This may be our book, but our story is just a small part of it. This book is really a vessel for others to share their stories, and show you what’s truly possible in marriage, in business…and in life.
But before you hear their stories, we do want to briefly share ours, just to give you a sense of who we are and what led to this book, because we think if you know that before you hear from the couples we interviewed, you’ll get more out of those conversations. We hope you’ll get as much out of them as we did.
SUZANNE’S STORY
I grew up in Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, near Charlotte. It’s a very small town, just two stoplights, but it was a great place to grow up, especially for a close family like mine. We lived across the street from my grandparents, and next door to my great-grandparents until they passed. I was in a high school graduating class of 132 kids.
I loved it there, but when I left for college, I never went back. I graduated from North Carolina State with a degree in psychology and worked in that field for a bit, but when Chris and I got married and moved back to his hometown, there were no jobs for me. I had always been into wellness and health and physical fitness, so I shifted gears. I have a master’s degree in applied nutrition and I’m working on my PhD in Naturopathy, so one day we’ll be Mister and Doctor Vester.
CHRIS’ STORY
She’s better looking and smarter than me. I grew up in Nashville, North Carolina, a slightly bigger small town. We had three stoplights. But my high school was much larger than hers. I had a graduating class of 365. Just like Suzanne, my family was close. My grandparents were our next-door neighbors.
It was a very rural area, and my dad was a farmer until I was eleven, but then he made a big change to white collar work, doing insurance sales. I also went to NC State, which is where we met, and graduated with a business degree.
By then my dad had gone from the insurance business to the car business and I was working for him. I worked my way up from washing cars when I was 17 to eventually running the company with him.
THE ROLE OF FAITH
Faith has always been important in our lives. Chris jokes that he was born on Super Bowl Sunday, 1972, and he was in church with his parents the next Sunday. It was always part of Suzanne’s life as well. But it has become more of a pillar over time.
In fact, we’ve often said it’s the reason we’re still married. Life does not always treat you kindly, and you have to have something far bigger than yourself to unload all the things that get thrown at you. Faith has become that very critical, very intentional, very strategic aspect of our lives.
Many of our struggles have their roots in a bad decision we made in 2000. We bought a business, and it turned out we had been sold a bill of goods. Chris bought it from a friend, and he was misled. Within days, Suzanne realized we were in trouble. That deal caused us a tremendous amount of financial strain, which led to disagreements and bitterness and resentment. The ripple effect grew. But we survived, with help from faith-based counseling that drastically shifted how we saw our marriage and saw life in general. It gave us a biblical view of how to overcome things, and while it wasn’t the end of the struggles, it led us to a way to overcome them. Whenever we have struggles of any kind we can think back to those sessions and think about what we learned.
We were also tested by a health crisis. Just before our second anniversary, Chris was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Imagine being a newlywed couple, thinking about having a family, and being told, “No, you can’t do that now. You may never be able to do that.” But neither of us ever felt Chris wasn’t going to be okay. We just knew our story wasn’t done yet.
Obviously, he survived, and eventually we did have that family. We have three daughters. In fact, we learned we were pregnant with the oldest two years to the day after we received that cancer diagnosis. Chris likes to say that was God’s way of saying, “See, I told you. I’ve got you.”
Last year we celebrated our 25th anniversary. We’ve had to work at our marriage, but it’s been well worth it.
BUSINESS SUCCESS VS. A SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE
Both of us have had successful careers, but one of us had to spend many, many hours at work, which has put a tremendous burden on the other. We think you can guess which one is which.
Owning an auto dealership means you have a tremendous demand on your time. Owning more than one just compounds that. Chris isn’t at work 24/7, but there are times it seems that way. He often tells people that Suzanne is the only woman he knows who’s been married 26 years but is a single parent.
Having this type of successful business creates challenges when it comes to having a successful marriage. It has not been a 50-50 partnership on the home front. Yes, Suzanne has always had a more flexible schedule and could more easily attend to things, and no, that has not led to any major fights between us, but it has definitely caused friction. Even though Chris has put in longer hours, Suzanne has worked full-time, and having the duties of house and kids on her shoulders after a full day of work isn’t fair. If you ask our daughters, they would probably tell you, “Mom was here by herself an awful lot of the time.”
It hasn’t been easy for Chris either. He’s worked a lot of nights and weekends, and missed out on a lot. But as his business has grown, so has his responsibility. They now have 200 employees, which means there are 200 other families depending on him. There’s a sense of duty. You want to always do the right thing, and often that means just being there.
For Chris, home has always been the safe spot. When things are stressful at work, the last thing he would want is a stressful environment at home. On the other hand, we do have three daughters, and that can mean conflicts.
Sometimes he’ll come home from work and the conversation goes like this:
Chris: “Why is everybody yelling?” Suzanne: “You haven’t been here all day.” Chris: “Got it.”
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
There’s a very high divorce rate in the automotive space, largely because of the hours involved. Many people never learn the very important lesson of how to have that work-life balance, no matter how many hours one spouse works.
Over the years, many people have asked Suzanne, “Gosh, how can you stand him working all those hours?” It was very difficult early on. But Suzanne was able to focus on her career and hobbies, and of course, having three kids takes up a lot of your time. She also learned something many couples don’t learn, which is the importance of understanding the reason your spouse is doing what they do. It’s not because they don’t want to be with you or the kids, they have that sense of duty we just referenced. Hopefully it won’t last forever, but know that you can make the best of it while it does last.
Even when Chris worked Monday through Saturday, opening to closing, we still had Sundays. We still went out to dinner. We still took vacations. Yes, it took some planning, but you have to create the intentionality around that. If you don’t put the effort in to make it happen, it’s not going to happen, and when it doesn’t happen, that’s when you start feeling that void, that feeling of being disconnected from each other.
This is actually something Suzanne coaches people on. You can’t always look at this like a balance of scales. Instead, look at whether there’s harmony. Think of the solar system. There are times the earth is closer to the sun and times it’s further away, but no matter where we are, nothing is going to fall off the planet because we’re always in harmony.
The sooner you can figure out that it’s about harmony, not balance, the sooner you can live a more integrated life. We have really integrated our faith into our lives. In a way it’s become the sun of our solar system.
THE 4TH “F”
As you know, the title of this book is Family. Faith. Fulfillment., all of which are very important to us. But there’s a 4th F that’s also important. Fitness. That’s something else we have in common. In fact, we’ve both competed in the body- building world, and we’ve both had some success there. After she stopped competing, Suzanne became a judge in competitions.
We were both very active in high school sports. Chris played football and Suzanne played tennis. By the time we met in college, Chris had gotten away from fitness. Yes, school and work kept him busy, but that’s really an excuse, not a reason. Suzanne never stopped being active. She worked part-time in college as an aerobics instructor. Soon after we met, we began working out together, and we still do that today. As we strengthen our bodies, we’re strengthening our bond as a couple.
Chris needed to learn a very important lesson about fitness. When you take care of the physical you, the mental you will perform better. You show up better for everybody around you. Staying fit is really an obligation, especially if you’re a spouse or a parent or a business owner. Everybody around you depends on you being healthy.
You have to steward your body because everything comes from that. If you're not able to walk up a set of stairs, that limits your ability to live life fully. It certainly inhibits your ability to serve people and serve them well, and far too often that's what people use as a crutch or an excuse. There’s nothing wrong with having something wrong with your body. But what is wrong is if that becomes who you are and how you identify.
WHY THIS BOOK?
We both read a lot of books. Books about marriage and parenting and relationships. Books about business. Books that are educational and inspirational. Not to mention lots of books people have written about themselves; their challenges, their successes, the lessons they share with others.
We never said, “Gee, maybe we should write a book.” We never thought sharing our story would help others.
But we’ve always wanted to help others, and learn from them. Over the years, we’ve talked to many different couples in many different settings. While everyone’s situation is different, there is one constant. Everybody has a struggle. The important thing is how you adapt and advance from that. Think about how many times you’ve been told, “You think you have problems? If you knew everybody else’s problems, you wouldn’t trade yours for theirs.”
Then it hit us. We could help people see how others have gotten through their struggles by hearing their stories. That’s when we decided to begin interviewing couples who have succeeded in marriage, in business, and in life. That’s what led to our podcast, and ultimately to this book.
In a way, learning how others have overcome their struggles has been a validation for us. Like us, many other couples have leaned on their faith to get through their struggles. There have been many times during these interviews one of us has said, “Wow, they could be talking about us. Isn’t it great to know there are others out there with our beliefs and our mindset?” We hope listeners of the podcast and readers of this book get as much out of these interviews as we did.
So, who should read this book? Just about everybody. That is, if you have or want to have a good marriage. Which means, even though we’ve talked a lot about couples, you don’t have to be married, or engaged, or even just seeing someone to benefit from this book. Single people can get a lot from these interviews too. Because one of the best ways to have a successful marriage is to be the type of person you want to be for your spouse, and the best way to do that is to work on being that type of person long before you get married. Even before you meet whoever you’re going to spend the rest of your life with.
If you’re already married, it doesn’t matter where you are in married life. There’s a lot in here for newlyweds, because let’s face it, it’s easy and fun for the first couple years. There’s a reason it’s called the honeymoon phase. But when it starts to get hard, there’s work to do. If you hear how others have gotten through the hard stage, you’ll be ready for what comes your way. If you’ve been married a while and are struggling, you’ll realize there are others out there just like you, and you’ll learn how to get through this. If your marriage is great and rock solid, you’ll get some insights on keeping it that way.
Faith will be a big part of this book, just as it’s a big part of our lives. If faith already plays a big role in your life, this will help reinforce why that’s important. If it doesn’t, we hope it will help you find that pillar, and see how your faith can have such an impact on your life.
Simply put, this is not just a book about marriage. It’s a book about life.
If you should happen to come up to one of us down the road and say, “Hey, I read your book six months ago,” we hope you finish that sentence this way: “….and we’ve had the best conversations since then.”
So, let’s get started on our conversations.