Our Anniversary (Transcript)

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Hi, this is Bob Barney for The Plain Truth today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com. This is going to be a personal type broadcast today, so many people may not be interested, just go on and do something else today at this time, or if you are interested, I’m going to give you a little story about today, December 17th, which happens to be our, Tammy and me, that is, for Tammy and I, anniversary, December 17th, 1981. Give you a little background, if you’re interested in the story, I think it’s a very good romantic story, personally. I first saw Tammy, I was 21 years old, and she was 15 years old.

She was working in the diner that I used to frequent from time to time. There was two diners in town, one Stanley’s, the other Windmill. She worked at the Windmill one night after the New Milford Fair days.My brother and I went in there in probably August or so, early August of 1976, and I saw her working, she was very cute, and that was the first time I ever remember seeing her, but over the years, we became closer and closer, became very good friends, and actually, I think she would have said even at the time, I was her very best friend, and I could tell you right now, she was my very best friend. I had feelings for Tammy long before she knew it or had feelings for me. We had many times together, but we always kept a distance as only a friend and not anything else, even though in my heart, I was madly in love with her.

Tammy was the girl that I’ve always dreamed that I wanted to be with. She was very pretty, very cute, and very sexy, actually, and she was well-known in our circle, in our town, because she was so pretty, and she stood out, and many people used to go to the Windmill to see and talk with Tammy, so not just me, and I understood that at the time, but like I said, we became very, very good friends, and I’ll give you a side note, just a hint of, she didn’t realize what I might have thought about her, but she used to be forced to type the menu when she was working, and if you’ve ever gone to a Greek diner, they have a daily menu that is probably 50 items long. It’s in the middle of their menu.It’s a paper that, you know, you put it in the middle, and when you open up the menu, it’s stuck there, and you can see the daily specials, and it would take her literally, she was not a very good typist, it would take her literally a couple hours to do that menu every morning while she’s not getting any tips. Well, I am a two-finger typer, but I’m a very fast two-finger typer, and I could kick out that menu probably less than 20 minutes, maybe 15, and so I volunteered to do the menus the day she had to do it, and of course, one thing leads to another, and all the other waitresses who I didn’t really care about would come to me and say, oh, you’re going to do the menu for me too, and I found myself at the windmill every morning at 7 30 having breakfast for free, but typing a menu for about a year of my life, and maybe a little longer, but that’s how we knew each other. We knew each other as great friends, we really are similar, similar I should say, to the Harry Met Sally story, in my opinion, where two friends, if you ever saw that movie, I think it’s a very funny romantic movie, directed by and produced by Rob Reiner, who was killed by his own family, but that’s another tragic story, but anyway, there are two people who meet, they never had any sexual encounters or anything like that, they became good friends, at first she didn’t like him, and then she got to like him as a friend, and it’s most of the movie, they’re just friends helping each other through their love affairs, or whatever else was going on in their life, and it’s a very nice movie, and at the end, they realize they love each other, and they get together.

Well, in my particular case, back in December of 1981, Tammy had come to Florida, and was helping me run a magic market store, I was in between jobs, and that’s what I did for a job in Hollandale, Florida, it was on US1, and it was a very rough place, I’ll just tell you right now, and I think we took it over in November, October, I think I started working there, but she started working there in November, the very first day that she was working there, that night with me, it was the days of the big quaaludes, when everybody was high on quaaludes, and people would come into the store very high on quaaludes, and they were over exaggerating every body movement, their legs would kick up like they were rock cat dancers, or whatever, and this one particular person, I guess it was about one o’clock in the morning, this one particular person came in very high on quaaludes, and he walked over to the ice cream, and it’s one of those, you know, reach over down into a an ice chest freezer, that you bend down, and you get your ice cream out of, he opened it up, and he bent over to get an ice cream out of it, and he fell into it, halfway his body, his head and shoulders fell into it, I was disgusted, and I went over, and I grabbed him, and dragged him through the front door, opened up the door, and threw him out into the parking lot, and he just casually stumbled all the way out into the middle of US 1, as a pickup truck was going by, probably at about 50 mile an hour, hit him square dead on, he traveled in the air about 150 feet up in the road, dead killed instantly, and that was Tammy’s first experience of really Florida, because she had just come from Connecticut, and of working in a convenience store in a very rough part of town, later, a week or two later, a motorcycle gang moved in next to our store, they were, they took over a motel, and they were criminal types, and they would come in, and just rob us blind in front of us, and then we had a hold up, and after that, I decided to arm ourselves to the teeth, and the girls had pistols, and I had pistols, and other weapons with me, which you’re not supposed to do, and of course, that got us eventually fired, but I was happy to leave that job, and I think Tammy was too, but during that time, I was very lonely, I knew that I liked her, and I was in love with her, but she didn’t know that, and I was very despondent one night, and we were talking, and I was feeling sorry for myself, and she came out, and said, well, other people love you, people love you, and I said, like who, and she goes, well, I’m in love with you, well, we were married a few days later, December 17th, 1981, and it was the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my life, so great, I decided I’ll do a show, a personal show, which I try not to do that often, although I’ve had a few emails from people, and it’s not just women, it’s men and women, both, and I like to hear the whole story, on two other shows I did about my personal conversion, and how I came to believe what I do, and also some other incidents I talk about, and people, a couple of people have emailed me, and said they really enjoy listening to my personal stories, and only because people need to understand, or so they say, that everybody feels like they do, and that even the person they’re listening to, and they might think has all the answers, by the way, I do not, that when they hear their personal woes, and their personal stories, it gives them hope that maybe they’re not as bad off as they think they are, and I will say, if that’s the case, I’ll do some of these stories, because I’ve been through everything. I have a friend of mine, one time, in business, who said he has been so low in business, and in life, personal life, that is, and he’s, this man is 84 years old, he said he would have to look up to see over top of the curb, that’s how low he had been, and I understand that feeling. There are many people out there who think they’re the only people that’s in love, and that is not loved back, or they’re the only people out there who God doesn’t understand, or they’re trying to be good, and they simply cannot be good.

I know this happens with a lot of homosexuals who do know what they’re doing is wrong, but they can’t end it, and I’ve always said that, like an alcoholic, the first road to recovery in any problem that you have, including your problem with your faith with God and everything else, is to admit you have that problem. When you admit you have that problem, you want to know what? The God, the God your Father, and the God your brother, Jesus Christ, they understand your frailty. Jesus Christ especially, who was tempted in every way like we were, not the Father, but Jesus Christ was God who became a man, and was tempted in every way that you and I are.He was tempted by pretty girls, he was tempted by money, he was tempted by everything, except because of his Holy Spirit unmeasured in him, he never sinned. That’s what the Bible says, and I believe that. So we see in our own lives, we’re not Jesus Christ.We sin, and we can’t stop it, and a lot of people, like I said, especially a lot of homosexuals that I know who is trying to end their ways, and they keep falling into, back into the bad lifestyle, and they condemn themselves that they cannot find peace with God, and they will never find salvation in eternal life, and that’s simply not true. And when you read some of the letters of Paul, which have been totally misunderstood, to understand that Paul is not saying the law was done away with, what Paul said is the penalty of the law has been done away with, with everyone who sincerely believes in God, Christ, and the Father, and desires to do their will. But Paul has many passages where he admits he’s a sinful man, and he cannot stop doing what is wrong when he knows he should be doing what is right.

And I don’t know what that was at the time, but many people just do not, does not understand that we all fall short of the glory of God. We cannot please God by what we do. We can only please God by how we feel, and how we love, because God will read our hearts, and read our minds, and understand where we’re coming from.I’ll be right back. Hi, Bob Barney for the Plain Truth Today, and theplaintruth.com, the one place to go to, to find out what is going on in today’s world, understanding what it means, and understanding the prophecies of the Bible to clarify what the news of today’s means. That’s theplaintruth.com. Go there every day.Thank you. Well, we’re back. It’s my anniversary, December 17th, 1981, and I just want to say that before I get back in what I was talking about, that we all do fall short of God’s glory, of what God expects for us, but we all have a God who loves us.We love our children, and we love our children when they do wrong. Do you think God is any lesser than us, that God can’t love greater than us, and that God can’t forgive everything that we ask him to forgive us for? God understands our weak character. God understands human frailty, and God is there, especially Jesus Christ as our defense attorney in heaven.

He’s there to defend us against the devil’s attacks, who’s trying to convince heaven and God the Father that we are just hopelessly sinful people that does not deserve any resurrection from the dead, and any eternal life, and become the literal children of God in spirit. And Jesus Christ, because he was a human being, goes through life in heaven, and defends us continuously day and night, and we have a justification by faith with God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord, and our sins are always forgivable, and we never have gone over the edge if we really care not to. If we don’t care what God thinks, and we’re going to live our own life, and God is not important in our life, well, I think you have a problem coming in the life to come.But if you’re a person who’s sincerely trying to do what is right, sincerely trying to follow God’s orders, and obey his laws, and his statues, and his regulations, and you always fall short, and you feel guilty about it, that guilt is good, my friends, is very good, because what you’re going to find out is that that guilt leads to a repentful heart, and God forgives you of those sins, even while you’re still in those sins, and your eternal life is not so far away as you think you are. So maybe when you listen to some of my stories, I don’t like to talk about it too often, and I’m a little shy about it, but when you listen to my stories, maybe other stories, that’s why I always wondered why does the Bible bring up all of these personal, dark, cornered stories about maybe Abraham, especially David, or some of the other heroes of the Bible, where we see David not only committed adultery, which is against the Big Ten, but he also found a way to kill her husband in battle, another one of the Big Ten, in order to have her, and for no one would find out that he did commit adultery. That’s pretty darn bad when you think about it, but David still was forgiven by God, and so was Bathsheba, obviously, and the two ended up producing the next king of Israel, which God had built his temple, and God loved dearly, so therefore we see, when we see the flaws of our heroes in the Bible, I mean, I’ll go into the New Testament.

I think most people put Peter up on a pedestal. The Catholics put him on too much of a pedestal, and they think he’s a pope, but he was never no such thing, but most people, including myself, look at Peter as one of the great disciples. I think if you were to think of the greatest two disciples of the Bible, of the New Testament, it would be Peter and John, and then, of course, Paul, but not one of the twelve, would be the third, and what we see with Peter was, on the time of the, I’m sorry, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the night of his trial, Peter, who just that same very night said he would never disown him, he would die with him, well, before the crow crowed three times, he twice, or I’m sorry, twice, he three times denied Jesus Christ, that he even knew him, or he was a part of him, or even cared about him, and so we see this strong fisherman, and if you know anything about fishermen, I used to sell paint, marine paint, to some fishermen in Stewart, Florida.If you know anything about fishermen, they’re not weaklings, they’re not wimps, they’re very masculine men, very tough men, and very brawling type men. Peter was not some wimp that became a Christian leader. He was a strong fisherman who probably was very familiar with brawls and like barroom fights of the day, but he became like a wimp for Christ, and he did so because we saw how he denied Christ three times, and then understood what a sinful act he did, a betrayal against his Lord and Savior, and Peter devoted his life, and it is tradition that he was crucified upside down by the Romans, that we see a person who totally changed their life by the Spirit of God, and by his own failures.

I think most people put Peter up on a pedestal. The Catholics put him on too much of a pedestal, and they think he’s a pope, but he was never no such thing, but most people, including myself, look at Peter as one of the great disciples. I think if you were to think of the greatest two disciples of the Bible, of the New Testament, it would be Peter and John, and then, of course, Paul, but not one of the twelve, would be the third, and what we see with Peter was, on the time of the, I’m sorry, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the night of his trial, Peter, who just that same very night said he would never disown him, he would die with him, well, before the crow crowed three times, he twice, or I’m sorry, twice, he three times denied Jesus Christ, that he even knew him, or he was a part of him, or even cared about him, and so we see this strong fisherman, and if you know anything about fishermen, I used to sell paint, marine paint, to some fishermen in Stewart, Florida.If you know anything about fishermen, they’re not weaklings, they’re not wimps, they’re very masculine men, very tough men, and very brawling type men. Peter was not some wimp that became a Christian leader. He was a strong fisherman who probably was very familiar with brawls and like barroom fights of the day, but he became like a wimp for Christ, and he did so because we saw how he denied Christ three times, and then understood what a sinful act he did, a betrayal against his Lord and Savior, and Peter devoted his life, and it is tradition that he was crucified upside down by the Romans, that we see a person who totally changed their life by the Spirit of God, and by his own failures.

His failures were not something that led to his defeat, his failures were something that led to his victory over death and over carnal nature. Well, so going back to our story, we were married in December 17, 1981, and the funny story is we married ourselves. We married ourselves on the Hollywood Beach.I had a customer who was a notary public, and in Florida, notary publics could marry people. Well, he didn’t marry us, but he filled out all the paperwork and notarized it, and then Tammy and I went to a very secluded place on Hollywood Beach, and we married ourselves, and that’s how we did it. 44 years later, we’re still in love, I think maybe more in love now than we were then, and I know she probably is more in love now than she was then, because she had a very hard time with me.She had a very hard time because we were poor. We were so poor, we moved from Hollywood, Florida to Stewart, Florida for a job working for a paint company, and I was running a paint store in Stewart, Florida with very little money, barely could make ends meet. We were by ourselves in Florida, no family, a child on the way.We lived in this little one-bedroom condo, adult-only condo, and so the minute our first daughter, Tammy Jr., really was born, we had an eviction notice that we had to leave within three weeks of her birth because it was an adults-only condominium, and in that condominium, we never had a legitimate piece of furniture except a bed that when the person came and delivered that bed, stole a very precious locket, a nefertari locket that her uncle had given her when he was working in Saudi Arabia, and it was stolen. There was nothing you could do about it, so the only one piece of jewelry she had was taken, and we had no money. We lived in poverty.

I used to take hose reels. You know, you see this reel, this wooden round wheel that you would wind a hose up on for air hose, and you would pull it off, cut the length you want, put ends on it. Well, I painted them black, and that became our kitchen table, and we sat on the floor a lot.I think we eventually got a couch, a used couch somehow in there, but we were very poor. We were very poor for a lot of our life, and Tammy went through a lot of problems living with me, and I’m not coming through for her as I really should have as the worker man of the family. We finally was very lucky.We became involved with the Esposito family, which owned a paint manufacturing company. That’s how I learned paint manufacturing, and I became a store manager for them, and then later on a rep for them. Later on, I ran their boat paint operation called Seahawk.It was the greatest, some of the greatest years of my life from 1986 to 1996. We lived in a very, very high-class area at Jupiter Farms in a house that we would never normally be able to afford, but was part of my working deal with the Espositos, Billy Esposito. It was his former house.

It had a beautiful fenced-in swimming pool, and it had two and a half acres of land. It was out next to Burt Reynolds Ranch, and we lived like kings on very little money because of the things that the Esposito family did for us, but Tammy went through a lot. Then finally, and I always tell this, I always tell the story, we started TAMCO in 1989, and we struggled along through the 1990s with TAMCO, and went full bore in 2002.I stopped working for other paint companies and did nothing but TAMCO, and we struggled for 15 years, all the way up until 2016. We were still struggling with TAMCO, not rich, and Donald Trump was elected president, and it was not like this time around. Donald Trump’s first time as president, I always call it Trump 1.0, everybody in this country felt great, especially those buying paint.Our paint sales doubled and tripled every year for five straight years, including the first year under Biden with the COVID, because everybody was buying online and we’re an online paint company. We did tremendously, and I always said we became millionaires, at least on paper, and we lived quite well off because of Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump’s trying the best to take all that money back if he can from us, with all his tariffs and other things going on with this bad economy that he denies occurs.I am so grateful for how we have finally, after years of struggle, found ourselves being able to go to Florida whenever we want to for our anniversary. We’ve done that now for 10 years, or nine years, I guess, and I just am very grateful. But most of all, I am grateful for the one prayer that I had many, many years ago, long before Tammy ever said she loved me, was a prayer that I gave or had with God back in the December time of 1978, three years before we ever were married, when I asked God to open her eyes and have that girl love me and fall in love with me and marry me, because I knew then she was the girl for me.

And I want another three years of that not happening. But God came through for my greatest prayer that I ever had concerning my welfare and my happiness in my life. And I’m living that dream today.Dreams come true, prayers come true, and if God comes true, if you seek him diligently. I always talk about the line in the Bible, which says, if you seek me diligently, you shall find me. And you have to seek diligently for God.God is not a Linus blanket that you can just pull out of the closet whenever you want to suck your thumb and hold on to your blanket. No, you have to live with God. You have to live for God.And every single day you have to think about God. God has to become the number one thing in your life. And if God is not the number one thing in your life, you got misery, and you’re never going to really find true happiness.

Tammy and I have found true happiness. I am not saying that we’re not going to go broke and poor the next day, because day by day, and it’s God’s will, all of the sales that we have could go away. A lot of it has gone away so far under Trump 2.0. But it all could go away, and we would still have each other, and we would still have our God and our faith, and we would be okay.And that’s the message I have to say. Our anniversary is a symbol, in my opinion, and I look at it that it’s a symbol of love that never dies, and doesn’t need money, doesn’t need things. It just needs God’s blessing, and God’s work, and God’s love, and our love for each other, and it works.And we have a great family. We have a great family business now, and God has come through for all of my prayers. Unfortunately, I’m 70 years old, and I wish I was 30 years old when it all happened.I would love to live this life over again with Tammy. I would love to have another 50 years going down the road ahead of me, but that’s not going to be the case. So now what we have to prepare for is the final chapter, and the final chapter is bad news, sad news, and then good news.And the bad news is everybody mostly gets sick when they get older. They get frail. They get sick.They catch something, or when something happens to them, and they die, and they watch their loved one die, or they themselves die, the two die together if they’re lucky, I guess, somehow. But the truth is all people’s life end in tragedy of one form or another. If you really love your life, and you care about your life, you know it’s going to end in tragedy.

But the good news is that Jesus Christ’s life ended and died as well, and three days later, Christ came alive again and is sitting in heaven on the right hand of God, and he is the person that is going to give you eternal life when he comes back. When you die, you’re not going to heaven like these churches try to tell you because they’re lying to you. You’re going to wait in a grave asleep, and that is the word.Read 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and Paul himself calls it a sleep. We all sleep in Christ until he returns, and at that last trump, right as he appears, when that last trumpet sounds in Revelation, when Christ is appearing to take back this earth, this King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the dead in Christ, those who have ever died, from Abraham and Noah all the way up through Adam and Eve, all the way up to the people that died just a day before, or according to Paul, even people who are still alive in Christ, who will instantly be transformed in a twinkling of an eye into a spiritual creature, into the literal sons of God and daughters of God, no longer facing pain and death. Eternity is forever ahead of you, and you will reign with Christ for a thousand years on this earth until everything is put under God’s feet, and then God the Father creates a new heaven and a new earth, and we live with him on this new earth, which will also be the new heaven, one place, and we will live with our Creator Father and with our Lord Jesus Christ, and we too will be gods, and I know that Tammy and I, I know people say Jesus said you’re like angels in heaven and you’re not married or given in marriage, but I do not believe personally, and this is not biblical, this is Bob Barney’s just logical thinking here, I do not believe personally that God has put two people together their whole life to live their entire human existence together almost, and in Tammy’s, in my case, over 80 percent of our life, her life especially, but even my life, 75 percent of my life has always been with her, so I don’t think God put you together to work together, to find salvation together, and to make a family together to reproduce the God kind in the human form.

I don’t believe all that happens, and when the resurrection happens, you do not have a special relationship. Remember one thing, whenever a man and a woman get together, it is the same symbolism as God the Father and Jesus Christ are together. Jesus said that the Father and he are one, they are one God.God is a uniplural, I’m sorry, a uniplural word from Elohim, meaning more than one making up one, and a church is a uniplural word. Many people make up one church, or one family, Barney family, for example. Tammy’s a Barney, I’m a Barney, my kids are Barneys, they may be married now, but it’s the Barney family.One family, many members, and that’s what the Godhead is all about, and when you get married, it says in the Bible, you two become one. It’s a reason why you’re not supposed to commit adultery, it’s a reason why you’re not supposed to visit prostitutes or have affairs on your husband, is because then you are married to that whore, or married to that person you don’t want to really be married to, because God has put you together with your husband, and you should not commit adultery, and that’s the reason for it. And so if you stay true to your loved ones and you live your whole life together, I do believe there’s going to be a special relationship of married people in the world to come, married Christians.They’re going to be God’s, and children of God’s, or children of the Father God, and of Christ, and they will have, in my opinion, they will still be like one. They will be a spiritual couple throughout all of existence, and I believe that with Tammy and I, and I believe that with anybody in our position. It could be you, it could be your loved ones, it could be your father and mother that set the example.

Well, I’m out of time for today, and that was it. I just want to say once again, I’m very blessed and grateful to have Tammy Barney, Tammy Holler Barney, as my wife, and it’s the greatest gift God gave me other than my eternal promise of life to come. Until tomorrow, Bob Barney for The Plain Truth, today brought to you by ThePlainTruth.com saying thank you for listening, and we’ll be back again. Bye-bye.