We are in Part Four of Guardrails. Everybody knows what a guardrail is. If you’ve been with us,
you know that basically what we’ve done is we’ve taken the idea of a guardrail that we’re
familiar with and see every single day, and we’ve come up with a parallel idea as we think about
living our lives. But just to kind of get us all on the same page, a guardrail is a system designed
to keep vehicles from straying into dangerous or off-limit areas, a system designed to keep
vehicles from straying, and that’s a key word, into dangerous or off-limit areas. Even though we
know how that works with vehicles, the truth is in many areas of our lives, our finances, our
relationships, our morality and different areas, we need guardrails. So we asked the question,
what would it look like to establish guardrails in lots of different areas of our lives? In other
words, what would it look like to develop systems that keep us from straying into dangerous
areas, financially, morally, relationally, professionally, academically—whatever it might be. So
we came up with our own definition of a guardrail.
Here’s our definition: It’s a standard of personal behavior, which means it’s a behavior that you
choose for yourself, a standard of personal behavior that becomes a matter of conscience. What
we’ve talked about in these last few weeks is what it would be like if we created standards of
behavior—that is—this is what I will and won’t do (we just come up with them on our own) and
we so tune our consciences into those that when we begin to break our own standards, our
consciences light up and it keeps us from living on the brink of disaster—again—morally,
physically, relationally, with our health, whatever it might be.
Now this whole idea of guardrails is nothing new. In fact, the idea of setting personal standards
is nothing new. As Sandra and I talked about this series, it dawned on us that this has really been
a part of our lives since even before we met, and that in some ways, we may have never met had
we not had guardrails in our lives—even in college and after that, or standards that we had set.
So I thought it would be fun, especially because today is the day it is, to invite her out to talk
about how this principle has interacted with our lives. So would you please welcome my wife,
Sandra Stanley. This has been fun.
Sandra Stanley: In a stressful sort of way.
Andy Stanley: In a stressful sort of way. On the way to church today, she said, “This is kind of
like getting up early and going to a surgery.” She doesn’t enjoy public speaking, but as you’re
about to discover, she does a delightful job.
Now, last week we did this whole thing on creating moral boundaries, and I gave some advice to
singles and couples. One of the pieces of advice I gave to singles was no sleepovers. You just
need to decide as a standard of behavior, no sleepover, and my boyfriend just doesn’t spend the
night here. It doesn’t matter if he sleeps on the couch. It’s one of those standards of behavior.
And I think I told you that when we were dating, we did have a sleepover, and so for full
disclosure, I wanted you to know that, but I wanted Sandra to tell you the story. How’s that?
SS: That’s good. This is one of those stories that is kind of funny now, but it was not funny at all
at the time. It was 1987 and we were either engaged or almost engaged, and I was a college
student living off campus in an apartment with my sister, and Andy was getting ready to go on
his first trip to Africa. He and his friend Randy were headed to Kenya. For those of you who’ve
done mission trips, you know for certain countries you have to have lots of immunizations and
things to get ready to go. In 1987, I think there were either more immunizations you had to have,
or at least it was different. You had to spread them out over a time period. But Andy didn’t have
time for that, so he’s going to get all of his in one sitting.
AS: Well, I just forgot.
SS: It was about a week and a half before he’s leaving for his trip.
AS: Which meant half of them wouldn’t even kick in until I got back.
SS: So this friend of ours, who is a nurse, comes over with this bag full of shots for him and she
lays them all out and she said, “Andy, this is going to be bad. It’s going to be real bad. In a
couple of hours you are not going to feel well.” And so sure enough she gives him all these
shots. Thankfully, my sister was a nurse, too. So he gets all the shots, and in about a couple of
hours, he’s got sweats and chills and fever and all that, with yellow fever and typhoid and things
like that swirling around in there. I think he basically ended up passing out on our sofa and we
sort of took care of him all night.
AS: Really, I woke up the next morning and I said, “How did I get here?” Her sister’s looking
over at me, like, [gasp]. So that was our sleepover.
SS: That’s when I knew that he really needed me to run his life.
AS: That’s true. That’s exactly right. Things got better after that.
At the beginning of this series, I made a comment that I’ve not followed up on because we’re
going to swing around back into the series and talk about it a little bit—that guardrails not only
protect, but guardrails also direct. They direct and protect. When you’re on a highway, you know
kind of where to get off and where the exit ramps are basically because of guardrails. As we
discuss this principle, really our decision to make and establish personal guardrails is what really
directed us to each other. Without these, we would’ve probably never met. I think this is so
important, especially if you’re in high school or college or single or you just moved to this city.
This isn’t just about being good; this really is about being able to discern the will of God.
SS: That’s true. We really probably would not have met. We didn’t have the same friends; we
didn’t travel in the same circles. I didn’t go to the church where he was on staff at the time. And
I’m a whole lot younger than him.
AS: Not a lot younger, a little bit younger.
SS: I was a college student when we met and I was at Georgia Tech. Earlier than that, I was
living on campus before I moved in with my sister. I was living on campus and I was involved in
a Bible study that happened on Monday nights from 7:30 to 9:30 or something like that. It was a
long time ago. But I was the type of student who had to study really, really, really hard for my
B’s and C’s, and it seemed like everybody around me already knew everything before they got
there and didn’t have to study, but I really did have to study. So making this Monday night
commitment was a pretty big deal for me and I really didn’t have time for it. Looking back, I
guess that was a guardrail. These were the people I wanted to surround myself with, people I
wanted to get to know and it was a great Bible study and a great thing for me, and so I tried to be
committed to that as many Monday nights as I could get away with.
It was one of those Monday nights I was walking back from Bible study, back to my dorm, and I
just remember being overwhelmed with the thought of, I really, really, really want God’s will for
my life. I had not been a rebellious kid. I’d never rebelled against God or against my parents or
anything like that. I wasn’t perfect, but I just didn’t have any real need for a big turning point,
wake-up call kind of moment. But this still was sort of a little turning point for me, and I just
said, “Lord, I know that there’s no true happiness outside of your will for my life and I really,
really want that. I don’t want to be focused on things that are just good. I really want to focus on
things that are the best.” I had been in a relationship at that time that was sort of an on-off sort of
long distance relationship, and I realized I knew even from the beginning this wasn’t God’s
choice for me. He was a great guy, but just not God’s choice for me. So during that turning point
I thought, I’m done with that, and I’m done with all the distractions and things that would keep
me from really focusing in on what God’s will was. It was really probably just about a year later
that we met, because I think we met my junior year and got married as soon as I graduated.
AS: On our first date, there was another kind of defining moment for us in terms of
understanding the importance of guardrails. Our first date, it was really like a blind date. We had
actually met at that Bible study, but I didn’t remember meeting her. It’s a long story. So on our
first date, I wasn’t sure who was coming to the door, literally. I didn’t have any picture in my
mind of Sandra Walker because of the way it worked out. So on our first date, we had no
relational moment. There was nothing to talk about, and she was very quiet and I ran out of stuff
pretty quick. It’s hard to believe.
So we’re driving along, and I’m trying to think up something to say or ask, and here’s what came
out of my mouth, and this only happened one time. It’s a great line, but it wasn’t really a line. I
was just desperate for something to say. Out of my mouth comes, “Hey, have you ever done any
modeling?” What a great line that is. I’d never used it before or since, because we started dating
and that was it. When I asked her that question, she answered yes, but the way she said yes, I
sensed that maybe there’s a story there, and since were out of stuff to talk about, I kind of
plunged in and said, “Well, tell me what happened.” And so she told me a story that was … this
is, I think, when I fell in love with Sandra. The significance of the story may seem small today,
but it was huge. I’ve shared this before, but you’ve never heard her share it.
SS: Since I would live downtown, I had some opportunities to do some just little modeling
things at the Atlanta Apparel Mart. It was just a few blocks away. I had a friend who had a showroom there, and so every now and then during the big shows I would come down and do
some things for her, and through that I got invited to do this other little modeling thing that I
didn’t ask enough questions about ahead of time. But I got there and it was in this hotel
ballroom. So I got to my dressing room and I went out and did the first runway thing, came back,
changed clothes, went out again and came back and looked at the next one and I thought, Oooh, I don’t really think I want to wear that. So I decided to look at the rest of them. They were all kind of lined up. You could just kind of see the next one as you went. They were all lined up, and as I looked, they got progressively worse as I got closer to the wall.
AS: Not worse, like ugly.
SS: Right. Just less and less appropriate. And so I just decided this isn’t something I want to
continue to do. So I found the lady in charge and I felt terrible and it was awkward, and I said, “I
am so, so sorry. I don’t feel comfortable wearing those outfits and you can keep your money. I
know this puts you in an awkward position. I’m very sorry.” And that was the end of that. I left,
and I didn’t do anything except Apparel Mart stuff after that.
AS: So we’re driving along and she’s telling me this story. Now, young ladies and not so
younger ladies, I’ve got to tell you. In a world where everybody’s racing down that runway to do
that, to be in the car with this college student who said, No, I’m not going to do that, I’m telling
you, my respect just went right out the roof, and I thought, Wow—because that’s a guardrail. Is
it a sin to model? No, it’s probably just a bunch of ladies there, anyway. It was to prepare for a
costume ball or something. So, it would’ve been so easy just to say, “Oh, it’s not a big deal; it’s
not a big deal.” But I’m telling you, when I heard that, just something happened inside of me.
What we didn’t anticipate then, because it was our first date, was that that would be a story that
one day she would be able to share with our teenaged daughter to say, hey, when there’s
temptation and when there’s pressure, when the whole culture is going this way, there are times
that was like a really big deal. So, again, we feel like the whole idea of personal standards that
you tie your conscience to really direct us to each other, and we could tell you some more stories.
We got married and lived over in Cobb County in a two-bedroom condo that I already had. One
morning not too long after we’re married, I’m having my quiet time and I’m reading the book of
Proverbs, reading one Proverb a day like I suggested that you do from time to time, and I ran
across this verse, and the word just kind of jumped off the page, and this sort of became a life
verse for our entire marriage or relationship. Here’s what it said.
Proverbs 27:12 (TNIV)
12 The prudent see danger [You may have heard me teach on this before.] and take
refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.
And this is a guardrail verse, because the verse says the prudent see danger and then they back
off. The simple or the naïve, they just keep going and they suffer for it. So I shared this verse
with Sandra. I said, what an amazing verse, so we began to pray this verse in our marriage before
we had kids. And the prayer went, “Lord, help us to see danger coming before it gets and then give us the wisdom to know what to do and then the courage to do it. Help us to see danger
coming before it gets here, then give us the wisdom to know what to do and the courage to do it.”
You’ve heard me pray this for you at the end of messages: Give us the wisdom to know what to
do with what we’ve just heard and the courage to do it. So, we began to pray this in our
relationship, and we saw God answer this prayer a lot, a lot of times.
SS: We saw God answer this prayer in several really, really big ways, but in a whole lot of little
ways—lots and lots of things where we feel like we got a little warning from God ahead of time
and were able to avoid some issues. We’ve seen it in our marriage; we’ve seen it in our
parenting. It’s one of the first verses we ever had our kids memorize. I think when they were
younger, we would entertain ourselves sometimes by making them memorize Scripture and say it
back to us because they had a hard time enunciating the funny words.
We’ve seen them now that they’ve gotten older and they’re teenagers, we’re seeing the fruit of
that, and we’ve seen them make decisions that are a direct example of this principle, and we
celebrate it like crazy. Even if it’s a little, little tiny thing that’s really not that big a deal, we
make a big deal out of it. We learned early on that what’s rewarded is repeated, and so we
reward and celebrate like crazy when we see our kids make decisions, even little things.
AS: Last week, I kind of gave you some lists. I’m sure you remember some of that. We talked to
married couples and said, Married couples, here are some things you shouldn’t do. A couple of
those things are things that we have always done. Again, because we were told early on, here are
some things you should avoid. So, one of our guardrails for both of us has been not to travel
alone with members of the opposite sex if they’re married or single, because we’re married; not
to eat alone, whether it’s coffee, lunch or dinner. We’ve just always avoided those things and
we’ve had some interesting … because of those standards, people who don’t understand that—
some people who’ve been offended by that, but it’s a guardrail. There were a couple of occasions
when I walked into a restaurant to meet a couple, and the husband decided not to come. I’m
standing there about to have dinner or lunch, usually, and in one case breakfast, with a woman.
And the interesting thing is, there’s no sin in that, but because Sandra and I had agreed on that,
my conscience just kind of lit up like, “Uh-oh.” I felt guilty. I felt bad, because that’s what a
guardrail is. It’s a personal standard. So I said, “Excuse me,” and I went and called Sandra and
said, “Well, I’m stuck.” And she kind of laughed, and I went on and did that because that was
kind of our rule: If you get stuck, just call—because again, it’s not the end of the world. But
again, these are guardrails that we think have guided and protected our relationship through the
years.
SS: They are. And we decided early on if trouble at work impacts home, then why not have
home more involved in selecting and helping with figuring out what relationships are going to be
at work. Andy included me from the very beginning on hiring when it was going to be people
working in his office, and wanted to make sure that I felt comfortable, especially if it was a
woman that they were thinking about hiring. He always included me in those decisions, and
Diane Grant, who’s his assistant, and Sara Molchan, who works for Diane and for Andy, are two
that are in his office now and they both have healthy, healthy marriages; they are emotionally healthy. They’re not working for Andy trying to get something from him. They really are just
solid, great ladies, and Andy allowed me to be part of that process. We feel like those are two
things, the healthy marriage and the emotionally healthy, two really important things in hiring.
So one of the things I’ve heard Andy say over and over to pastors especially, but to any leaders,
is “have a ministry, but don’t hire a ministry.” I think that’s great advice and we try to apply that.
AS: And we’ve done that throughout our organization. We have included spouses in on hiring
many, many times, and we get pushed back. When I mention that in a corporate environment,
people just kind of roll their eyes. But I say, “Wait a minute.” It’s just like Sandra said, isn’t it
true that if something inappropriate happens at work, it impacts what happens at home? So on
the front end you think there’s this high dividing wall between work and home, but you know
that the two cross over in terms of what happens emotionally or what can happen in terms of
relationship. So why not tear down that wall and invite spouses in? And we’ve had a couple of
situations here where a spouse just said, I don’t feel great about that hire, and you don’t press.
You just go with that intuition, and again, it’s not a rule; it’s not a sin; it’s just a guardrail. We’ve
just done that from the very beginning and never regretted that.
SS: Another relational guardrail that we’ve had in place has been our community group. We’ve
been in community groups for 18 of our 22 years of marriage and we wouldn’t change that for
anything. I don’t think we will ever go without being in a community group of some sort. The
relationships that you build when you’re sitting in a circle and sharing life together and sharing
stories and sharing prayer requests and all of those things and opening God’s Word together,
those relationships go very, very deep very fast. So when you do that for a year or a year and a
half with a group of people, those are just some solid relationships. We see ourselves, as a result
of that, having layers and layers of accountability and friends that we can call on to help us.
That’s a huge guardrail, I think, in our relationship, in our marriage, and in our family with kids,
too.
AS: I’ve always felt like because of the nature of what happens in a community group, because
in a community group, as Sandra said, you invite people into that part of your personal walk with
God—your standards and those kinds of things. So, I feel like she’s always had half a dozen or
more guys, men, that she could call at any time if she felt like I was drifting off in some
unhealthy habit or in some bad relational direction—there’s a group of people that we’ve been in
a relationship throughout these years together. So again, it’s just a guardrail. It’s just a measure
of safety that unfortunately I know a lot of people don’t have, a lot of couples don’t have. But
it’s one of those things you pre-decide.
SS: And for singles, too.
AS: Definitely for singles. We had groups like that before we were married, before we even met.
To talk about money a little bit: As I’ve told you before, we were raised in families that saw the
world financially very similarly—no debt, no crazy ridiculous cars, just the kind of stuff that gets
people in trouble. So when we merged our financial world, of course there wasn’t really much to
merge. She came with a car she got in high school.
SS: My Cutlass Supreme.
AS: Her Cutlass Supreme. It was pretty awesome. It was great. This lady rear ended me. I was in
it. Rear ended me in her Volvo and totaled her Volvo. We didn’t even do any repair. It was like
the most unbelievable car. It was indestructible. I just drove off, after the police came.
So financially, we established three habits. And again, this is so early on; we had no idea the
benefits from these decisions, because we were just trying to take the good advice of people
around us. The first decision we made was about a year into our marriage, and I’ve encouraged
you to do this, so I know I’m repeating myself, but most of you just go, oh, that’s the preacher.
About a year into our marriage, we began to record, write down on the same ledger sheet, every
penny we spent. We tracked every single dollar we spent. We actually did it on graph paper. We
didn’t have a computer back then. Then as time went by, we got a computer in our home.
Eventually we started using Quicken, and this isn’t just looking at American Express bills and
stuff. This is actually a ledger sheet on a computer, where we sit down, in my case almost daily,
and as Sandra will tell you, she does it in a few minutes. Basically, we have one ledger sheet
where everything we spend goes. This has been an incredible, incredible habit that has peeled
layers of pressure off our relationship financially, because that’s where so many people get into
trouble in their relationship.
SS: And honestly, it’s kind of a hassle. The way I do it is I go at the end of every month, I get
my statements and all my stuff, and I just put everything in, and it’s a little bit tedious and it’s a
little bit time consuming, but it is so worth it. For me, each month it’s a review. Sometimes it’s a
wake-up call just to look over everything we’ve spent that month or that I spent that month. I’m
the one in the family that’s doing most of this—just lots and lots of little spending—things with
kids and food and all that. So it’s a great review for me to look over that. It’s just a great
discipline, and it’s been helpful. Andy, when he does it, he does it more along the way. A couple
of times a month he’ll sit down and input all of his stuff. It’s just a great thing to know where the
money went.
AS: And when we’ve had times where things got tight financially. The biggest one was actually
when we started the church, because I quit a job; there was no church, there was just quit. And
we were getting things started. We didn’t have insurance, went without health insurance for a
while, while she was pregnant—another old story. The thing that we didn’t stress about, we
knew exactly where we were financially. We’ve never had in our marriage, and this is just
because of good advice we were given, we’ve never had discussions like, Well, it seems to me
that you always; well, it seems to me that you always, because there’s no “seems to me” about it because it’s all right there. When we needed to cut back when things were tight, we knew
exactly. Again, it really was a relational guardrail. Even though it’s a financial decision, it was a
relational guardrail, because it took all the mystery out of money. And that’s where marriages get
out of whack sometimes, because people are hiding things or they’re not keeping track and
things go crazy.
When we’ve talked to couples about this, it seems like there’s always one person in the marriage
that’s like, yes, tell her or tell him. And then there’s the other person that’s like, I’m not listening. I don’t do that. I’m not a financial person. I don’t even have a calculator. So what do you say to the person who would be like, somebody else needs to do that?
SS: I just think it’s really worth developing the discipline of doing it, even if it’s not your
strength, even if you don’t like numbers, even if you don’t like little tedious tasks. It’s just worth
developing the discipline. The thing that we have found is, we can sit down at the end of a year
and look at a whole report (or you could do it quarterly or even monthly), but we’ll sit down at
the end of the year and look at the whole thing and, again, there’s no finger pointing, there’s no
suspicion. It’s like it is what it is because it’s right here. Different seasons of life are different.
There are certain seasons of life where you’re spending more in one area and the next little
season of life you might not have to spend that, but we’ve been able to look at it and evaluate
and say, Okay, we way overspent in this area. Is that something we need to cut back on, or is that something we just need to make some budget adjustments for? So it’s just worth it, and I think relationally, again, it just peels off that layer. So to that person I would say, the hassle is worth the relief in the relationship that it provides.
AS: It’s better than a budget, we’ve learned. Because if you just have a budget but you don’t
track your spending, you’re just going to argue over people getting out of whack with their
budgets. But when both people can look and see where things are, it just creates sort of
flexibility.
The other big financial decision we made (and again somebody told us to do this), we decided up
front what percentage of our income we wanted to live on. Now, here’s what I know about all of
you. You all live on a percentage of your income. Most of you have no idea what it is, because
you don’t think in those terms, and I understand that. I didn’t, either. Some of you live on 105%
of your income. That doesn’t work for very long, but you can do that for a while. Some of you
live at 110, some of you live right at 99, and any little bump, any little bump and it’s a
catastrophe, and where you feel that is not financially. Where you feel that is in your
relationships at home, because if your son has a flat tire or your wife accidentally—then there’s
all this relational chaos.
So we took some good advice and we decided, because a guy told me, he said, Andy, it’ll never
be any more inexpensive for you to live than right now. It’s just going to get more expensive. So
we just sliced it way back to where we had gigantic margin, not in terms of dollars, but in terms
of potential dollars, in terms of the income that we made at the time. Consequently, we had just
not experienced a lot of the pressure that a lot of couples—especially newlyweds—feel, because
we lived so far below our income. And as our income has increased, our lifestyle has tracked
with it, like the average American family, but that margin was really a relational decision, and it
was a guardrail decision, because we are way back. Something could happen this afternoon and
change all that, but just in terms of the ebb and flow of life, we have margin. Again, that’s just a
financial guardrail.
SS: It’s allowed us not to have to carry credit card debt and car payments and all that kind of
stuff. It’s been really helpful for us to just pick that percentage and to camp out there or better.
The thing that I love most about having financial margin, though, is just, when you have that margin, you have so much more freedom to be generous. One thing that brings both of us great
joy is to be able to give to people that we see who are in need. Or we both have hearts for
orphans, and so we’re involved in some things overseas and with foster kids here. It just allows
us that freedom. It just breaks my heart to think of what it would feel like to see a real, real need
and to think, Gosh, I can’t help with that. I can’t help with that, because there’s just no margin
there for stepping beyond things that I’m spending it on for myself.
AS: That’s the third decision we made. And again, we learned this from our parents and from the
churches we were brought up in. We decided up front we would always give first. You’ve heard
me talk about this, but literally for us, when we get a check, a paycheck or some extra money
from something, the first check we write is we tithe to our local church. We did this when we
worked at First Baptist. We’ve done that since we started Northpoint. The first check, literally—
not at the end of the month. We always give first. Now, let me tell you where this is a huge
guardrail, because you don’t think in these terms, but after all these years, greed is simply “the
assumption that it’s all for my consumption.” That’s all greed is. You can be poor and be greedy,
and be rich and be greedy.
Greed is just the assumption that it’s for my consumption. When you give first, we’ve learned,
when you give first, it guards you. It’s a guardrail against assuming it’s all for me and it’s all
about me. Even though in your mind you can say, well, it’s not all about me. When you give
first, not later, but when you give first, it just breaks the power of greed in your life. So that’s
something we have always done. And again, as our income has increased, our ability to be
generous in terms of actual dollars has increased. But we did this from the very, very beginning
when, like any newlywed couple, you’re kind of trying to figure out how do you manage all the
new expenses and unexpected expenses from family.
Okay, real quick—work and home. Like any other couple, we have experienced the butting of
heads, I guess you could say, or the tension that comes with how much time do you give to work
and how much time do you give home? I love my job. You probably should know that since I
work for you. I love my job. I’ve always loved my job, and I love being at home. But there is a
tension there. There is an ongoing tension there. And this really culminated for us when we were
starting Northpoint Community Church fifteen years ago. The situation was, we had two little
ones in diapers, just had a third child, we were starting the church. I felt like I needed to give
more and more time to home, because it was just difficult. At the same time, starting any kind of
organization, there were all these people I needed to meet with. The organization was very
fragile. I mean, there was very little money, and we were just trying to do all this stuff. And one
day I realized, this is not a time management problem for me. There really is not enough time.
Somebody is going to be disappointed. Somebody is going to feel cheated. It’s either going to be
my family or this new church that I thought God called me to start. At some point you wonder.
In a very kind of emotional afternoon, I went home and we kind of had a powwow. As part of
that, Sandra asked me a really—well, I asked Sandra a really important question because I just
didn’t know what to do.
SS: He was feeling frustrated with the whole thing. If you’ve ever had toddlers—I guess we had
three kids four and under at one point—that’s just a stressful, high-maintenance stage of life. So
the afternoons from about 4:00 o’clock to about bedtime are the crazy hours where everything
seems to happen at one time, and it’s frustrating. So when Andy came home that day, he said,
“We’re in a high-maintenance, stressful time, so let’s just talk about this and see if there’s
anything that we can do to get some relief.”
And he said, “In a perfect world, if everything was perfect, what time would you see me coming
home? Even if it may not be realistic, what time would you see me coming home?” And I said,
“Oh, this probably isn’t realistic, but in the perfect world everything really starts falling apart
about 4:30, so if you got home at 4:30 and engaged with the kids and just helped me until
bedtime, that would be incredible.”
And he did that. He adjusted his schedule, and all of those appointments and meetings and things that would’ve happened in the mid-to-late afternoon, he shifted them over to early morning
breakfast appointments, and it was incredible. I had the morning covered. That wasn’t a problem;
it was the afternoon. So he made some adjustments for that short season, and it was a short
season, made the adjustments to the schedule then. I look back at that time now and our kids are now—they’re 18, 16 and 14—and the richness of their relationship, of Andy’s relationship with
each of our kids is amazing. I really think it has so much to do with the fact that during those
early formative years, he was plugged in with them. He didn’t just come home and go to the
office and answer email and make phone calls. He came home and engaged. He was on the floor
with building blocks and all that kind of stuff.
AS: And this was very difficult for me, because even though I knew it was the right thing to do, I
left and left employees still working. It was terrible. In fact, people would call and they would
want to meet, and it was so important that I met with people and I’m “Mr. Happy.” Everybody
needs to come. It was very fragile. And people would say, well, look, could we meet about 5:30?
I can meet you at 5:30 a.m. I cannot meet you at 5:30 p.m. I would sometimes have three
breakfasts in a row. I would tell people, there’s not too early—4:00 o’clock. It was very
awkward, but I just decided.
And my point is this. My point is not that you should be home at 4:30 in the afternoon, because
you can’t do that. I realize that. My point is this: you have to have guardrails. When it comes to
work and home, you have to have limits that your conscience is so tied into that when you
violate one, you realize, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. And so for us, because we were leasing offices that
were a mile from our house, so this wasn’t like a big 285 deal like I know most people have a
commute in Atlanta. So don’t get hung up on, Well, Andy, I can’t do it the way you do it. That’s
not even the point. The point is, when you feel that tension, because there’s going to be that
tension, you have to establish guardrails, and you’ve got to decide who’s going to lose—your
family or your profession.
I know it seems like a long time ago, and I remember in my little book, Choosing to Cheat, I
chronicled this whole little story. I remember telling God after we had this conversation, she’s
kind of in tears and I’m in tears, and the kids are like, what’s wrong with Mommy and Daddy? They couldn’t even really talk that well back then. And I just remember telling God later, God—
and I’m not suggesting you do this—this was just, I didn’t know what else to do. I said, “God, I
can only give you 45 hours a week, it looks like. If you can build a church on 45 of my hours a
week, then we can do this. But it looks like at this stage of our life, that’s all. I can’t do 50, 55,
60-hour work weeks like I’m willing to do. It’s just impossible.” And I feel like God honored
that . . . honored it at home, honored it with the church. So the point is, you’ve got to have
guardrails.
Now, the other thing is, during this same stage of life, I saw Sandra establish some pretty
amazing time guardrails as well. Because we decided a few years later to home school, which
meant suddenly she has no time to herself.
SS: When the kids were really young, I kept thinking, Oh, I can’t wait for them to get in school,
because then I can have lunch with my friends. I had all these other things I wanted to be able to
do. And then we decided to home-school, and that was a decision that I was very excited about,
but I realized, you know what, that’s going to kind of impact that whole going to lunch with my
sister and all that kind of stuff. But I decided then there are just some categories of things that
I’m not going to be able to do for now, for this season. We home schooled for a number of years,
and then put them in school after that.
But during that time, Andy was doing a series in Nehemiah. Nehemiah was this Old Testament
character who was going back into Jerusalem to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. He had a
whole team of people helping him, but he was the leader. It was going to be a huge, huge task. At
the same time, there was a group of people who really, really, really did not want the wall to be
rebuilt, and so they had plans to try to derail the whole thing by distracting Nehemiah. They
would go to him and they would invite him to do things, and they would ask him to come down
and talk. There’s this one verse that jumped out really to Andy and me that just spoke to me
about that whole thing. It’s Nehemiah 6:3, and it said,
Nehemiah 6:3 (NAS)
3 I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.
So, here they are. They’re inviting him to do things, trying to distract him, and he just looks
down at them and he says,
Nehemiah 6:3 (NAS)
3 I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.
And that verse, I put it on index cards in my car, in my closet, and in my school room. I thought,
that’s exactly right. I need to be focused on this main thing that God’s calling me to do for right
now, and the other things are just going to have to wait. And so that verse was so helpful to me.
AS: People would call and she’d put the phone down and she would say, they want to know if I
can do such and such. And then she’d say, “I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down.”
She’d call them back and say, “I can’t go.” And so I just saw her just focus, focus, focus during
that season of life on what she felt God had called her to do, which meant we hurt some people’s
feelings.
There were wonderful things we just said no to. I’m sure there are people to this day that think
the Stanleys are the biggest snobs. Because they’d say, “Well, then what about the next week?”
And she would just say, you know what, I’m doing a great work and I cannot come down. It’s a
guardrail. You know what it does? Everybody listening to this message, you have had weeks of
your life, or months of your life that you liked every individual thing on the calendar, but you
hated the whole month because there was so much on it. You didn’t enjoy anything you were
doing because you got it so full of stuff. It’s because you had no guardrails in terms of time. So
this was a verse that God used to help us create margin.
Last thing, real quick: kids—children and guardrails. We, again, early on got some great advice.
We went through a course on video about raising kids (that we went through a couple of times,
actually, as our kids got older). The gentleman who led the lecture, who did the lecture, here’s
something he said: I wrote it down; that became a real guardrail for us as far as our family. He
said this, “Kids or children are a welcome addition, but you are already a family.” Kids are a
welcome addition, and he went on to talk about the importance of a marriage-centered family,
not a kids-centered family. Now this immediately struck a positive chord with us, because I’d
been in student ministry for a bunch of years, and I’d seen what happens when the children got in
charge and it wasn’t good. Then when the children left, Mom and Dad didn’t even know each
other. So early on, we established some pretty high and strong guardrails around our relationship,
in some sense, to the exclusion of the children, because we didn’t want the kids to be the center. I know that sounds terrible, but I’m telling you, it’s some of the best advice we ever got. Then one day, there was something that happened that really clued Sandra in as to how big a deal this was.
SS: This was a wake-up call for me, and I think I may have been pregnant with Andrew at the
time. I don’t’ remember. But Andy and I were leaving a parking lot and a car pulled up beside us
and the dad was in the front seat driving and the mom was sitting in the back with the baby seat.
And Andy looked over and I looked over kind of at the same time, and I didn’t think anything
about it, and he said, “Please don’t ever do that.” And I just thought, “Wow, I’m glad he said
that.”
That intuitively seems like the thing to do when you’ve got a little infant, a little helpless infant
in the back seat, and a husband who should be able to handle it on his own in the front. But it
was a wake up call for me because I thought, you know what, there are decisions that I will be
required to make or can make to really communicate to him that you are still my priority. I am in
love with you. I love these children, but you are my priority. That’s not a big deal thing. It’s just
a little thing, but it really helped me form the idea that I really want to make decisions that
communicate to him what in my heart is true. I just want him to know that by my actions as well.
AS: And so we talked a lot about that because again, it’s very emotional. It’s emotional, and
your kids are needy, and obviously kids require time. But in terms of not allowing them to be the
center, we started going on dates really quickly after we had our first kids. And the other thing
we did—every year we’ve been married—we have gone on some kind of trip, just the two of us,
even if it’s just a weekend somewhere. We’ve been down to Buckhead and spent the night, every
year, and then some more elaborate trips.
That just seems normal to us. But the reason I make a big deal out of it . . . many, many times in
the community when we’re out with our kids’ friends or doing sports with our kids and we’ll
mention to some families that Sandra and I are going off next week; we’re going to be gone a
few nights or whatever . . . how many times we’ve heard people in our stage of life with kids
from ten years old all the way through now . . . parents say, you know what, we have not had a
trip with just the two of us since we had kids. And we just look at each other like, I can’t imagine
if you went and subtracted all the benefits of those times together from our marriage, where our
marriage would be, honestly. It would be completely kids-centered, I think. And so, again, it was
just a guardrail.
Is it a sin if you don’t go on a trip? No, these aren’t sins. This is just, how do I protect, how do
we protect our marriage from getting to that point where we don’t know each other because
everything’s all about the kids? We have a lot of friends who do weekly date night. We think
that’s a great idea. We’ve never done that. We’ve never had like a set time. Part of it is, I don’t
like to go to movies, she doesn’t like to eat late, so what are we going to do? But we do other …
SS: We do. Early on, in our community group, we did—this was really after we first got married,
we did a book called The Five Love Languages, and I discovered then that Andy’s a quality time
person. What speaks love to him more than anything else is just quality time together. And I’m a
to do list kind of person. I want to get it done, check it off, get it done, and check it off. And so
this was an adjustment for me. So I think even during those early years, we would just find
things to do that would be quality time together. Now that we don’t need babysitters and stuff,
we just hop in the car and go drive around, get a Starbucks and just kind of download all of our
day and information and all that and catch up.
AS: You know what she used to do? This is so amazing. When she figured out I was quality
time, and I knew she was acts of service. This is the most capable woman on the planet. I mean,
the capacity is just unbelievable what she can do all at one time. That’s the thing. I mean, I have
to do one thing at a time and then take a break.
SS: Most women are that way.
AS: Most women are that way. Your brains are better connected, I’ve heard. So I’d be coming
home, and here she’s had this day with all these kids and everything’s going, and she’d call me
up and she’d say, “Don’t get out of the car. I’ve already gotten a babysitter. I’m just going to
come out and get in the car. Let’s go somewhere and just talk until they turn the lights off.” Oh,
my gosh. I’m like, Well, I want to do laundry; I want to come and clean out the dishwasher. It
was so powerful to me, but you know what it was? It was a way of playing into what she knew spoke love to me, which motivated me like crazy to do the things that spoke love to her. But it
was a way of prioritizing the marriage, not to the exclusion of our children. Our kids aren’t time
deprived, believe me. But in terms of keeping it central. And again, it was just a habit. And most
of these things we were taught as kids; most of these things we learned early. We are so very,
very, very blessed in that regard. But the point, and the big takeaway for all of you and for all of
us is you have to establish guardrails, because they direct and they protect. And if you don’t do
it, culture in every area will lead us up to the brink of disaster and then push us over.
We have concluded that the greatest gift we can give our children is a great marriage. I would die
over my belief in that principle. If we did almost nothing for our children but gave them a great
marriage, then that counts for more than anything else. But to do that, you have to have
guardrails.
