weekend to Remember. And by the way, it’s good for events this fall; or if you want to go ahead and schedule your Weekend to Remember getaway for the spring, you can do that as well.
Go to FamilyLifeToday.com. Click the link that says, “GO DEEPER.” Find out more about the Weekend to Remember marriage getaways in the fall of 2014 and in the spring of 2015—plan to join us at a Weekend to Remember marriage getaway so that you can get a weekend of refreshment / some time together and some biblical coaching on how to have a strong, healthy marriage relationship.
And that’s really part of what we are going to get today as we hear a message from Barbara Rainey—a message that she calls “Three Essentials for Every Married Woman.” And, quickly, here’s the outline: A married woman needs to be a woman of the Word, she needs to be a husband-helper, and she needs to be a world-changer.
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[Recorded Message]
Barbara: Good morning! I’ve realized that one of the advantages of being in the season of life that I’m in is I have a little more time to reflect, and to think, and to look back on my life and to just look at it from a big picture. I think when I was raising my kids I was so swamped in the daily-ness that I couldn’t ever pull back enough to look at the big picture.
As I’ve done that, one of the things that I have realized that is true for me—and I think it is true for most women—I think that there are three things that are just essential for every married woman, no matter what your age is—if you’re just starting out, if you’ve got teenagers, or if you’re in the empty nest and you’ve got grandkids all over the country, like we do.
5:00
I just think there are some things that are universal—that are common to all of us / that are needed by all of us—and those are the three things that I want to share with you this morning. Then, hopefully, we’ll have some time for questions in the end. So, I’m going to share three essentials / three priorities—whatever you might want to call them—for every married woman.
The first one is that I’m really convinced—and more so with each year—of the importance of us, as women, of being in God’s Word. I remember—when I was raising kids, how hard that was for me. It was one of those things that I felt a great sense of failure over, for many years, in my life because I had this ideal and I had this goal of spending time in God’s Word on a regular basis. I felt very frustrated and very defeated much of the time because my kids interrupted me. Or I’d get up early in the morning, and they’d get up before I would. Or I’d try to do it during naptime, and somebody wouldn’t go to sleep like they were supposed to. Or somebody would be sick, or I’d be so tired I couldn’t focus and continue a train of thought in prayer.
6:00
Three Essentials For Every Married Woman (Part 1) - Priorities of a Christian Woman
Three Essentials For Every Married Woman (Part 2) - Being a World-Changer
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete
Being a World-Changer
Guest: Barbara Rainey
From the series: Three Essentials for Every Married Woman (Day 2 of 2)
Air date: September 2, 2014
Bob: The kind of woman God uses in her home and in her world is a woman who has dug down deep in His Word. Here’s Barbara Rainey.
Barbara: “Wimpy theology makes wimpy women.” [John Piper]—because—if we really aren’t in God’s Word, then we just have second-hand information. We’re living on somebody else’s insight or somebody else’s discovery. That makes for wimpy theology. It makes for a wimpy woman too.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, November 20th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. A wise woman knows that the foundation of her relationship with her husband is, first and foremost, found in a strong relationship with God. Stay tuned.
1:00
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Tuesday edition. You looked tired when you came in today. Was it because of dinner last night? [Laughter]
Dennis: You saying that dinner wore me out? What are you saying?
Bob: You were just—as you were—
Dennis: I slept well.
Bob: As you recounted to me, you said that you had a meal with your wife and that she was—you were pretty worn out by the time it was over.
Dennis: I did not say— [Laughter] Barbara, if you’re listening to this, I want you to know I did not say that!
Bob: Okay, that’s true. You did not say that.
Dennis: Bob is construing—I actually said: “Last night, over dinner, Barbara was talking about all the stuff she wants to do and be a part of. She was dreaming and thinking and had a list of 12 projects she wanted to accomplish—
Bob: Here’s what you really said. You said she talked for an hour before you got a word in edgewise. [Laughter]
2:00
Dennis: I did not!
Bob: That’s exactly what you said! [Laughter]
Dennis: I did not say that. [Laughter] I enjoy talking to her. In fact, I said this to her. I said, “You know, in our relationship, you have become the extrovert; and I am becoming an introvert.” She said: “No, no, no. Don’t you give me that! You are not an introvert!” And she’s right. I’m not an introvert. But I do enjoy listening to her because she’s energized, she’s excited, she’s got her head up—she’s looking to the horizon with ideas for the future.
Bob: In fact, if folks are interested in looking at what Barbara has been working on in recent days, they can go to FamilyLife.com and click at the top of the page where it says, “GO DEEPER.” There is a link there for the Ever Thine Home® resources—the complete line of resources that Barbara Rainey has been working on over the last couple of years now—great collection of discipleship resources that look beautiful in your home. That’s how I would describe Barbara’s line. Again, find out more—go to FamilyLifeToday.com.
3:00
Click the link that says, “GO DEEPER,” and then the link for Ever Thine Home. Take a look at what Barbara has been up to over the past couple of years.
Let me also mention, while you are on our website—this week and next week—we’re making a special offer available to FamilyLife Today listeners who would like to attend an upcoming Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway. We’ve got 14 getaways happening this fall in some pretty nice locations—Monterey Bay, California; Estes Park, Colorado; San Diego—there’s going to be one in Fort Myers, Florida; and in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho—some great locations for the upcoming Weekend to Remember season.
If you and your spouse would like to attend one of these upcoming getaways—if you sign up this week or next week—you pay the regular rate for yourself, and your spouse comes free. It’s a buy one/get one free opportunity for Weekend to Remember marriage getaways this fall or for next spring. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com. Click the link that says, ‘GO DEEPER.”
4:00
The information about the Weekend to Remember is available there—find out dates and locations. Again, when you register online, you pay the regular rate for yourself and your spouse comes free. Take advantage of that opportunity. Plan to get away for a weekend together, as a couple, at one of our Weekend to Remember marriage getaways.
Alright, we’re going to listen to Part Two of a message now from Barbara Rainey about what she calls the essentials—the “Three Essentials for Every Married Woman.” She has already said, this week, that a woman needs to be a woman of the Word, and she needs to be a husband-helper. Today, we’re going to hear her thoughts on how a woman can become a world-changer.
[Recorded Message]
Barbara: And then the third thing I want to challenge you with—that I think is, again, a truth for all women of all seasons / of all generations—and that one is to be a world-changer. All of us, as women, need to see ourselves as being world-changers.
5:00
No matter where you are / no matter what your age, the Christian life is permeated with purpose. Jesus rescued us from meaninglessness / from futility to give us a life of great purpose and great calling. He didn’t just save us so we could be happy and have sweet little families with perfect little children. He saved us for a purpose, and for a calling, and for a mission, and for a ministry.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” That means—for every single woman in this room, God has works prepared beforehand for you to walk in just as He does for me. We need to find out what those are and walk in them.
There are two categories of women who are world-changers. The first one is for those of you who still have children at home and are still raising children.
6:00
I want to say to you, who are still parenting, that: “Mothers are the bigge...
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
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.
The Art of Being a Wife
Guest: Barbara Rainey
From the series: The Art of Being a Wife (Day 1 of 1)
Air date: October 20, 2016
______________________________________________________________________________
Bob: In the Book of James, the Bible says we are to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” Barbara Rainey says she doesn’t see that being lived out today in a lot of marriages.
Barbara: We are so quick, as women, to say exactly what we think / exactly how we feel without much regard for how that impacts him—or other people, for that matter. We have a really high value in our culture today on being truthful / on saying what we think; but we don’t have an equally high value on saying it in love. It affects our marriages. We all say things in our marriages that we probably shouldn’t say.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, October 20th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Would your marriage be different / be better if you slowed down and didn’t speak as thoughtlessly as you sometimes do?
1:00
We’re going to hear from Barbara Rainey on that today. Stay with us.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. Most of the time, I am glad our program is radio and not television. That way I can wear pajamas to the studio if I want to and nobody knows what I’m—
Dennis: You have never done that. [Laughter]
Barbara: Except all of us in the studio would know! [Laughter]
Dennis: Twenty-four years—
Barbara: You should try it sometime! [Laughter]
Bob: Well, I’d have to go buy a pair of pajamas first before I did that.
Barbara: Oh! [Laughter]
Bob: But, there are days when you think the visual would be helpful. Actually, what we’re going to hear today—
Dennis: Of you and your pajamas? I’m not getting beyond that.
2:00
Bob: No, not that visual. There’s a different visual here. It involves your wife, who is joining us again. Welcome back to FamilyLife Today, Barbara.
Barbara: Thanks, Bob.
Bob: You had an opportunity, not long ago, to speak to a group of wives and moms. You were talking from the book you’ve written, Letters to My Daughters. You did something unique as you began this message that we really can’t—we can’t show it on radio the way we wish we could.
Barbara: I wish we could show it. It actually was quite fun. What we did is—I set up an artist easel on the stage, with a large canvas. I had two wooden palettes. I invited a woman to help me do this—someone whom I had never met before / someone who has an interest in art. So, I wasn’t asking someone to do something that would be totally foreign to her. But nonetheless, we didn’t really talk this through ahead of time. On this easel—I did tell her ahead of time, “Here’s what I want us to do—you and I are going to paint something.”
3:00
We had the easel turned away from the audience so they couldn’t see it.
I told the audience that each of us had a palette in our hands, with different colors. She had five colors and I had five colors. We had two that were the same, but the other four were each different. That was to illustrate for the audience that a husband has responsibilities in marriage that are different than a wife, and a wife has responsibilities that are different than the husband. Both of us are commanded to love—that was the color we had in common. In that illustration, the love was the color white—we both had the color white.
We went to work painting, much like you do in a marriage. I didn’t know her very well, and she didn’t know me. That’s very much like a marriage when it begins. We think we know each other, but we don’t know each other at all.
Dennis: And so, I’m wondering if you whispered to her what you were going to paint?
Barbara: No—well, I did tell her what shape I wanted us to paint, but I was not talking to her as we painted. I was talking to the audience, and I was explaining, “One of the colors on my husband’s palette is, ‘Live with your wife in an understanding way.’
4:00
“He’s been commanded to do that, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not supposed to be understanding of him.”
As this woman and I painted this image on this canvas, I was explaining that principle. I reached over and I got some of her yellow off of her palette, and I put some yellow on my half of the painting. For about ten minutes we worked on this painting. It was a painting of a heart—she did one half and I did one half—and they were very different. Yet, there were some similarities between them; because we were both painting the same picture. Then, when we finished, we turned it around and showed the audience.
The whole idea was to help create a visual so women could see that God’s idea for marriage was to create a masterpiece—to create a painting that was unique from every other couple’s painting on the planet. The painting that Dennis and I create in our marriage is going to very different than the painting you [Bob] and Mary Ann create.
5:00
Bob: So that opening illustration—quite literally an illustration—set up the rest of what you wanted to talk about. That’s what our listeners are going to get a...
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
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.
Building up Your Man
Guest: Barbara Rainey
From the series: Letters to My Daughters (Day 1 of 2)
Air date: May 31, 2018
Bob: See if you can spot where the challenge is here. You’re a wife and a mom who wants things to go right. Marriage and family is messy, and your husband isn’t perfect. You see how that can be a problem? Here’s Barbara Rainey.
Barbara: One of the things that is true about us, as women—I had a conversation with my daughter just yesterday on the phone about this—is that it’s so easy for us, because of our emotional makeup, to get very overwhelmed by the circumstances of life. A woman, who is married and is discouraged by her relationship with her husband—she can get so overwhelmed to the point where she just doesn’t see clearly.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, May 31st. Our host is Dennis Rainey; I’m Bob Lepine. What do you do, as a wife, when you get overwhelmed / when you’re discouraged by all that’s going on? How do you deal with that? We’re going to talk about that today with Barbara Rainey. Stay with us.
1:00
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Thursday edition. We’re diving back into a rich field of ore today. I mean, there is some good stuff that we’re going to be digging into.
Dennis: We have some pretty fair guests on FamilyLife Today from time to time.
Bob: We do; yes.
Dennis: Max Lucado, Tony Evans, Crawford Loritts, Mary Kassian, Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth—a lot of, really, pretty fair country guests.
Bob: Pretty good communicators with some pretty good biblical knowledge.
Dennis: Yes; this one is a cut above.
Bob: Somebody who is—
Dennis: —just a cut above.
Bob: —kind of your favorite?
Dennis: Definitely my favorite—my bride of 43 years. Sweetheart, welcome back.
Barbara: I don’t know if I can live up to all of that! [Laughter]
2:00
Dennis: That’s pretty strong; wasn’t it?
Barbara: Very strong!
Dennis: Well, our listeners love you. We were with some friends, here this past weekend, and ran into a number of listeners. They came up and talked to Barbara about her books and Ever Thine Home®—all the resources she’s creating for wives, and moms, and women to be able to display their faith in their homes. It was kind of fun to watch them come out of the woodwork—out of a large gathering of people—come by and say, “Hi,” to Barbara and say, “I appreciate you.”
Bob: Well, and a lot of buzz around your new book—it’s called Letters to My Daughters. This really didn’t start as a book; did it?
Barbara: It absolutely didn’t. When our oldest son was engaged to be married, his fiancée came to me and said, “You know, I would really love to hear some encouragement from you about being a wife.” And I thought, “Wow!”
Bob: She just opened the door; didn’t she?
Barbara: I know. I thought: “Wow. If she opened the door, then I’m going to gently and cautiously walk through that door.”
3:00
I wasn’t sure exactly how to go about doing it, because we all lived in different places. It wasn’t possible to take her out for coffee and have a conversation. I decided I would start writing some letters just to share some of the lessons that I had learned over the years in being a wife—just by way of encouragement—and “Here are some things that I learned, and maybe this will help you.”
Bob: Did you write them, one on one, to her; or did you copy everybody else when you started?
Barbara: I copied all three married girls: our oldest Ashley, who was already married; and then our son, Samuel, had married the same summer. It went to three married girls.
Bob: Then you expanded it out as this snowballed and continued?
Barbara: We traded about—I sent—I’ll rephrase that—I sent about a dozen emails total. You know, I don’t know how much of it was that they didn’t know me that well; so there wasn’t a lot of response, which I understood.
4:00
I mean, you know, we’re talking about subjects about marriage; and this is your mother-in-law. What do you say?
Bob: Yes.
Barbara: I didn’t get much feedback, so they kind of dried up.
Then, when our daughter, Rebecca, got married in 2005, I went and dug them all out and sent them to her sort of as a batch—a couple of them at a time—and then, that really was the end of it after that—an email version.
Dennis: I think what’s interesting about this is the whole idea came from a couple of sources. One was a book that was famous and very popular, back when Barbara and I were college students, by Charlie Shed.
Bob: Yes?
Dennis: It was called Letters to Karen. It wasn’t Letters to My Daughter. It was—although—was Karen his daughter?
Barbara: Karen was his daughter.
Bob:
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
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.
Praising the Positive
Guest: Barbara Rainey
From the series: Letters to My Daughters (Day 2 of 2)
Air date: June 1, 2018
Bob: Barbara Rainey has some advice for wives. She says, when you’re husband messes up—and by the way, he will—when it happens, how you respond may determine whether he learns anything from his mistake or not.
Barbara: If you rail on him, and if you criticize him, and you tell him how stupid it was that he made that decision, he may not learn the lesson that God wanted for him; and he may have to repeat it again. The best thing that a wife can do is trust God, even when it’s hard, and ask God to use it for good in their life and that God would use it to grow him in that area, where he just blew it royally.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, June 1st. Our host is Dennis Rainey; I’m Bob Lepine. The words you say, as a wife, have profound power in your marriage. We’ll examine that subject with Barbara Rainey today. Stay with us.
1:00
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Friday edition. Have you ever stopped to ponder who you would be: (A) if you had been single all your life or (B) if you’d married somebody other than Barbara?
Dennis: Yes; I guess I have because I tried to marry a young lady from SMU before Barbara and I started dating.
Bob: You proposed?
Dennis: She didn’t want to marry me. No; no—it wasn’t at that point.
Bob: It was clear enough that you didn’t—
Dennis: But there was a DTR—a “define the relationship.”
Bob: Yes.
Dennis: How she defined it and how I defined it [Laughter]: “Thumbs down, baby!”
Bob: Okay.
Dennis: “Thumbs down!! You’re out of here!” [Laughter]
2:00
It was good because—yes; it was okay, because I wasn’t in search of a myth. I wanted a real relationship with a real person.
Back to the previous part of the question, though, Bob: “Have I ever thought about who I would be if I hadn’t married Barbara and was single?” I have. I don’t visit that picture very often, because that’s a horror film. [Laughter]
Bob: Pretty ugly? [Laughter]
Dennis: She laughed—she’s laughing real hard, because she knows what happened behind the curtain. [Laughter]
Bob: Are you saying, “Amen,” to that? Is that what that laughter—
Barbara: No; I just think that’s funny that you said it would be a horror film, because I don’t think it would be that bad.
Dennis: Well, I don’t know what you would compare marriage to—that teaches you how to love, that instructs you in how to sacrifice for another person, to care for, to cherish, to nourish, and to call you away from yourself, and force—
3:00
—I mean, if you’re going to do marriage God’s way, it is the greatest discipleship tool that has ever been created in the history of the universe!
Bob: Yes.
Dennis: It demands that both a husband and a wife pick up their cross, follow Christ, deny themselves, and ask God, “Okay; God, what do You want me to do in this set of circumstances?”
Bob: And that’s true. It works both ways—for husbands and wives—but our focus this week is on the responsibility a wife has—the privilege she has / the assignment she has—from God to be the helper that He’s created her to be.
Barbara, we’re talking about some of the themes that are found in your book, Letters to My Daughters. Some women recoil at the idea that they’re called to be helpers. It sounds demeaning to them. Your book affirms that it’s a noble thing that God is calling wives to.
4:00
Barbara: It is a very noble assignment that God has given us. It’s equally noble, I think, to the calling that God has put on a man’s life too. What makes it even better is that, together, marriage is a high and holy calling—it says that in Scripture. It also says that it’s a mystery. I think that’s the part that we wish God hadn’t said about it, because it would be nice if it was a little bit more black and white / more obvious.
But God says it is a mystery. God is an artist / God is an author—God didn’t make robots. So figuring this out—this uniqueness / this relationship that Dennis and I have that’s unlike anybody else’s relationship on the planet—just as your marriage with Mary Ann is unlike anybody else’s on the planet—the ingenuity of God to create these little duos all over the planet that represent Him / that are a picture of Christ and the Church—all of that mystery is profound and baffling.
We wish sometimes that marriage was a whole lot easier, but it illustrates that it is a very high and noble calling.
5:00
We think it is drudgery / we think it’s dispensable—and it’s not.
Dennis: Yes; in the book that Barbara has written, called Letters to My Daughters: The Art of Being a Wife, you quote Mike Mason. Speaking of mysteries, he wrote a book called The Mystery of Marriage. This comes from that book—he says...
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
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.
Embracing the Differences
Guest: Barbara Rainey
From the series: Letters to My Daughters (Day 1 of 3)
Air date: February 15, 2016
Bob: Engaged couples often look at one another and think, “We’re so much alike!” Then, after they have been married for a little while, they look at each other and think, “Who are you?!” Here’s Barbara Rainey.
Barbara: What happens when we’re engaged—we tend to think: “Oh, we’re so much alike. We love each other so much—we’ll never have clashes.” I think one of the first difficulties for most young couples is they’re caught off guard by these differences. They don’t know what to do with them—they go from being cute and attractive to being downright ugly or frustrating. All of a sudden, what was cute isn’t so cute anymore; and you think, “Now what do I do?”
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, February 15th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. So what advice would you give to young wives and their husbands about the adjustments we make in marriage? We’re going to hear what Barbara Rainey has to say about that today. Stay with us.
1:00
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. I am really enjoying learning lots of new things about you, Barbara.
Dennis: You’re eavesdropping.
Bob: Well, it’s legitimate eavesdropping because of what your wife’s been writing about. This has been so much fun to read. [Laughter]
Dennis: I think I want to welcome her to FamilyLife Today—Sweetheart.
Barbara: Maybe we don’t; huh? [Laughter]
Dennis: This is my bride, and she has plenty of stories to tell.
Bob: And she has just recently—by the way, welcome, Barbara—nice to have you here.
Barbara: Thank you, Bob.
Bob: You’ve been collecting these stories, not to share with the world your stories, but really to mentor—you’ve become an e-mentor; haven’t you?
Barbara: Yes. I’m really writing this for six women / six young women, who happen to be my four daughters and two daughters-in-law—to share with them the lessons that I’ve learned over all these years of marriage in hopes that it will encourage them, and give them hope, and help them—help them persevere for the long haul.
2:00
Dennis: But it actually started—back to Bob’s point about—from an e-mentoring standpoint—really started on the internet—
Barbara: It did. That’s right; I had forgotten.
Dennis: —as you were writing emails to your daughters and daughters-in-law so that you’d be able to coach them / encourage them in the process.
Bob: Did you start doing this right after Ashley got married?
Barbara: No; actually, it was after our two boys got married. They got married the same summer—the summer of 2001. One of those two girls asked me if I would give her some advice on being a wife. I thought: “Wow! She really wants my advice?” I thought, “If she cracked the door open a little bit, I’m going to just walk right on through while the door’s open!” I said, “Sure, I’d love to!”
I began writing a series of letters in the fall of 2001 to my two brand-new daughters-in-law and to my daughter, Ashley, who, by then, had been married four years.
Bob: A lot of—a wife will hear you say that and they’ll think, ““Boy, if somebody asked me, I wouldn’t know where to start or what to say.”
3:00
But it sounds like you were ready to dive right in with wisdom.
Barbara: Well, I don’t know that I would say it that way, but I was ready to dive in—in the sense that I felt like, “Now was the time,” because all new brides are extremely teachable—they’re eager, they want to learn, they want to do it right, they don’t want to make mistakes—they really love this guy they just married. They’re most teachable and most coachable in those early years. I wanted to begin by sort of exploiting that—in a sense, in a good way—by saying: “Here are some things that I learned / here are some lessons I learned along the way. Here are some stories of what we went through / what I’ve learned from it. Perhaps, it will be helpful.”
Dennis: Over the years, we’ve—who knows how many hundreds of Weekend to Remember® marriage getaways have been held by FamilyLife—we’ve looked into the eyes of those in attendance.
4:00
It does seem that the engaged couples and the newly-marrieds are, not only on a steep learning curve, but they’re much more teachable and kind of spongy in terms of soaking in the truth.
What we wanted to do—and what I encouraged Barbara to do with this book—is take advantage of a window into the soul to speak a lot of relevant truth that she’s learned, as a woman from the Scriptures and from other older women who have coached her, and really help these young wives get started on the right trajectory.
Bob: They didn’t ask you about a specific subject. They just said, “Help me be a wife.” How did you know, “Okay; I’ll start here”?
Barbara: Well, what I did is—I just thought back to those early days in our marriage and tried to remember: “What were the lessons that I learned? What did I do r...
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
References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.
Leaning on God
Guest: Barbara Rainey
From the series: Letters to My Daughters (Day 2 of 3)
Air date: February 16, 2016
Bob: Barbara Rainey says there’s a lesson that every couple needs to learn really early in their marriage. The lesson is this: “You can’t do this on your own.”
Barbara: The bottom line is going to be the same for the rest of your life; and that is, when God brings you to a place that you realize you cannot do this thing called marriage, you can’t do this thing called mothering, you can’t even do the Christian life on your own—that you come to Him and you say: “I give up. I surrender—Your will, not mine.”
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, February 16th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We’ll find out today just how important it is to have a spiritual foundation poured in your marriage if you’re going to try to build a home on top of it. Stay tuned.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. I’m curious—did you think, when you and Barbara, in the summer of 1972—I guess September of ’72 / late summer; right?
Dennis: Right; right.
Bob: That’s when the two of you stood and faced one another and said your vows.
Dennis: It was still summer in Houston.
Bob: Did you think, “This is going to be a breeze,” or did you think, “I know there will be some challenges”?
Dennis: I just didn’t think. [Laughter] Honestly! I was in love. I was committed. I was ready to get on with life with my new bride and my new love. Honestly, I didn’t do a lot of cost-counting; but I did make a commitment.
Bob: We heard your wife laugh as you said, “I wasn’t really thinking.” Barbara, welcome to FamilyLife Today.
Barbara: Thank you.
Dennis: Were you thinking, Barbara?
Barbara: Not much more than you were.
Bob: But were you confident?
Barbara: Yes, I really was.
Bob: Did you start marriage, thinking, “I can do this”?
Barbara: Yes; I really did because I had grown up in a good home. My parents were not divorced. I had seen them work out their marriage and—though there were things I wanted to do differently—I felt like I could do this. Added to that, I was doubly confident because I was a Christian and my husband was. We were not just pew-warmers / we were committed Christ followers. I thought: “This is guaranteed to work because we’ve got the right ingredients: We love each other. We love the Lord. We are going to do this the right way. We’re going to follow the instructions in the Bible—A+B=C. It’s going to work out great!”
Bob: The reason we’re exploring this is because you’ve been spending a lot of time, recently, working on editing a series of letters—actually, emails that grew into letters.
Barbara: Yes.
Bob: Letters that you’ve written over the years to your daughters and your daughters-in-law, where you’ve just offered counsel from your own life and experience about getting married.
Barbara: Yes. I started writing this series of letters the summer that both of our sons got married. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to teach them—and I was invited to do so by the way—I didn’t do this without an invitation. It was that I wanted to encourage them by sharing some of the stories of things that I had learned so that they would know that: “Oh, it’s normal to have disagreements. Oh, it’s normal for this to happen or that to happen,” so that they would understand the long view of marriage and the big picture of marriage.
Dennis: One of the things that had occurred in our marriage that I think really pointed out the importance of perhaps Barbara doing this—early in our marriage, she had kind of run into the differences between us and how that was impacting her. Someone told us—and I don’t remember who—but said, “You really ought to go spend some time with an older woman who has experienced more of life and been around the barn a few more times than you have.” Just to spend some time and to know that what you’re going through is normal.
Bob: Yes.
Dennis: I think couples start out their marriage together and they get isolated. They don’t realize that what they’re going through is what everybody else is dealing with. But if they have someone who is seasoned / who’s authentic—and not going to create some kind of pie-in-the-sky approach that’s: “A+B=C, and you’re going to have all your problems solved by sundown tonight,”—if you’ve got somebody who’s real and helps you understand that it takes a lifetime to work out this thing called marriage. That’s what really fueled Barbara in writing our daughters and our daughters-in-law to be able to enter in to these first months and years of their marriage.
Bob: Barbara, one of the issues you felt like you needed to mentor your daughters and daughters-in-law in was this issue that we talked about—your confidence that you could be the wife and mom that God called you to be—that, at some point along the way, you kind of woke up and went, “This is harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Barbara: Yes. I think that realization was an on-going realization. What I’ve realized, as I...
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