From Mess to Mission

Tim and Kathy Busch's marriage was a mess for a lot of reasons. But Kathy says one of the reasons was because of alcohol. We were so mired in sin that I couldn't see anything. I never understood the Bible.

I would try to read it. We finally said, you know, let's quit drinking for one month. And in that month, as we quit drinking and we're reading the Bible, things are starting to change. And we sat down with a piece of paper at the end of the month and wrote, you know, the good things about not drinking and the bad things about not drinking. And we couldn't find anything that was bad about not drinking. Things were so good, so we decided, you know, we're just not drinking.

We haven't drank now for nine and some years, and it just keeps getting better. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. We're going to hear today how God got a hold of Tim and Kathy Busch's marriage and changed them from being a mission field to being missionaries. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. Our listeners are going to get to meet a couple of friends of yours today, right? Yeah, Tim and Kathy Busch. We love these guys. They have an amazing story. Good friends.

They do. Tim and Kathy live in eastern Washington. Been to their house many times. And you've done events that they've brought you in to speak at. It really is a remarkable story. Oh, it's an unbelievable story. They came up to us on the Love Like You Mean It cruise, and we had never met them. They came to our autograph table. And I'm sitting there like, nobody wants our autograph. And he walks up and goes, yeah, I don't want your autograph. I don't care. But I want you two to come to our church and do a marriage retreat for us.

And we ended up doing three or four in a row years. And here's the thing about them. They are not about their marriage. They're about telling God's redemptive story in their marriage to impact others.

And they are impacting thousands. They are a couple who have gone from the worst place you can be in a marriage to healing to ministry. And in fact, here at Family Life, we're hoping that more and more couples who have been in bad places can get to healing. That's what we're all about.

But we don't want you just to stop there. We want you to take your healing. You mentioned this a few days ago when we were talking 2 Corinthians 1. Comfort others with the comfort you've received from Christ. Yeah, in some ways, it's like when God blesses you, I think rarely does He have just you in mind. He wants us to be a blessing to others, and that's what Tim and Kathy are doing.

Let's meet Tim and Kathy, hear their story, and hear how God is using them in the lives of others, not just in eastern Washington, but all around the country. So how long into 37 years of marriage before you went, oh, this is going to be more challenging than I realized? I was going to say, yeah, the first night on our honeymoon. The very first night. I was sure we made a mistake.

And I second that. So the first night both of you were in isolation? Yeah, so I was 18, Tim was 20. We got pregnant, and then we got married. We thought it was the right thing to do. So we only knew each other for 5 months.

5 months and 5 days from our first date. Yes. He's the numbers guy.

Yeah, he's the numbers guy. So yeah, pre-marriage counseling, no. I think we met with the pastor one time before we got married. So we did not know each other. We hardly knew each other.

Actually, we got a pass. We met with the pastor. We were supposed to meet with him like 6 times. I was busy. We met once, and that was a pass. That's all we needed was that one time. Was there something particular the first night that made you go, this is going to be hard?

Yes. We went to the beach, and Tim got us a room with a kitchen, and he thought I was going to cook. I did buy food. And I thought by getting married that that meant we could have all the sex we wanted, and I thought the kitchen was part of it, but it wasn't. Wow. Okay.

Well, I can see why this got off track. As you look at the first 20 years of marriage, would you say roller coaster, highs and lows, or would you say more dips than highs? I would say more dips than highs for 27 years. 27 years. For 27 years, yes. Tim, were you feeling the same, or were you just so into work that it was kind of like I'm not even aware? I was a very driven guy trying to survive by working, and I thought having multiple businesses, making lots of money was all I needed, and I could never make enough to be okay. Ever.

I could never survive. Did you know your marriage was not good? I would say I thought it was great because Kath had everything she would want. She had new cars, new houses. We went on vacations.

We had some great experiences as a family. I mean, what else could she possibly want? But didn't she ever say, I'm not happy? All the time. Yes.

I never heard it that way. He would ask me, what can I do to make you happy? And I couldn't tell him.

I didn't know. And throughout this 27 years, we were in and out of counselors. We were doing everything we could. We were searching.

We were searching, and there was drugs and alcohol. There was infidelity. On both sides.

On both sides. The thing that I say is there was never a day that we both said we wanted a divorce. One day maybe I did.

One day maybe Tim did. Tim was from a home that his mom was married. Well, my mom was married nine times. And two of her husbands abused me, put me in the hospital from beating me. And then when I was 12, one of those husbands told her she wouldn't marry a woman with kids. So she gave me up to my grandparents.

Wow. And then my grandparents, that's how I got my last name. That's how counts got hers too and the kids do. Then my grandparents, my pop was a player. He had girlfriends.

And from a 12-year affair, he divorced my grandma then after 37 years of marriage when I was 18. So needless to say, I was not marriage material. You didn't have a model. I did not have a model. You didn't have anything. And you didn't have much.

My parents were long-term married. Right. So I would say I was raised going to church.

Okay. But it was only on Sundays. I never saw my parents open a Bible.

We prayed at meals. There was no relationship. You were raised to be married now. Yes. And there was seven kids and I was raised where there was no talk of college.

There was really no talk of future. It was when you turned 18. You get married.

You get married. And when you find a man, and I found a man. I saw a man. He had cars and money and a house. And I thought that was it.

I thought that was going to be the ticket. You guys said 27 years. There was a turning point in 27 years? Well, Bob, the turning point was a process.

Yeah. We'd gone through counseling. Like Cass said, we had actually broken up a few times. And like the first time we broke up, we'd only been married a few months. We had a daughter. And then we found out Cass was pregnant with number two. So we moved back together. So that was God had his hand in that right then.

That was early on. And then we were in counseling at about year 10. And I got some advice from a pastor. I basically said, How are we going to fix my wife?

And he told me I got an idea. And at the end of the at the end of a couple counseling sessions, he told me that your wife doesn't love you anymore. And the only way you're going to fix this is let her go. And she may come back. She may not. Well, she did come back. That was that. But multiple things. I think the sickness came from me overworking, not spending time with Kathy.

Cass' love language is quality time. And we were not we were not doing that. We were just not doing that. So what brought the turning point for you?

The turning point for us, we had in 2008, still not Christians. We were going to church one point three times a month, like a lot of people do. Right. And yeah, right. Yeah. Well, you know, 12 times and Christmas and Easter.

And that's one point three point three. And we had gone through a time when the economy was starting to change. I saw in 2008 and we were I had five businesses, a couple hundred employees. Things were kind of crazy. And I noticed that my brother, Ned, who was 43 years old at the time, he was he was in this thing that I was doing, a construction company called Bush Construction. And we were going to build my own kingdom here on Earth. That's what my plan was. Hundred buildings in 10 years.

Millions of dollars we were going to make. And I noticed that my brother had a limp and that limp turned into his hand falling off the computer to turned into his foot falling off the left driver's pedal. And I said, dude, you got to go to the doctor. So he finally went and he got tested. He got a CAT scan. And they said, well, we're going to have to do a biopsy because there's something in your brain.

We don't know what it is. Well, about three weeks later, we found out it was stage four glioblastonoma. And they said, Ned, you've got anywhere from a few months to maybe a couple of years to live. That was in July of 08.

And Kath was gone to Istanbul on a conference for her aesthetics. And during that time, I started drinking a lot heavier than normal. And my brother never worked anymore.

He had a wife and a six year old daughter, Madison. And then about two months later, our nephew, he took his life. So at his funeral, I felt myself getting sick. To the point where I was having anxiety, couldn't sleep.

And in the month of December of 08, I say I never slept even a minute the whole month. So what a huge turning point was. So at this time, this husband who controlled everything. He controlled everything, including me. All of a sudden, I saw this change in him and he had no control over anything. And I remember a moment because our parents kind of lived, they knew all this stuff that was going on. I remember my mom coming over and Tim was having anxiety and she asked me how long I was going to stay with him because she knew our history. And there was something in me that I saw this change in him and it was like, I'm going to stay.

Something's different here. And I finally, I stepped up in the marriage. I felt like I had never really grown up. And all of a sudden, I had to step up. I had to go into the business and tell the kids, Dad can't be here.

He can't talk to bankers. He had actually even threatened to kill himself. And so it was a start of a journey of where I saw him where he had lost control and then I was stepping up. So what I saw from Kath at that point, she came up in the bedroom and said, I want you to know what Mom just said. Mom just said that I should probably leave you while the going was good. And she said, I want you to know if we lose everything we have, I'm not going anywhere. And really, I got to tell you, for the very first time in my life, I felt unconditional love because I didn't have to work.

She was going to stay with me no matter what. And that was huge for me. And we really thought things were going to get better when my brother died. And so we're into 09 at this point and I'm on some heavy duty drugs from a doctor this time. But I'm also taking other drugs and I'm also drinking heavily and I'm starting to read the Bible like 70 pages a night and getting nothing from it in my mind.

Imagine. And so my brother dies on February 28th. He didn't even last six months. He died on February 28th of 2009 and we went to Mexico and figuring everything's going to be better now. And instead of it getting better, I started spinning out of control. So he's got a really good friend in Mexico that actually came to me and said, Kathy, is Tim okay? And I'm like, no, he's not okay.

I don't know what to do. He had asked his friend to get him some more painkillers. And this guy that Tim had talked to, he had asked him if he was reading the Bible. And it was kind of crazy because I did see Tim pull a Bible out at our house and he was kind of like speed reading it with a cocktail on his other hand. And he told him, why don't you slow down and read a proverb a day? So we got home from Mexico and Tim asked me if I would start reading the Bible with him and read a proverb a day. So before we talk about how the rest of the change happened, Kath also says one of the sexiest things I've ever asked her is to read the Bible with her every day.

Guys, there you go. There's a challenge to you. So we started reading a proverb a day and then a psalm a day and then we started reading the New Testament. Well, then I was going to a pastor at our church for grief counseling. He's the same guy that led my brother through his death. And after four or five times, he comes in and he closes the door behind me. So I need to talk to you about this.

I could lose my job over this. And Pastor Bill said, you need to get out of this church. You need to go find yourself a Jesus loving Bible teaching church. The Lord's got a calling on your life and it's a big calling and it's not here.

You're not going to find it here. So you need to get out of here. Wow. So I went home and told Kath, what do you think about looking for another church?

He goes, I'm in, let's do it. So we started to do it. So then at that point, we were still drinking our wine and we had started reading the Bible. We drank wine during the week. I drank hard alcohol in the week.

So we decided, we finally said, you know, let's quit drinking for one month. And in that month, as we quit drinking and we're reading the Bible, things are starting to change. Like my eyes are opening up and I think because of the church background I had, we were so mired in sin that I couldn't see anything.

I never understood the Bible. I would try to read it. But as we're reading it, I mean, I'm just feeling this huge change. I'm feeling like, and we sat down a month later after we had spent, and we were reading the Proverbs, we were reading Psalms, we started reading the Gospels, and we just were like hungry. And we sat down with a piece of paper at the end of the month and wrote, you know, the good things about not drinking and the bad things about not drinking. And we couldn't find anything that was bad about not drinking.

Things were so good. So we decided, you know, we're just not drinking. We haven't drank now for nine and some years and it just keeps getting better. So once... Get to Jesus, will you? We're going to get to Jesus. We're going to get to Jesus.

So we're not drinking now about three months. We go to a Kenny G concert and I realize I'm still full of anxiety, not as bad as I was, but still not drinking and still reading God's Word. Well, then we went to a Christian concert and we didn't know it was Christian.

It was a Christmas concert. And literally we got saved, got baptized the next year, and the Lord had a plan. That calling we figured out. In fact, that's... First of all, that's an amazing story. And that's condensed. Yeah. I believe it is. I believe it. There's a book there.

Yeah. That transformation in your lives led to a reprioritization of everything about your lives that has led to an engagement in ministry where our paths have crossed and where we've been working together. This burden started. You wanted to help other couples who were in distress the way you'd been in distress.

And part of it was because people were seeing a change in you and come and say, what's going on? So tell us a little about that. So we're going to this church. We're going to all three services.

Our kids think we've become Mormons because we're in church all the time. We're starting to serve. Tim starts talking about sharing our story and helping other couples. I'm a little hesitant because I didn't want to get up in front of people and share.

I didn't like to talk. She said to do marriage ministry by myself. I asked him if he would do it by himself. He said it didn't quite work like that.

Yeah, right. So we did our first marriage class and I told Tim, okay, I will sit there with you. You can do it. You can do all the talking. I'll sit there. So I sat there the first night and we got in the car that night and I started telling him what he should have said and what he needs to say the next week. I kept going on and on and I finally looked at him and I said, do you know what? I can talk.

I'll start talking. So I started talking and that was the start of marriage ministry. It got more and more that we were doing more and more marriage stuff. Tim was like, this is what we're going to do. We got called to a bigger church. Yeah, we got called to a bigger church and he really wanted to grow it.

My thought was, okay, if we're going to do this, we need to get some training. So I googled marriage conferences, Christian marriage conferences, and that's how I found Weekend to Remember. Six years ago. Six years ago. And I signed up for that and then I found the cruise and I signed up for that.

I didn't even ask him. I was like, and I said, babe, we're going on a cruise. Well, we got on the wait list because it was full. But the reason, what really drove us to marriage ministry even go deeper is we went to a catalyst conference. Actually, and Craig Groeschel said, I cannot believe how in the church, how messed up people are. And meaning that there is infidelity in churches and by the leadership and that they had gone through it. And they were sharing about it since stepping up week five, by the way.

Yeah. So, so we, we, I was really committed to bringing it to the church and bring it to leadership. And so we, we had this all planned out. Man plans and God laughs. And we go to this Weekend to Remember thing and we find this thing called the art of marriage. And I called our senior pastor and I said, Dave, I think this is a God thing, but there's something here that we, I think we should be using and not what we were going to use. And I just think it's like, what do you think? He says, well, if you think it's a God thing, so do I. So let's just do it. So we brought bags of stuff home and including the book Stepping Up and, and it's really changed everything in the trajectory of what we've done and how we've done it and how the Lord's worked in it.

And blessed it and continues to bless it. So that's that. You guys have started doing regular art of marriage events and classes, right?

Right. And yeah, we mainly do the small group six week and we do it as a large group. And so the first one we did was, do you remember the number guys? How many people? We did 61 couples the first time.

Sixty one couples the first time. And then the room wasn't quite big enough, so we kind of condensed it. And, and what we do is we set it up at small groups.

It's like a date night and we have dinner. And then Tim and I will share bits of our story. And then we add, we kind of modeled it off of Weekend to Remember with the videos.

And so we add some secular videos and, and it's like two and a half hours and there's childcare provided. And we have ongoing, we do that a couple times a year. We did it three times first year. And we've also done the day and a half. We condensed it down to one day and probably close to 2,000 people.

Wow. And you've done it not only in Eastern Washington, but you've been places all around the country. Yeah, our kids were in Aiken, South Carolina. So we went down to Aiken and didn't, didn't event. In fact, tell them how the Aiken event happened. So the Aiken event, this is, I just told Bob this, he just heard it. So I, I, we were in Aiken seeing our kids. I wanted to see the pastor and tell him what we did. And so he walks into Starbucks and he says, I got five minutes.

Okay. So I told him what we did and he says, okay, so what's it cost? And I said, well, we don't charge. We, God redeemed our marriage and we don't charge, we could never charge for it.

And he started weeping. He said, my associate pastor and I just last week, we're saying we have to do something for marriages. We just don't know what to do.

And the worst part is we have no budget for it. That was last week prayer answered. So anyway, 30 minutes later, we were planning that after that five minutes got up, we were planning an art of marriage. And there was a hundred couples there. And last I heard, they still have a marriage ministry going on in that church from that, from that one Saturday we were there.

You, you have done art of marriage. Then you started taking guys through the Stepping Up video series. Around 600 guys through Stepping Up. It's really easy to do that. And.

I love the Stepping Up thing. Well, first off, did you, did they get any pictures of the building? We haven't gotten to the building yet. We'll get to the building. Okay. Cause of the building that's been built.

We'll do it now. So you built basically the ultimate man cave. Tim built the man cave. The war room. Yes.

It's got some old cars in it. And Tim has groups of guys in there. He's got now a core leadership group that he, well, he started this. This was funny because he started it and we're going shopping at Costco and he's buying all the food. And the next week we're at Costco buying all the food and I'm like, why are you buying all the food all the time?

Like why don't you delegate this to the guys? Which he gets all the meat for the guys and then they bring all the, you know, the chips and everything guys want. And, but what I love about this, what I love about this is I think it's a precursor to art of marriage because on week eight. I bring my special guest in. The secret weapon. He brings me in and I get to tell the guys how cool it would be if they invited their wives to art of marriage.

Because I think that's the way it should be. Instead of being in a church announcing art of marriage and the wife going like this. You know, you got these guys that have been learning how to step up and now they're going to invite their wives to art of marriage.

And so I love what he's doing at the war room with that. As you look at taking 600 guys through stepping up, taking thousands of couples through art of marriage. Now you're starting to take people through art of parenting. Like I said, this has reprioritized your life. Tell me what the last six years have been like for you guys. For me, they've had a lot more, well, Christ centeredness in everything we do. We're doing everything with Christ in mind and instead of self.

And so it's just much more powerful. Kathy, what's this meant to you? Oh, well, it's just been since the last six, seven, eight years. Our life's just totally changed. I mean, some people will ask me, how can you share what you share? And it's like, well, we're just not those people anymore. And so we can share and people can come to us and share their stories. And we know that there's hope. And we know, I know when I sat in weekend to remember it was the first conference that I went to that it was validated that, hey, we're doing the right thing.

Like we knew that the answer to a great marriage is Jesus and we had found it. So it was just reaffirming that we're doing the right thing. Don't you guys love stories like this? Isn't this amazing?

Thank you. Well, again, we've been listening to a conversation with our friends, Tim and Kathy Bush. And as she was talking, I'm thinking of the listener who's going, I could never be as transparent about the mess of our past because it's still too embarrassing, humiliating, shameful, all the words you'd attach to it.

You've felt some of that, but you found your way past it to be open and transparent about your own marriage difficulties. And I know Kathy well, and I know even with me, when God can take our mess and He transforms it, it can become our message. So you're not embarrassed to say, this is what happened to me because God has done a real miracle and transformation in our lives. And for Dave and me, it really has changed everything. And so even sitting with Tim and Kathy at their home, this was so fun because they're like, hey, we want you guys to be a part of our lives. And so come and spend time with us.

Every morning we sit and we talk to God and we pray and we have our devotional. Remember that? It's so fun because they are living it out every single day. Yeah, I got to tell you, Tim and Kathy, they're a breath of fresh air because they're so honest. You can see where they've been and you can see the redemptive resurrection power of God in a couple's life. And that inspires others to think we can have hope.

Yeah, think about this. What if a thousand people listening would say, you know, we've got a mess because like you said, Ann, if you've got a mess, you've got a message. What if they would say, we'll find some way to connect with other couples and together we can work on our marriages. You guys just finished up last night session two of the three-week vertical marriage online small group that you've been doing.

And anybody can do that. You can set up an online small group and get together virtually with people or actually step one now, I'm hearing people say step one in starting to reengage with church is to do a small group meeting with 10 or fewer people in a living room, you know, appropriate distancing. So get a copy of the vertical marriage video series or the art of marriage or art of parenting, the resources we put together here at Family Life and get some other couples together and say coming out of what we've been going through. And let's hope we're coming out of it, right? But coming out of everything here, we need to make sure that the foundation is strong, that our marriages are strong as we go forward.

Go to familylifetoday.com for information about the vertical marriage video series with David Ann Wilson, about the art of marriage, about other resources we have available here at Family Life. And think about how you can do what Tim and Kathy Bush did and just start to engage with others and say, we have not done this perfectly. We're still not doing it perfectly, but we need help and we need other people around us and we think it'll benefit all of us if we do this together. Again, go to our website, familylifetoday.com for more information on the resources we have available. If we can help you somehow know how to set up a virtual small group, we'd be happy to do that. Again, the information's available online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And we want to ask you one other thing, and that is, can you help us over the next seven, eight days? Here in the month of May, we've had friends of the ministry who have come to us and said they will match every donation we receive this month, dollar for dollar, up to a total of $345,000. As you might imagine, that's a significant opportunity for us at a time when the money would be extremely helpful. So if you are a longtime listener to Family Life Today, would you consider making a donation knowing that that donation right now is going to be matched dollar for dollar? Let me also add, if you're a regular listener, would you consider becoming a monthly legacy partner? Every legacy partner donation we receive over the next 12 months, if you're a new legacy partner, your donation is going to be matched dollar for dollar for an entire year. And we'll send you as a new legacy partner a certificate so you and your spouse can attend a weekend to remember marriage getaway when those begin back up. We're planning to do that this fall, Lord willing, and we'd love to see you at a getaway.

Or you can pass on the gift card to someone else you know if you'd like to give the weekend away to a friend or to maybe one of your adult children. It's easy to donate or to become a legacy partner. Go to familylifetoday.com, and the information is available there, or call us at 1-800-FL today.

We can get you all set up over the phone. Anyone who donates today or becomes a new legacy partner, we'd like to send you as a thank you gift a copy of Barbara Rainey's new book, My Heart Ever His? A wonderful collection of prayers that I think you're going to find very encouraging as you get this beautiful new book. Again, it's our thank you gift when you donate today by going online at familylifetoday.com or by calling 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Thanks in advance for whatever you're able to do, and thanks for helping us take advantage of the matching gift opportunity. Now, we hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together somehow this weekend. And I hope you can join us on Monday. That's Memorial Day here in the United States. We're going to talk about what a husband can do when his wife doesn't trust him anymore.

How do you build back trust when trust has been violated? Shanti Feldhahn and Brian Goins are going to join us to talk about all of that. Hope you can be with us for that. 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'll see you back 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.