Learning By Example

CORE PRACTICE #89: Model what a healthy marital relationship looks like to other young couples.

Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity. —1 Timothy 4:12

Lauren

Teammates Donnie Shell and John Stallworth had a great impact on Tony when he was a rookie with the Steelers. Specifically, they helped him understand that God, not football, needed to be first in his life.

It’s no surprise, then, that once we were married, Tony and I looked to Donnie and his wife, Paulette, and John and his wife, Flo, as role models for marriage. Ironically, by that point Tony was one of their coaches even though they were slightly older than him. Yet they were always gracious, and we all became fast friends. Looking back, they weren’t that much older than we were. However, despite their relative youth, they were willing to step up and model what a strong marriage looks like.

In Kansas City, another couple, Leo and Yvette Morton, were instrumental in showing us how we could build up other young families by being welcoming. They were active in the community, but they also opened their home to their neighbors, which became a place where we all went to play games, watch movies, and eat meals.

All three couples taught us that no matter what your age or how long you’ve been married, you can live with a winsome, warm attitude that encourages other couples to look to you for help in building a strong marriage. That’s why, over time, Tony and I also made it a point to invite other young families to our home to socialize.

In fact, when we arrived in Tampa, one of our goals was to intentionally and specifically model a healthy marriage for coaches, their wives, and especially players, both married and single. We let our players and coaches know we were there if they needed to talk. We thought it a privilege to be able to pray with them or to simply sit and talk with them.

That’s why, when the Glazers invited me to attend road trips on the team plane, I jumped at the opportunity. While on the road, Tony and I held hands, talked, went for walks, and generally did our best to openly model a healthy, functioning marriage and family for the players. At the Glazers’ invitation, we also began bringing our children on road trips during our second year with the team.

Even now that Tony has retired from coaching and taken up broadcasting, we look for opportunities to model a healthy marriage. In fact, that was really the point of writing Uncommon Marriage. We felt readers might not only enjoy learning our story, but they might learn something from both the good choices and the mistakes we’ve made over the years.

Though Tony and I wouldn’t have felt qualified to write a marriage manual early on, inexperience has never prevented us from trying to teach by example. If we had waited until we had it all figured out, we’d never have gotten started. As Paul told Timothy in today’s verse, just because you’re young doesn’t mean you don’t have something worthwhile to share.

Adventure Application: Even though you probably don’t feel that you have marriage all figured out, try to identify an area where you and your spouse might be a role model for another couple.