Seasoned Marriages

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Dr. Larry McCall

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 6/2/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Welcome again to Stand in the Gap today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. Today, I want to talk to married couples. Now, for some reason you’re single, do not turn off this program. What we’re going to discuss today will be a great help to you, especially in the event that God guides you to meet the person of your dreams. You will be glad you listened today. I want to talk specifically for those who are in the second half of your marriage. Well, let’s say you’ve been married for 20 plus years. Kids are grown. You’ve been blessed maybe with some grandchildren. At this point, you might think that your marriage is on cruise control and you don’t need much attention. You’re not some wild eyed infatuated driven youngster in need of a family life weekend to remember. Your longevity alone speaks of your commitment to marriage and your love for each other.

Nevertheless, as you move into these later years of married life, you face different struggles and challenges and the familiar might not be as beneficial as you once thought. As a matter of fact, some of the new things that you may face should test and strain your marriage. And so today on Stand in the Gap, we want to examine this idea of marriages in the second half and our guest today has written a book entitled A Seasoned Marriage. Dr. Larry McCall serves as pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Winona Lake, Indiana. He is also the director of Walking Like Jesus Ministries. He’s married to Gladin since 1975, has a tribe of kids and grandkids. But the reason I invite him here is to discuss his work on understanding and maximizing marriages in our later years. Larry, welcome to Stand in the Gap.

Larry McCall:

Thank you. It’s good to be with you, Jamie.

Jamie Mitchell:

Larry, there’s much to discuss, but first I want you to share why you wrote this book, A Seasoned Marriage. What were you attempting to accomplish by publishing it?

Larry McCall:

Thanks for asking, Jamie. It actually was something I was not originally pursuing, but some years ago a pastor friend of mine, you know him as well, Andy Farmer, invited my wife and me to come to their church near Philadelphia and to teach a Saturday seminar on grandparenting with grace. That’s the name of another book I’ve written. Then he called me back and said, “Hey Larry, what do you think about the idea of coming a day early?” And on Friday evening, just doing one session on marriage for the people coming to the grandparenting seminar. So it would be marriage for older couples. And I said, “Well, Andy, I’ve never done that before, but that sounds like an exciting thing to do. ” So we did that Friday evening seminar there at their church and on the way home I said to my wife, I said, “You know what, Gladyne?

This could be a book.” And we’ve read lots of books on marriage, but we realize that most books on marriage, Jamie, who are they written for? They’re written for couples getting married or couples in their early years of marriage and there’s only a handful of books out there written for couples that have been married for a while. And so I started digging in and realizing there’s a real need for a book that focuses on couples that are in the second half of life and how marriage is different in the second half than it was in the first half.

Jamie Mitchell:

Larry, we’re going to speak to some of those issues specifically, especially those who have been married a long time and how to keep marriage vibrant and fruitful. But in general, in just a couple of minutes, what’s the difference about couples who have been married 25 years compared to those who are younger couples? What are just a few of the differences that you’ve noticed?

Larry McCall:

Well, I think there are some good things I think in being married for a long time that given marriage some resilience and that is just you know each other better. Now I’m still trying to figure out my wife sometimes. I’m still learning and we’re coming up on our 51st anniversary this month, but we continue to learn. But I think once you get into those season years, you know each other better. But then Jamie, there’s a downside to that and that is what’s that saying, familiarity, breeds contempt. Not that we’re contemptuous in our marriages, but we tend to take each other for granted. I think a lot of couples in their middle years and older, they just kind of gradually slide into what we call marital monotony. I think we’re keying in on something. I think realizing that God wants us to have vibrant marriages in our season years.

He doesn’t want us to just endure until one of us is called home.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. You know, Larry, one of the things I’m even noticing like in Kris and I, we’ve been married 42 going on 43 years is that sometimes we even forget what our spouse likes, what our spouse desires, how our spouse likes things done. And it’s not that we do something wrong. There’s more of an upsetment that you have after 43 years you’ve forgotten it or you’re still not getting it right. And so as much as we may attempt to do things out of wisdom, out of experience, out of familiarity, there are some frustration points that come in seasoned marriages and we need to address those because we want our marriages to continue to grow and not to stagnant. And I guess that’s the key of your book. You still want older couples to grow and enjoy their marriage, don’t you?

Larry McCall:

Yes. And you know, Jamie, I think it’s good for us to raise the bar even higher in this sense that not only do we want marriages that are joyful and healthy, but God wants that too. I mean, not just for older couples, for younger couples, really for all married couples. He wants our marriages to be a beautiful reflection of the greatest love story ever. The love that Christ has for his bride, the church. That’s Ephesians 5:25 and 32. And we shouldn’t just be content with our marriages sliding into monotony. We want our marriages to be a thriving, joyful representation of Christ and his church. And so that takes intentionality, that takes thoughtfulness. It takes applying the gospel.

Jamie Mitchell:

Larry, you get to a place even as you get older, you think retirement is, okay, I’ve done my duty. It’s time for me to sit back and relax. I see this all the time in the church with like people who work in the nursery. Sometimes they say, “Hey, I’ve done my time. It’s time to stop serving.” But that’s not the case with marriage. We’re to keep faithful to the end. Isn’t that correct?

Larry McCall:

Yes. And not only does that honor the Lord and bring joy to us, but I think it serves the coming generations. Our kids, our grandkids, younger couples in the church are looking at us seasoned couples. They’re looking for hope. They’re looking for a couple that can model this in their lives. So we can actually serve the younger generations by having thriving marriages as models examples for them.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen. Amen. Well, Lord willing, anyone who is listening today and is married, wants to remain married and flourish all the way to glory. Yet we will discuss that there are challenges even after you think that you’ve arrived as a couple, you’ve been married 30, 40 years. When we come back, I want Larry to unpack some of the specific challenges that folks in their second half of marriage will experience and have experienced and begin to build a strategy of how to keep marriage alive when you’re a seasoned couple. Don’t go anywhere. We’re talking about marriage today on standing the gap. Well, thanks for sharing your day with us. We’re discussing seasoned marriage dealing with the issues couples face in the second half of their married life. Dr. Larry McCall is our guest. Larry, as you wrote this book, you looked at couples who have been married for a while.

Let’s unpack some of those challenges. What are the three or four challenges that an older couple who is married and still wants to thrive in their marriage, what kinds of things will they face that are unique to them?

Larry McCall:

That’s a great question, Jamie. I think when we first get married, especially if we got married young, like my wife and I did, we weren’t anticipating some of the changes that would come once we crossed the halfway point in life, but some of them that come to my mind, probably the biggest change a lot of couples face midlife is the empty nest. I heard my wife tell a friend not long ago that when the last of our kids got married and left home, she said, “I had helped Larry prepare our kids for adult life, but I hadn’t prepared my own heart for the day they would be out of our home.” And I thought that was very insightful on Gladine’s part to evaluate her own heart that she wasn’t ready to let them go. In fact, we tell a funny story that when the last of our kids got married, we came home exhausted from the reception and everything and she said, “Oh, Larry, now it’s just us.” And I said, “No, Gladyne.

Now it’s just us all in the inflection.” But I think that empty nest is a big change. And then you move into, “Okay, now I have to learn how to relate to our adult kids. They’re not under a roof anymore. And then before you know it, elderly parents need our help and how do we handle that issue that comes up that maybe we hadn’t anticipated in our younger years, that sometimes we end up parenting the parent and then there’s just other issues, other big changes that come up. How do I relate to grandkids? How do I think about retirement? I mean, I got to prepare for it here. What’s that mean? What’s that look like? ” And then eventually we all have an expiration date. We just don’t know when God has assigned us our expiration. So even how do we prepare for the end of life?

So these are all huge issues that we encounter in the second half of life as married couples and how does the gospel come and help shape and sweeten our marriages as we encounter those changes?

Jamie Mitchell:

Larry, I’ve had a theory and theories are as good as you can prove them, but let me just talk about that empty nest thing. I have told couples, because I know Chris and I experienced it when Alex finally left the home, first when he went to college and then he got married, that it was almost like going through the loss of a loved one like a death and there’s real grieving that takes place and one couple may grieve greater than the other, but there is a real sense that some of these changes that you’ve just indicated here, it’s almost going through a whole grief process, isn’t it?

Larry McCall:

Yeah, it can be very much so. And I think Jamie, I think I see this more often in the mothers, the wives than I do the men, the husbands and dads. Not that dads don’t grieve that change. Many men do and some more stronger than others, but especially if the wife in that marriage has been maybe devoting more of her time over the years to helping raise the kids, maybe a stay at home mom, suddenly her role has changed and now she’s even questioning her identity. Who am I? I don’t hear those calls, mom as much anymore. And so it is wrestling for many people and some do grieve very deeply, but God’s grace can help us work through those times as well.

Jamie Mitchell:

You mentioned also this issue of how to relate to each other when the empty nest syndrome happens, it’s just you and your spouse now. We’ve experienced some of that in that we don’t have as much to talk about. It used to be we talk about our son or we talk about doing this or going with, but it almost is like some of our information and subject matter starts to dry up. That could be a real issue and you have to kind of start learning how to communicate to each other all over again.

Larry McCall:

Yes, that’s true. That’s insightful. Yeah. I think when you think about a lot of couples getting to that point in life, they’ve devoted 20, 25, maybe even 30 years to raising kids, getting established in a career, maybe getting their first home, all those issues come up with home ownership and then they get to this point where suddenly they’re looking at each other and it’s kind of like, now who are you again? And they’ve just not nurtured their relationship like they should have over the years. And so now they’re at that midpoint in life and maybe a little past that midpoint in life and they don’t have the thriving relationship that God wants them to have. In fact, there’s a term that’s come about in the last 15 years or so that maybe you’ve heard called gray divorce that there’s a phenomenon in North America of a bump, a noticeable bump in divorces of people who are in that age bracket, 45 to 55 and it’s probably an indicator that they’ve raised their kids focused on their kids.

Kids are gone and they hardly know each other anymore because they’ve not cultivated their relationship, their marriage. And so there’s a real need to lean into God’s grace and say, “We don’t want to stay here. We want to either get back what we used to have or grow something new in our marriage where we truly enjoy being married to each other.”

Jamie Mitchell:

Larry, I have your book. I love it. I’ve even recommended it to some people, some friends of mine, but you also say one of the things in here of a challenge is the physical changes in our lives and as we get older, not only do we begin to slow down, but we start facing some real physical issues as we do get older and that does play a role in the marriage relationship, doesn’t it?

Larry McCall:

It does. And I think sometimes it’s our own physical decline, sometimes it’s our spouse’s decline, but to how do we lean into God’s grace and serving one another in that period of physical decline? And it’s good for us to steward our bodies as best we can. My wife and I try to be careful what we eat. We try to exercise regularly, but the reality is this is a fallen world and our bodies are in a fallen world and God told Adam, “You’re made from dust, dust will return.” And we feel it. I think what Paul wrote in Romans eight, Jamie, when he said, “We groan while we await the adoption of our bodies when Jesus comes back.” And the older we get, the more we grow, don’t we? I don’t remember groaning like I used to. I mean, I don’t remember groaning like I do now climbing out of bed or doing something extremely physical, but to accept that reality that it’s because of sin in the human race, that we do have physical decline, but also we live with the hope of the resurrection that we don’t need to be cynical and negative, but we can live with anticipation that one of these days Jesus is coming back and at that point we get new bodies that are immortal that will not decay, will not decline.

But in the meantime, to trust him in that, but also to serve one another as husbands and wife. And that’s true just doing physical things, humbling for me. I have arthritis in my hands and there are times when my wife, who’s a small lady, opens the pickle jar for me and it’s like, “Oh, this is humbling.” But then there’s other issues. Even sexual issues might be more challenging, but to be patient, loving with one another, working through those things together with hope, with humility. So it’s actually a time to grow as a couple as you face physical decline together with hope in the Lord and with a servant-like attitude toward one another.

Jamie Mitchell:

Larry, it seems like one of the things along with these changes is that mentally I’ve watched couples over the years the change isn’t as much of a problem as them being able to accept the fact that the changes are coming, whether it’s in their own life or watching a spouse. I’ve heard some folks say that when my spouse got sick, it was the first time that he or she ever was ill or ever went to the hospital or ever needed a surgery and I never had seen that. They were always this strong and vibrant in the rock of our family and now they’re experiencing weakness and I’m having a hard time handling that. So part of it isn’t just a change, but having the right response and being able to view those changes in a way that it doesn’t kind of rock your world, isn’t it?

Larry McCall:

Yes, it is. And I think that’s where we have to accept the fact that this is a fallen world and not to be shocked when we see that decline in the family member, one of the marriage maybe that have been the stronger in many ways, but also to have that hope in the Lord that one day he’s going to come back and fix all this.

Jamie Mitchell:

You know, Larry, I will never forget Dr. Robinson McWilken, who was the president of then Columbia International University, Columbia Bible College at the time in South Carolina and in really the height of his ministry years when he was getting to a place where boy he was just so … And his dear wife was stricken, I believe, with Alzheimer’s and he resigned from the college to take care of his wife. What an amazing testimony. Friends, as we get older, things naturally evolve or devolve and we need to prepare for those changes, especially how it will affect the relationship with our spouse. When we come back, I want to consider a whole set of relationship changes that are affected with our kids, our grandkids, our friends. Relationships are the core of a solid marriage, but when those change, it can change the marriage relationship. Don’t go anywhere.

Stay with us here at Stand of the Gap today. Well, welcome back to Stand in the Gap Today. If you’re joining us for the first time, thank you for jumping in here. We’re talking with Larry McCall, who’s the author of A Seasoned Marriage. I want to encourage you to check out Amazon, get your hands on this tremendously helpful book. Larry, in your book, you wrote about the way that time and as we get older, begins to affect the relationships in our lives. I want to talk about all spectrums of that. And first I want to talk about aging parents. How will your older parents affect marriage and how do we prepare for that? How do we respond to that?

Larry McCall:

Statistically, a lot of older people die gradually. I’m not sure how to say that politely, Jamie, but some people die suddenly. In fact, that was true of three of our four parents, a heart attack, stroke, but one of our parents died very gradually. There was a month’s long decline until her body just finally gave out at 91, but she needed our help, my mother-in-law and I loved my mother-in-law and she needed our help. And so as a married couple, and we’re focusing on marriage here, but also talking about how do you minister to aging parents as your own marriage doesn’t suffer in the process. And the great majority of caregivers are female, great majority. It’s well over 70%. And so I always like to talk to men when this subject comes up, Jamie, that I think some of us men, we see our wives devoting extra time and energy to their mother, their father, or maybe one of our parents and we just kind of let them do it.

And I don’t think we ought to just kind of sit back and watch our wives and sometimes it’s the husband, but sit back and watch our wives do all the caregiving and we’re just on the sidelines. I think as men, as husbands, we need to love our wives to serve our wives if they’re the caregiver saying, “Honey, how can I help?” Looking for ways we can help, especially if mom lives far away and our wife or maybe the husband has traveled to be there with the aging parent, we can reassure them, “I’m going to take care of things on the home front, so you don’t need to worry about that. ” Or if we’re in the same community as aging parent to get involved very directly, very personally, what can I do? And even if I might not be good at nursing sort of things, could I run errands?

Could I pay bills? Could I read scripture to an elderly parent whose eyesight is failing? What could I do to help? And so to work together as a married couple in ministering to that aging parent that can actually strengthen your marriage, even though there’s certain stresses on it, because you don’t have as much time to focus on your own marriage, you’re focusing on that aging parent. But as you do it together, just doing that Christ reflecting, serving as a couple can be a very bonding thing in your marriage, even in your midlife and beyond.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. Larry, I think what gravitated me to this topic and also to your book and I love is that Chris and I, we’re living through this right now. My in- laws live in another state. They live far away. It’s very difficult. My wife is the only daughter, so you’re exactly right. There’s something different about a daughter than a son who takes care of you. And so we’ve had to navigate the issue of being a distance away, having to travel, being willing to give up the finances for her to be able to travel there and fly there. But again, I think Larry, the other thing is the battling of resentfulness that now I have to give up my wife to care for her parents time away where we could send and boy, you just got to navigate that so carefully and in a Christ-like manner. Larry, when you get older, your kids get older.

And so the other relationship that you have to manage here is you’re dealing now with adult children and they’re not the little kids at home that you just tell them what to do and they need to do it. The things are different. How as you get in this seasoned years of your marriage and your relationship with your adult kids, how does that change and then how do you respond?

Larry McCall:

Yeah. When God did and I travel to speak at seminars on grandparenting or on seasoned marriage, when we have a Q&A time, a question and answer time, what’s on your heart? What do you want to talk about? What’s your struggle? This issue probably comes up more than any other. How do I relate to my adult kids? And people can veer too far to the left or too far to the right. Some people just feel like if they want me in their life, they’ll let me know and I’m going to retire to a senior community, someplace warmer and just hang with my peers. And they don’t have any relationship with adult kids of any substance. But what happens more often I think is an overreach going too far the other direction and trying to either subtly or not so subtly control the decisions, the lives of our adult kids.

Both of those are dangerous, but instead leaning on God’s grace to reflect his grace to our adult kids, we want to be intentionally involved in loving ways in their lives. What Gladyne and I do with our adult kids is every couple of months or so we’ll sit down with them and ask, “How are we doing as parents, as grandparents in that case as well? How would you like us involved with your family? Are there ways you feel like we’ve backed off and you’d like more involvement? Are there ways we’ve gotten too directed you’d want us to back off?” And we just have an open conversation and we’ve kind of cultivated that over the years and so it’s pretty comfortable talking to them and sometimes one of our kids will say, “Mom or dad, we’d really like you to just step back from this issue. We’ve got this.

If we want your advice, we’ll ask.” So having that open relationship, but then just showing them love. I mean, just show them love in simple ways, sending them a text, texting them Bible verse or word of encouragement, praying for them, praying with them. There’s so many ways that we can show that we value your friendship. We value you as our adult son or daughter once you know we’re praying for you, whatever. But I think that control issue, some older parents struggle with that and they want to protect their kids from wrong decisions or steer their kids from what they feel like are bad decisions and sometimes experience is the best teacher and we also let them go ahead and say, “If you would like our input on that, we’re glad to offer it, but it’s your call whether you want that or not. ” And then let them decide.

Jamie Mitchell:

You know, Larry, from your experience, have you seen this? I’ve noticed that when relating to your adult kids, moms struggle relating to the sons and dads struggle relating to the daughters. Moms still see him as a little boy and that relationship and the change that takes place there, not realizing, “Hey, he’s a man of his own. You need to just respect him and not smother him.” And then the dad looking at the daughter and being protective and eyeballing anything the son-in-law does as not meeting up to his standard for his princess, boy, you have to be careful how that whole thing interacts, don’t you?

Larry McCall:

Yes. And you know, Jamie, another dynamic I think along what you’re saying that can be very helpful is you talk about the dads. I think for a dad to build a relationship with a son-in-law, not just his son or sons, but sons-in-law can be so fruitful and I love our sons-in-law and enjoy getting together with them. And there have been seasons when we’ve lived closer, we’re kind of scattered now some, but seasons when we’re closer, we’d go out for lunch once a month and just get a sandwich somewhere and we’d talk about life. How’s it going? How can I help you guys? How can I pray for you? And to build that loving relationship between father-in-law and son-in-law and that actually is a way to provide for our daughters indirectly because we’re helping their husbands become more godly men in a gracious way so that our daughters now can see their husbands as a loving leader in their home and not like, “I wish dad were in here to fix it or whatever.” And to work with God’s plan that the husband, the fathers to be the leader in the home and to help him do that in a non-controlling way, in a hopeful way.

Jamie Mitchell:

Larry, one of the things that we have thought about and again, I think it’s all over your book is as we get older, I don’t want to be a burden on my adult child. I want to be a blessing and part of that is right from the beginning as I get older, they’re on their own, they have their own life to continually say to them, “Listen, I want to do things as I get older so that it will be easier for you. I know at some point you might have to take care of me or you may have to help us more or look, when I die, you’re going to have to clean up whatever I left here.” As an older couple, we have a responsibility to look ahead and ask that question, don’t we? How can I be the greatest blessing on my children and not a burden assuming that at some point I might be a burden to them?

Larry McCall:

Yes. Yeah. I think that’s a fear a lot of folks have as they get into their season years is, “I don’t want to be a burden on our kids.” You hear that, you feel it, you said it probably and yet reality is that we’re not in control Of our long term abilities and God is sovereign over our physical wellbeing as well or over our abilities. And it could well be that he wants us to show the humility of accepting help from other people, including our own kids. And that’s hard for us. We’ve tried to provide for our kids when they’re growing up while we don’t want to be a burden to them and yet the reality is it might come to that, that we need their help. And so God gives grace to the humble. So don’t make it difficult in arguing and you don’t need to do that for me.

I’ll do that. No dad, get off the ladder.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, I think as we get older, our marriages need some predictability, some stability and family relationships are key to that, but they’re ever changing. When we return our last segment, we want to address some other issues about couples who are getting older. Stay with us. Well, thanks for being with us today. We hope that it’s been a blessing and encouragement, especially if you’re in the later years of your marriage. Larry McCall’s been our guest. Larry, can you take a quick moment and share with our listeners where they can find you on the web and do you speak at churches and what subjects do you speak on? And maybe there’s a church out there that might be interested in having you and your dear wife. Well,

Larry McCall:

Thanks for asking, Jamie. Yeah. The way to find us is on our website. I’m the director of Walking Like Jesus Ministries. And so our web address is wljministries.org. And if you go to our website, you’ll see a link there to our YouTube channel as well. And be careful. There’s a ministry of the similar name in Great Britain that’s theology is a little more questionable. So make sure you got the right walking like Jesus Ministries, wiljministries.org. Yes. We do travel and speak at churches, conferences, especially on the subjects of marriage and these days seasoned marriages, but also grandparenting. I speak at a lot of men’s conferences throughout the year. So what we try to do, Jamie, is we try to show how the gospel shapes and Sweetens life’s most important relationships of marriage, parenting, and grandparenting.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, Larry, now that I know you’re about an hour away from me in Indiana, you might be getting a phone call to come on over and minister to the church that I’m serving at. We would certainly love to have you. Larry, as we finish up, I’m going to call this the lightning round. There’s three issues I want you to address. You can do it any way you feel, but these issues are also in your book, A Seasoned Marriage, and I just want you to touch on them. First, grandchildren, please don’t go wild. I know this could be an hour long program when we talk about our grandchildren, but grandchildren affect a seasoned marriage. Secondly, financial issues. We seem to have too many issues and not enough dollars. And then finally, Larry, will you speak to the issue of facing death and how do we finish well in our marriage?

So touch on those three issues. Give us some insights.

Larry McCall:

Okay. With grandparenting, I love to use the word intentional. A lot of grandparents never think about grandparenting as a ministry. And yet when you read the scriptures, Deuteronomy four, Psalm 78, Psalm 145, and so on. The Bible actually has a lot to say about one generation pouring God’s word into the next generation. So to be intentional, I need to be thinking about that as a grandfather, grandmother. We need to think about it as a married couple. How are we going to, by God’s grace, serve our grandchildren alongside the parents and telling them about God is greatness, his grace. So to study the Bible and then seek how to pour that into them. Yeah, we could talk more, but I would encourage you to not only read that section of seasoned marriage, but also another book I’ve written called Grandparenting with Grace. You mentioned about finances.

Yeah, it’s a big issue and there’s people all over the map in their season years. Jamie, there’s people that have just not managed well or maybe they just had a lot of hardship in life and have gone into their season years without many resources at all. I think in those situations to learn what it means, Jesus said not to worry about those things. And I’m going from memory here, but Matthew 6:32, I believe it is, Jesus said, “Your heavenly father knows you need these things. And do we trust him or do we live as worry warts?” A lot of older people though are actually more toward the other end of the spectrum where they have more than they need to live out their years and to not be selfish and hanging onto it metaphysically, but how can I be generous in these season years and to give so that God’s kingdom can continue to impact people with the gospel and so to be generous that way as well.

The third thing, I’m going from memory here, but you asked about finishing well. We’re all going to die.

We tend to live as if we’re going to be the exception, but unless Jesus comes back first, we’re all going to die. And how do we prepare for that? And we can go to seminars and learn how to get the legal documents lined up, how to leave medical information for our survivors and those are important. And I encourage people in the book, I actually walk people through some of the documentation that’s good to work on. It’s good to have your funeral at least sketched out and maybe even pre-planned some of your funeral arrangements and paid for those things ahead of time. Might be a way to serve your kids, surviving kids or your surviving spouse. But what doesn’t get talked about, Jamie, is how do I prepare my own heart for my upcoming death? How do I prepare my spouse’s heart in case he or she survives me and how can I lovingly think through how to prepare my heart and my trust in God with my shortcoming demise that he has my days planned.

Just the other day in our devotions in the morning, we read Psalm 139 where the psalmist says, “All the days are ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. I’m going to die right on time, right on God’s schedule. I just don’t know when that is. ” And so to prepare my heart knowing that that’s coming and then to serve my wife so that we can talk openly about that and to realize if she outlives me, I want you to know I love you. I’m grateful for your ministry to me as my wife over these years and I want to serve you by doing some of this prep ahead of time so that it’s not all left on your shoulders while you’re grieving or on the kids’ shoulders while they’re grieving. And so there’s just ways and in that chapter of the book called Finishing Well, we walk through not just the functional things we’ve got to do documentation wise, but the heart issues too and how do we communicate that to our family before it’s too late?

How do I communicate my love, my gratitude for them while I still have breath. And I might even want to put some of it in writing or video so that they’ll have something to look at after I’m gone or maybe if I’m in a coma or whatever and can’t speak anymore. But I think there’s ways we can live out the gospel even as we face our own upcoming deaths.

Jamie Mitchell:

You know, Larry, I can’t tell you how many people who are getting older in years and I bring up this issue about planning for death and all of that. As a matter of fact, I’ve written a notebook entitled Putting Your House in Order. And it’s a way to get everything about your life in on place so that when you do go, it’s right there and you’re not running around trying to find it. But part of that is planning your funeral. And here’s what I’ve heard spouses say. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk because if I talk about it, it might happen. But boy, we really do a disservice where as an older couple, there’s a bonding that takes place when you talk in a very open, natural, God-centered, God trusting way to say, “Look, there’s going to come a time that one of us is going to be left.” We don’t know which one, but one of us is going to be left.

And so how do we want to respond and what are our wishes and what are some things that we would desire? Larry, we can’t avoid talking about these things, can we?

Larry McCall:

Right. Yeah. We know we’re all going to die and some of us are going to walk our spouse to heaven’s gate. We can’t walk them through. And for some of us, it’ll be our spouse who walks us to heaven gate and cannot walk us through. So to prepare for that in a way that honors God and serves our surviving spouse.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. I mean, it’s crucial. It’s so helpful. Larry, you’ve been a blessing, brother. I’m so glad that we got connected. Thank you for an informative and encouraging program and book. Again, friends, get Larry’s book, A Seasoned Marriage. It will be worth your while. Matter of fact, if you’re younger, get it. Read ahead because if God allows you to get marriage, that’s what you’re looking for. And the goal is always to enjoy each other, have flourishing relationships and to be used by the Lord until we see him face to face. What a testimony of the power of the gospel when we finish well in life and in our marriage. Well, listen, we’ll be back here in 23 hours for another stand in the gap today. Until then, live and lead with courage. God bless you. Thank you so much for being us. Have a wonderful day.