Pamela and Victor Warner’s lives are guided by the tenets they share with any troubled married couple who consult these two church marriage counsellors.
Married for 33 years, their formula for a successful marriage has been tried and tested, and amidst constant laughter, they talk freely about the highs and lows that have brought them to this point where they are secure about being well yoked.
You ask the reason for the long marriage and Victor hardly begins to speak, uttering the word “love”, before an effervescent Pamela joins in and almost like a rehearsed chorus they both say “love is the key”.
“We talk a lot, even when he is going to sleep,” says Pamela. Such conversation has over the years often moved the couple over the rough patches of their marriage.
“Every day is not a sunny day. It rains some days, it is sunny some days, so you mix the sun with the rain,” Victor interjected as Pamela reaffirmed, “love is the key, though”.
“Some days you don’t like the person, but you love them no matter what,” she added.
“In all the years we had the two children we went through some difficult times, but through it all we loved each other.”
There is evidence that love reigns in this home, where husband and wife exchanges are tender as their son Travis, a medical practitioner sitting in on the interview with his parents, echoes their ordered, gentle approach to things.
Pamela stands out as the matriarch of a household that clearly adores her.
And Victor is not shy to declare how much he loves his wife “first for who she is – a pleasant person and a wonderful homemaker and the best wife I could have hoped for.”
“Thank God for her,” he says with a hug.
“I love her because she puts me right when I am wrong; she says what’s on her mind and she takes care of me. I love her for who she is. I could not ask for a better mother for my kids.”
Pamela was turning 18, on her way to watch a football match, when the young man who had before indicated an interest in her, stopped to talk with her again. He had seen her before this, standing at a bus stop and offered her a lift, which she accepted, and a roti, which she declined.
Hers was a strict upbringing by a mother who did not “make any sport” and she was not about to accept such a favour from a man she did not know. They both laughed heartily when Pamela repeated her response on that occasion: “I said I do not know you so I could not take it.”
Pamela and Victor are born-again Christians; immersed in activities at their church Dunamis Outreach Ministry, located just a stone’s throw from their home. They raised Travis and their daughter Tanya, a pharmacy technologist who lives in Atlanta, by the same Christian principles that gave direction to their own lives.
“I put God first and always told them to be honest with themselves and just do the best they can do and be the best they can be and keep trying. But most of all I always instilled that God comes first,” Pamela said.
They were both working parents when their daughter was born but at the birth of son Travis, “Vic told me to stay home”. That sacrifice is not lost on Travis, who also lectures in medicine at the American College of Barbados.
With an arm around his mother, he said, “My mother is quite the mother. She is loving and caring. She is very thoughtful; she is a wonderful counsellor. She is always there to help someone. When you are feeling down, she is the person to go to pick you up.”
He is grateful for the Christian upbringing and remarked: “She has brought me up to be a person to fear the Lord and she has taught me valuable lessons about women and how to treat a woman. I did not really have an idea. I was lost about it.”
With marriage on the cards next year, there are lessons on which he is sure to draw.
Travis also appreciates his parents’ input into his education and the encouragement of a father who says a good education for his children was always on his front page.
“We always strived to do our best in providing the children with an education,” Victor said, and Pamela gave her husband due credit in this area.
“Vic worked with them. He instilled that school work is very important. He was the one working with them even away from school. We were involved in every aspect of our children’s school life from kindergarten up.”
Taking a page from her mother’s book on child-rearing, Pamela was “firm and strict with her children while “embracing them with love”.
“I would always tell them when they are wrong, but then I would tell them why they are wrong and let them know always that we love them.”
The word love is a constant in the Warner home, even today. “I brought them up telling them every day that we love them. Up to now I still tell my children every day that I love them. That is something cemented in me and I passed it on to them and they give it back to me and I am sure they will do it with their children.”
The family laughs just as much as they pray and Pamela hopes to inspire young mothers by example. She advises them to get their children into Sunday school and to “instil that there is a God and that they can do all things through Him who strengthens them”.
She also shares her life’s mantra: “Trust God, build your hope on Christ who is eternal and then all things will come into play.”