Coming Clean

Early in his marriage, Corey Carlson had been unfaithful. He'd been able to successfully hide that from his wife.

But God started working on him, and he knew he had to come clean. I remember driving home that night with, all right, I'm going to say it. I'm ready for the consequences, whatever they may be. And so I'm driving home with this thought of, no, no, like these last minute bargaining, like this is between you and I, God. I'm not going to, you know, I won't make any more mistakes. I'm all committed to you. This is a deal.

And I just couldn't get over that hump that I had to come clean. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. It's true that our sins have consequences. It's also true that God can bring beauty from ashes. Corey Carlson joins us today to share a story of God's redemptive work in his life and his marriage. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. If we went back 35 years— That's a long time, Bob. 35. If we ask you about work-life balance back 35 years ago— You know what I'm going to say. I do know what you're going to say.

Ask her. Yeah. How was his work-life balance back 35 years ago? It might have been better then than now. I think it was better, actually.

I think 35 years ago wasn't bad, but 30 years ago it was really bad. So it didn't start off with Dave being, I'm all paying attention to work and ignoring home. That kind of grew over time?

Right. It grew as the number of jobs he held grew. She always says I have five jobs. Yeah, because he was the chaplain. He started out as the chaplain for the Detroit Lions, and then we started a church, and then he was coaching football. And what else did you do?

Oh, playing in a couple bands. So you're like— I had hair back then. I could flip it around and sort of fun. Were you aware of the fact that things were out of balance? No. I wish I could say I had self-awareness. I was not aware until my wife said, what are you doing? But you didn't agree with me. Then I would have said I am not a workaholic.

I'm balanced. I was just in denial. I was out of control. How many times did you say, I need help before he heard you? Too many to count. Really?

Yeah. I don't think Dave heard me. I think he thought I was just a needy wife and a needy family, but he was conquering the world, which that's one of the reasons I married him, because I thought, we're going to change the world together for Jesus. Can we stop talking about me?

Can we move on? How many guys in the business world today do you think are where you were, life out of balance? As a pastor, you're talking to guys all the time. Yeah, and I would say maybe I'm too high here. The number that comes to my mind is 80 percent. Really?

Eight out of ten. And again, I'm basing that on guys that walk up in the auditorium, guys I talk to during the week, guys in small groups. You just look at them, and they're just going, going, going. They're getting up at five. They're coming home at eight or nine. Yeah. I mean, in the NFL? Oh, my goodness. Right. The coaches are never home, and that's accepted.

That's just the way it is, and I think that's true in the business world as well. I got a letter one time from a wife. She went to our church, and she said, I feel like I've been totally deceived and duped.

She said, I started marrying my husband. I loved him. He's an achiever. He's a sharp guy, but man, he went after me, and he did everything he could to get me. He was romantic. He spent time with me. He got to know me. He opened his life to me, and she said, we've been married a year, and I feel like he was on the hunt. He saw me. He shot me. He begged me. He put me on the mantle, and now he's off for another hunt.

Bought that company, and now I'm on to the next company, right? Yeah. Well, we've got a guest joining us today. Corey Carlson joins us. What a great way to introduce Corey.

This week. You can relate to what Dave's talking about, can't you? Absolutely. This was a part of your life.

Corey today is doing executive coaching and working with guys in business and in ministry who are struggling with work-life balance. Part of the reason you're doing this is because you went through your own struggle. In fact, your struggle led you outside of your marriage for a while. Unfortunately, it did. Yeah.

Absolutely. By the way, Corey's written a book called Win at Home First, which is all about work-life balance, and this is a part of what you talk to people in the business world and in the ministry world about today. Were you aware that your life was out of balance when it was?

No, I was not aware of it being out of balance. And what I also found, I wasn't aware that I was going to places to find my worth, to find my value, to find my identity. And I was pursuing a variety of different things, not knowing that that's what I was looking for.

I was longing for, you know, it's that idea that only God can fill the void in our heart. But, you know, in my 20s, it was a pursuit of climbing that corporate ladder, and on great days, I felt like I was the man. You know, things were going well, I was getting a promotion. And then on those other days, you know, maybe I'd be thinking about, you know, my marriage or it's like, well, that's, you know, maybe not exactly how it wants to be or we're arguing a little bit. And then I started to think, well, maybe my marriage isn't great. And so there's kind of these different things where I kept taking my questions of who I was to temporary things and eventually end up catching up to me in a couple of different ways. You know, from a marriage standpoint, I would basically take my questions to her, am I a good enough man?

And in the process, we'd have some different tensions. And, you know, you mentioned earlier about the hunt that the man had. One thing I work with executives on and talk about is, are you pursuing your wife? Are you actually going on dates? It's like one of the first things, it's like the low hanging fruit when I get a client is, when was the last time you went on a date?

It's like, hold up, if you don't know the last time you went on a date, we have to start there. So I've got some really fun stories with friends and clients that where we start there and we start seeing progress. But in my situation, and we were spending time together, like we were going on double dates, you know, it's a double income, no kids is how it was in our 20s. And so we just were going out a lot, hosting parties, going to parties, going on dinner, you know, dinner dates with other couples, just spending time together, but never together. And what ended up happening was, at that same time, very busy pursuing my career, working all the time, traveling, I started to see that I didn't have any guise of deep friendships.

I had a lot of surface level friends that I could, you know, go watch a game with or go have a beer with or whatever it may be. But I wasn't talking about the depths of my marriage or the depths of the struggles I was having. So when Holly and I would get in an argument, I thought, I'm the only guy having this argument. I'd go talk to, you know, my buddies, and it sounds like life is amazing.

And here I'm thinking, what's our problem? So I ended up taking my questions to another woman who thought, hey, she's laughing at my jokes. She thinks I'm funny, she, you know, and so it became obviously a very slippery slope. It ended up unfortunately and regrettably had an affair. But it was a secret. It was a secret, yeah. And your wife had no idea. Wife had no idea. And I grew up in an awesome home. And I think when I look back at my home, I think maybe that was part of the reason that I ended up having an affair. Not that my parents are to blame at all.

That's not it. But I never, ever saw them argue. I just didn't. And when my mom died when I was 15 from cancer, and I don't know if they never fought because my dad just had an enormous amount of grace. And so it just rolled off. I don't know if they did it behind doors.

I just didn't know. And so when we'd start to have our arguments of work-life balance or whatever it may be, I started to think, wait, wait, this isn't on me. This must be on my wife because my parents had it all figured out and they were battling with cancer. And then my buddies weren't ever talking about their marriages being a challenge. So here I am thinking I'm on this own island of having marital issues. So I ended up having this affair, did not get caught.

I get promoted and transferred to Denver. I moved to Denver, and we are not really going to church frequently. Because every time my wife would ask us to go to church, it's like, I mean, I grew up in a church.

I don't want to sit in a church and hear about character when I've got a skeleton in my closet. So is that something you were carrying? Oh, absolutely carrying. Absolutely carrying. And I was carrying it so much, and I see this, not that affair is always the issue, but I see this in so many other people, where we know we are losing somewhere, we go wherever we can to get our wins. So if marriage is not working well, your parenting is not working well, or whatever, it's like, I'm going to work.

I'm going to get it there. You know, it's really amazing. The same thing happens in ministry.

It's a minister who does the same thing, right? That's one of the reasons I was so busy. It wasn't because our home life was that bad, I don't think, was it?

But it was the same thing. It was like I'm trying to find my identity in numbers of people, or somebody saying your sermon was good, or whatever. It's really very similar to what you went through.

You're moving up in the business world, and yet there's this secret. How did you deal with that? My wife said, hey, we need to start going to church. And I could only run from that question so many times, because she knew I was supposed to be a man of faith, grew up in a Christian home.

It was probably one of the reasons she married me. And so we started going to this church in Denver, the pastor's name Jay Pathick, and I started to meet people in the leadership team, and they were pursuing Jesus, but yet weren't perfect. And it seemed like anyone I was exposed to had this veneer of just the perfect life if they were a Christian, and I knew that that wasn't my case. So when I get to Denver and I start spending time with these church leaders, they were very obvious about pursuing Jesus, but they were also very vulnerable and honest about their own brokenness. And in that, in having conversations and hearing about the struggles they were having, whatever it may have been—marriage, porn, finances—God started working my heart about this situation. And it was interesting, as I was kind of in these conversations, I never really thought I was going to come clean of my affair.

I think God was just softening my heart. You thought it would always be a dark secret? Dark secret.

Nobody would ever know. Yeah. Dark secret, no one would know, did not talk to the woman, was not connected via social media. So it was totally over. So it was totally over. Yeah, it was over. And your wife never sensed anything?

No. I don't think she sensed things because she didn't think that was the result of me not being present at home. It was my commitment to job. It was my commitment to other things. And so it wasn't necessarily another woman.

There was isolation in your marriage, but she didn't see somebody else as the reason for that. Right, right, right. So you've got this secret that's hidden away, and nobody's ever going to find out. I mean, it's kind of like a lot of guys will look at that and go, okay, I got a pass here. Yeah. Well, I think I've talked to a lot of people that have been in that situation that say, this is what I did. It's on me.

I don't want to give this to my spouse because why should I make them suffer? It's over. And so was that part of your thinking too?

Why will I hurt her? This will just disrupt everything? Absolutely. It was also, wait, God, things are going great in my life. I just got promoted. I'm making the most money I've ever made. Things are going well with the team.

The integration into this new team is fantastic. I'm in a city I love because I have family there. And things are going great.

Why would I mess this all up? You know, almost like with this argument with God of, hey, you're giving me signs. Things are good.

So let's just keep moving this along. So what brought this to the surface, and what forced you to say, I've got to come clean with this? I was invited to participate in a volunteer leadership program at this church. And so as I'm in this night, Jay's doing a talk on character. And as he's talking about character, all of a sudden, I had a God moment.

I had an encounter where out of nowhere, I kind of heard, I don't know if it was audible or just what I just heard in my own self, but you have to come clean of your affair. And I was like, what? I mean, it was that clear? It was that clear. Yeah.

Like, who said that? Like, what's going on? And for really the rest of that evening, maybe it was an hour and a half or so, I really have no idea what Jay was saying. It was, and I don't know what I look like.

I may have looked like a zombie sitting in there. But I just kept having this wrestling match with God of, no, I don't have to come clean of my affair. I've been promoted. I've, you know, things are going great.

We're starting to get along and all this different stuff. And then later in that evening, sitting in that chair, I started to have a peace. And a phrase I heard, and I really didn't know much about it then, and I've learned more since then, is you need to hand over your story for a greater story. And I really didn't know what that meant at that time, but I started to think about it. And I remember driving home that night with, all right, I'm going to say it, and I'm ready for the consequences, whatever they may be. And did you have kids at that time? Yes. I have three kids now.

We had two at the time. And so I'm driving home with this thought of, no, no, like these last minute bargaining, like this is between you and I, God. I'm not going to, you know, I won't make any more mistakes. I'm all committed to you.

This is a deal. And I just couldn't get over that hump that I had to come clean. So I came home that night, and my wife was asleep. I was like, perfect. Thanks, God. Another sign from God. It's a sign.

Like, this is awesome. If he wanted me to tell her, she'd be awake, sitting on the couch, ready to talk. With a sign, talk to me.

Yeah, talk to me. And so I, you know, I went to bed. The next day got up and kind of went to my normal kind of motions. And over the years when I was hiding this, if the heaviness came, I'd go for a run. Or if it was at night, I'd have a drink. Or I would work harder and send out a bunch of emails. I mean, unfortunately it's amazing how the devil can work and quickly pull you away from that sin.

And I mean, obviously the devil loves nothing more than a kept secret, right? So later that day, I'm going to tell her tonight. So when we got home, I put the girls to bed and then came down and told her it was not cupcakes and balloons. It was awful. I mean, rightfully so.

Doors slammed and yelling. But from that moment, we began a journey of figuring this out. And so we both grew in our faith at that moment. Fast forward, this summer we celebrated 20 years.

So it's been amazing. I don't think she thinks about it. I mean, I'm sure there's moments she'll think about it. Especially, you know, interesting part about this book, it's part of the intro. I hired a writing coach for this book. And my intro was not about coming clean on my affair. My intro is a neat client story, a super fun client story. I had that and then I go into the book saying, you know, we're all broken. You know, kind of I had a fair comma, you know, this may have a new comma. My writing coach said, no, if you want anyone to read this book, you need to come tell a story.

I was like, oh, no, like this has been kind of fun to talk with a couple of men here and there and kind of. So I ended up writing the introduction and then shared it with Holly to say, here's the advice I got from Chad, the writing coach. And here you go. Do you want to read it?

And are you good with it? She read it and she was good with it. She did say, you need to fix the ending of it. You make it sound like I said, OK, that's great. You had a fair.

Let's keep going. And so I had to expand on that a little bit more, but she was good, ready to know. And she also in that whole process, when I probably when I first told her, it was a very kind of feel like you're the only ones that experiences. And then from Denver to when this book has came out, she has been a part of as well as heard my stories.

Once you start sharing this vulnerability, it's amazing how it's helped others. And that's the greater story. So back to that night when I felt God say, you need to hand over your story for a greater story. The greater story is through that vulnerability, sharing my brokenness, sharing the restoration that Jesus had in my life and our marriage.

It's just been neat to see. I think that's the reason she was willing to put herself out there as well. Well, go back to a little bit about, OK, Slammedoor is yelling. I've been there with Ann in terms of sharing a struggle about porn 30 years, 40 years ago. And so I know that moment and it didn't change the next day. She was like, OK, now I'm all good. I slept on it. And no, there was a process. What did that look like for you guys? How did your marriage get restored? How did forgiveness happen? The advantage I had and I don't want to make this sound like the way to do it is she had seen a change in my behavior along the way.

So I had at least in full transparency, I had that in my favor. She had seen I was making some different choices I didn't used to. But there's still things to this day that I do that are showing building trust, like whether we are texting neighborhood women about coordinating a playdate.

I copy Holly. I don't want to get in a position. I don't want her to think anything. And so it could be communication like that, that I'm doing different things to show my trust. There were times early on with traveling, I would not always answer the phone when she called or if I was at the bar with work guys.

Even, I mean, all innocent, just at work guys. I wouldn't answer the phone. Just kind of like, I'll talk to her tomorrow. She knows I'm at work. It's like, forget that. If she calls now, I always answer.

Even from a client meeting or a prospect meeting. It's like, I got to take this real quick. And it's just answer the phone. Is everything okay? Great. I need to let you go.

I'll call you in an hour. And you're just starting to show those signs. Now, I'm not perfect, right?

I mean, there's still selfish things I can do. But you really built back that trust. You opened up your life freely to say, I want you to know all of me. And that's a big deal.

It is. To put some boundaries, some hedges in place to say, okay, I'm going to demonstrate my trustworthiness and not just presume that I've earned it because I confessed. I think a lot of guys will confess and think you should trust me now because I confessed. Oh, and I've heard that. You've heard it too, Bob.

Even at the Weekend Remember, couples will come up and say, you know, a lot of times guys will come up to me and say, I had an affair. I told her. It's been years. She's still, you know, it's like the Bible says she should forgive me and she's still not forgiving me.

And she should trust me. And, you know, I always use this as an example is you lose trust in a second. You rebuild it over years.

You destroy a Lego thing in one hit and it'd take you a week to rebuild that complicated thing. And so you're doing that. You're rebuilding trust. I've also had wives that have asked me, my husband has a couple phones and he has passwords on them and I'm not allowed to know the passwords. And they always say, what do you think of that? And for Dave and I, we know everything. We know each other's passwords.

What are you laughing about? We had a flare with the Detroit Lions years ago. He came to Christ, one of our quarterbacks, and, you know, he was a guy who was a player. He had girlfriend, single guy, just, you know, and so he's probably three or four months new in Christ. He's driving with a wide receiver.

Actually, the receiver is driving. Dan is sitting in the seat beside him and he pulls out two phones and Mike goes, Dan, what are you doing? He goes, oh, this is my, this is a phone I used to have before I came to Christian. I have all my girlfriends in here.

I just sort of keep that around. He goes, what do you mean you have girlfriends? Well, you know, it's my old life, but they're still in here, so I keep this phone.

This is my new phone. And Mike goes, let me see it. He looks at his phone, he rolls out the window, throws it out the window.

That is awesome. Dan's like, what are you doing? He goes, dude, that life's done. It's over. And Dan tells that story now. It's like, that was a defining moment because when that phone went out the window, he's like, what are you doing? He realized I have to move on. It has to be a new life.

That's awesome. It's building trust. It has to be a new wine skin, old wine skin.

Like I'll have clients and individuals where, you know, you're sharing content with them. Oh, it's this new wine skin, but then they're trying to shove it in their old behaviors or old rhythms or old patterns. And you see that a lot. And I mean, I think if I had some secret behaviors, Holly would go, you talk about breaking those Legos.

I think I could break those Legos real fast because of the history. She'd see things, but my phone is always face up. I don't take my phone to my room.

So it's charged in the kitchen counter and it's face up. And so any text can come from anybody, anything. And so just a full transparency. Let me ask you this. When you told her, was there a sense of freedom? Did you feel a relief like, oh, it's finally out. We can move on. Yes. There was a significant one we can move on.

And what's interesting is she made numerous comments in her frustration. Oh, it's great. Your burden's gone, but now it's all on me.

I'm carrying it. Then I had this heaviness of it. And so that was a whole struggle. And even in some of my quiet time, like, all right, now God, now I'm really confused. The thing I didn't want to do, I ended up doing is I ended up putting all my burden, all my stress, all my brokenness on her for her to carry around.

That didn't seem right. And so there was a tension there, but there was an absolute of freedom. Other stories in my own personal journey or in our marriage that as you share those with other people, oh, man, it's so fun. So there's been freedom numerous times of sharing stories with people on the other side of the table.

Yeah. And I would just say to the husband who's hiding something right now. Or wife.

And I was going to say or wife, but I just know as you're listening to this program and you've got that one or five things, today's the day. Because I've been there. You've been there.

You just shared it, Cory. It's just like there's no life in a hidden life. You know, as long as it's in the dark, it wins.

The second you bring in the light and that's scary and it's hard and there's going to be fallout, it is the first step to freedom. So today's the day. I mean, there's a guy. He's got websites going. He's got the phone. He's got something going on.

And probably some women. God is using this program today to say it's time. You want a new life?

It starts right here. Did it take weeks or months for your wife to forgive you? I would say immediately, immediately may not be the right word, maybe a few days, forgive.

But the trust piece, that took time. On her side of the story is right after I told her, we had some doors slam, but she felt a it will be okay. Like kind of came over her. She didn't know what that meant.

Like how's this all going to play out? So thanks to Holly and her faith, she leaned into that moment from the Holy Spirit of it's going to be okay. And she kept going back to that. So I'm sure there were times, maybe all the way up to today, you know, where she may get frustrated and she can rest and it's going to be okay. And I think part of that, you said that there was, she had seen change in your character that gave her some confidence.

There is a new you at play here. But it's also, you're the one who brought the secret out of the darkness into the light. And Dave, to your point about somebody who needs to do it today, there's a big difference whether you're the one who confesses your sin or whether it gets exposed later. You get caught, yeah.

And that's a big difference in terms of what the restoration and healing looks like. You come forward and you say, the Lord's put this on my heart and I've just been under conviction and I've got to share this and I know this is going to be hard for you to hear. But for you to bring that up is an indication even to your betrayed spouse that God's doing something and it's different than if your spouse hears five years later from your ex-girlfriend who texts her and says, you never knew this happened, but.

Yeah. And you get busted. Now it's harder to rebuild trust when you were outed rather than you being the one who brought it to the table. And I think one of the ways we start to rebuild trust is we demonstrate to one another that we understand what our priorities ought to be and we start to show evidence that our spiritual life matters, that home matters more than work. That's really the thesis of your book and it's a mentor guide for men and women who need to make sure we've got our priorities in order. You can go to our website, familylifetoday.com, to find out how to get a copy of Corey Carlson's book, When at Home First. Go to familylifetoday.com to order or call to order. 1-800-FL-TODAY is our number. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com. You can also call 1-800-358-6329 to order a copy of the book. Again, that's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

The book is called When at Home First by Corey Carlson. Now, we're just a few days away from the end of May, which is significant for us here at Family Life. We had some friends of the ministry who came to us back earlier this spring, back before COVID-19 was a thing, really. And they said, we'd like to encourage Family Life Today listeners to support the ministry of Family Life, so we'll match every donation a listener makes during the month of May up to a total of $345,000.

And we were delighted by that and even more delighted once the pandemic settled in, because this has been a challenging time for us as a ministry over the last several weeks. And so having this matching gift is very significant right now, and we're coming to those of you who are regular Family Life Today listeners and asking you to make as generous a donation as you can today, knowing that your donation is going to be matched dollar for dollar right now. And anyone who makes a donation, we'd love to send you as a thank you gift a copy of Barbara Rainey's new book, My Heart Ever His? A collection of prayers that Barbara has written.

It's a beautiful book, and I think a book that's going to be helpful for you in your personal times with the Lord. In addition, if you sign on to become a monthly supporter of Family Life, what we call a legacy partner, over the next 12 months, your donations are going to be matched dollar for dollar, all of them, and we'll send you as an extra thank you gift a certificate so you and your spouse can attend an upcoming weekend to remember marriage getaway when those resume in the fall, or you can pass that certificate on to someone else you'd like to send as your guest. All of that as a thank you gift for becoming a monthly supporter of Family Life, a legacy partner.

You can make a donation or sign up as a legacy partner online when you go to familylifetoday.com, or if it's easier, just call us at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Thank you for your ongoing support of this ministry. We appreciate it. You're the one who makes Family Life Today possible for people all around the world, and we're grateful for your partnership with us. Now, tomorrow we want to talk about the priorities of life and how we arrange them properly.

So we'll talk about our spiritual life, we'll talk about our relationships, we'll talk about our physical bodies, we'll talk about developing our minds, and we'll talk about our financial priorities. Corey Carlson's going to be back with us tomorrow. Hope you can be back as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We will see you next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.