Your Story: The Parts You Wish You Could Change

Alcoholism, abuse, pain, death, affairs.

Wow, this sounds like a really exciting day. What are you talking about? Lies. That's your story growing up. Do you think you would have chosen a different story? Of course.

I mean, are you kidding me? You just described the worst mini-series on a program, you know? But it feels like your life was like a hallmark movie gone bad. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today.

Alcoholism, death, affairs. That's your story. You know, it was shattering. I mean, what's really crazy is when I went back to that home in New Jersey in a gated community because my dad was an airline pilot and we made a lot of money back then, you would have looked at that house and said, that is a perfect family. Yeah, it's a picture perfect.

Yeah. I mean, if you looked at a picture of our family, you would say, oh, that's the dream family. And nobody knew behind those doors was alcohol and girlfriends and my dad taking me on trips when I was five and six with his girlfriend, still married to my mom. And then after the divorce, the death of my little brother. I mean, it was no, I would have never chosen that life. But now as I look back, I also can see how all that pain developed me into the man I am today. And yet you could have stayed in it and been so bitter and angry and even blame God.

And I did. Do you feel like you did? Oh, for years, for decades, I blame God for the whole thing. And now do you blame God? No, I blame man. Those are decisions that men made. And I thank God that he got me through it and actually turned it into something pretty beautiful.

Yeah. And that's sort of what we're talking about today, how God can take a broken life and story and make something beautiful. We have Sharon James back with us today. She's been on Family Life before. So welcome back to Family Life in Orlando, Florida.

Thank you for having me. And you've never been on Family Life in Orlando. Never before. A lot shorter distance to travel than when it was going from Charlotte to Little Rock.

So Charlotte to Florida is just a quick trip. Do you know how many times you've been on Family Life today? I can't remember.

I see the four or five. I have to go back and look in the archives. And Sharon, you have always been a treat for us, for our listeners. You always bring a lot of wisdom, practicality, scripture. And this book, When You Don't Like Your Story, and the subtitle is, What If Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories?

When I hear that, I think, yes, all of us are listening to that thinking, that's what I want. Can it become my greatest victory? And you've written a lot of books. I didn't know this.

25? I know. How in the world do you find time to write 25 books? I don't know.

I mean, we've written two and it about killed us. You have a call on your life. I really think that's it. It's just what God's called me to do. Yeah. So when he calls you to do it, then he makes you able. And you're married. You have a son that's grown. But this is your passion. And you've been speaking to women over the years. You helped found Proverbs 31 women. This is something that really matters to you, of really helping women especially.

It really is a passion of mine. And when I go back and look at the titles of some of the books that I've written in the past, you can see that there's a common theme of really helping women have a better story. I mean, there's a book called Enough Silence and the Lies That Steal Your Confidence. Well, that's helping them have a better story right now by believing the truth of God. I mean, each of the titles, except the ones on marriage, well, those are helping women have a better marriage. Yeah.

Those helping women have a better story than the one they're currently find themselves in. Or in this case, a lot of the book is talking about maybe it's not your whole story that you don't like, but there's just certain chapters that you have in your story that you would love to rip out. But what I'm saying is those chapters that a lot of times we want to rip out are the very chapters that God wants to repurpose. And those are the ones that he uses the most in our lives.

Yes. And as you were saying, Dave, to make you a stronger person, but to also help other people. Because it tells us in scriptures that God comforts us in all of our afflictions so that we can comfort others with the comfort we have received from God. Now, that's kind of a convoluted verse, but basically it's saying that God comforts us to make us comfort-able. Not to make us comfortable.

That's not really how this list, in case you've noticed, but to make us comfort-able. So when we can look at those difficult chapters and all those places we'd like to mark out that God's highlighting. Those places that we've dog-eared and we just keep going back and back to that chapter to try to make sense of it all and say, why did this happen? Those are the very chapters that God will use the most in our lives to develop us and then turn around and help other people.

I can't agree more. And I remember, I think we had just come out of a 10-year slump in our marriage. And I remember listening to Chuck Swindoll on the radio and he said, God will never allow if you trust him, your pain to be in vain. And I can remember because of abuse in my background, because of our marriage that was really struggling, I clung to that.

Like I needed to know, like, is this it? Is this my story? Just one failure or one adverse situation after another. And so as you say that, I had never thought at the time that God could actually use that period of time to help other people.

And that's what we've done with our marriage. Like, oh, let's tell people our story so that maybe they can find hope too. Yeah, I've discovered as you write in your book and I want to hear your story that the darkest parts of my life where I thought God wasn't there, I find out he was there. And you want to hide those dark chapters. Yeah, exactly. And it's sort of like nobody's ever going to hear that part. But then you go to, like you said, 2 Corinthians 1, that God comforts us in those moments so that we, I love how you said that, comfort, able to help others.

And he actually uses our pain. And I think in some ways points us to our purpose in life, because now I have a passion I always have for marriages that end in divorce, for marriages, for families staying together. Why? Because I came out of one that didn't and I want to help others. So you heard a bit of my story. What's your story? Well, there's so many different chapters I could tell about the difficult parts that God used for good. Well, you pick any chapter you want. I'm going to start at the beginning.

How about that? Much like you, I was raised in a beautiful home. We lived in a little town in North Carolina, on the eastern part of North Carolina.

A ranch-style home, very typical, with two kids. And we had a collie dog named? Lassie. Lassie, of course, a collie dog named Lassie. Now some listeners don't even know who Lassie is, because they've missed that decade. But that was the best, greatest dog on TV in the 60s and 70s.

Even though there were like 20 of them that played one little dog. So we had a collie dog named Lassie. And my father had a successful business. And my mom had her own little shop.

She owned a craft shop called the Van Beetle and taught painting classes and little decoupage classes. But there was a secret behind the door, much like in your home. And that was that my father had a terrible drinking problem.

And many times when dad would come home, he would come home drunk and my parents would fight and they fought physically in front of us children and they fought verbally. And I remember going to bed at night and just pulling up the covers and praying that I could hurry up and go to sleep so I could shut out the noise of what was going on at that next room. And I remember sometimes I would just get in my bed and pull the covers up. Sometimes I would get up and turn a little key on the back of a jewelry box. I had this little pink jewelry box, turn the key, open the lid, a little ballerina would pop up. Remember those?

And I'd try to listen to that music to shut out that noise. Sometimes I'd go in my brother's room and we would hide together. And those were your earliest memories growing up? Those are my earliest memories. I don't remember anything before violence. That violence is the first thing that I remember.

How old were you? You know, I'm thinking kindergarten is what I really start to remember. So I don't remember a lot before that. But what I do remember are scary, very scary memories. And I can remember that I heard words that I didn't know what they meant, but I knew how they made me feel.

And they made me feel sick inside. And this is what would happen in the next day after one of those fights. And I would hear the flesh on flesh hitting, the hitting and the tearing up of the furniture. And the next day it was always the same. My dad would be at the kitchen table crying, saying, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

This will never happen again. And then my mom, she would go into a period of passive aggressive silence. So she would be silent for several weeks.

My dad would say he was sorry it wouldn't happen again. And then we'd have a lull and there would be peace in our home for a little while. But it's just like kind of the Israelites rebellion cycle off the Old Testament. I could kind of feel it building back up again.

And then it would be another explosion. And it was like living on an earthquake fault line, just never knowing when that big one was going to hit. But it continued and continued and continued through my whole childhood.

You know, kids internalize this. And I felt like I was so ashamed. I mean, the next day when my father was saying how sorry he was, and I'd have to get my little lunchbox and get dressed and go sit in first grade and feel so ashamed, even though nobody knew that and thinking my family is so wrong, something's wrong with my family and something is wrong with me. And when my mom would say, now, listen, if you've ever said this to your kids, don't feel bad about it.

I'm sure I've said it to mine. But when my mom would say, what is wrong with you? To me, I remember thinking, I don't know, but there's something wrong with me. And grew up feeling that I just wasn't good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough.

So all that violence and the alcohol, there was pornography, there was gambling. All that just put such a shame on me as a little kid. And I lived under that until I was about 12 years old.

There was a woman on the next street. It was my best friend, little redheaded Wanda. It was her mom. And I loved being down at the Henderson's home because they, Mr. Mrs. Henderson would hug and kiss. They had little pet names for each other.

And I've never seen married people act like that before. And I loved being down there. And listen, even though I was terrified of my father, I still wanted a daddy who loved me.

And I think all little girls want a daddy who loves them. And did you love him? I was terrified of my father that I would not have said I really loved my father. I wanted to have a father like Mr. Henderson.

I loved that vision of a father like him. And I didn't know why that family was so different from mine, but I knew it had something to do with Jesus. Because she would, Mrs. Henderson would sing little praise songs about Jesus when she cleaned the house.

Now listen, here's something I want you to know too. My family, as bad as we were with the alcohol and the violence, pornography, the gambling, we went to church on Sunday. We went to church on Sunday. We walked in looking good, every hair in place.

I remember my mom using sponge rollers on my hair the night before because we were going to look good. And then I started spending the night with the Hendersons, going to church with them on Sunday. And I began to see there was a big difference between what we had and what they had. Now I could not have verbalized it at 12 years old, but what I was seeing was that there's a big difference between having a religion in your life and having a relationship with Jesus Christ. So that woman took me under her wing and she loved on me and I began to tell Wanda about what was going on in my home and then telling Mrs. Henderson. Did anybody else know? I think they suspected because my mom would have a black eye.

How many doors can you run into? But pretty much kept it quiet. It was a small town and he ran around and I'm sure people knew that, but nobody talked about it. And yet you said it earlier, it wasn't just that something was wrong with your family, something was wrong with you.

Absolutely. And we need to know that children internalize that. When they see their parents yelling and screaming and they might be terrified, they internalize that shame onto themselves and feel like something's wrong with their family. That family is wrong and that they are wrong. And that's how I felt. I didn't know that at the time and I could have put that into words. But after a couple of years of going to church with the Hendersons and she taught me about Jesus and she started a Bible study in the neighborhood for teenagers. We were young teens and she talked to me about a heavenly Father who loved me. And when I was 14, I was spending the night with them and she asked me if I was ready to accept Jesus as my Savior.

Now I want to say something here, too. Honestly, I was not the kind of girl I would have wanted my little girl to play with because, I mean, there was a lot in me. There was a lot of anger in me and I was really headed in a bad direction. But she took a chance on me, exposed her daughter to me and ended up leading me to Jesus. So what are you saying about that family? I'm saying that as a parent, sometimes we might want to keep our kids away from certain kids. To protect them?

To protect them. But maybe we ought to consider that maybe God has brought these certain kids in our lives so that we can love on them and show them that life can be different. You know, when other kids come into your home, even now with your grown boys, and they're watching you, they say, life can be different. This is what my family could be like.

And that's what I saw with them as she took that chance on me. I was saying, this is what life could be like and this is what I want. I want a family like that. I'm telling you, like, just what you're doing is you're preaching what we're saying at Family Life. Our homes make a difference. Each home on every corner, when we're walking with Jesus, we reflect the Savior. And people are drawn to that, as Dennis Rainey used to say, and still does say, our marriages in the future, and even right now, are the greatest evangelistic tool we can use. Because when people see a great marriage or a good family, they think, as you did, Sharon, as a little girl, whatever they have, I want that. And when you heard the gospel, when you heard that you had a Heavenly Father.

Well, let me add this. I'd just love to add, Mrs. Henderson, who I'll never meet, had that vision, thinking not only is our house sort of a lighthouse, but God's going to bring people into our home that need what we have. And she had that vision to be able to reach out to you. And that is not the end of the story with Mrs. Henderson.

Yeah, keep going. So at 14, she tells you, shares the gospel. And I become a Christian through this woman. But the problem was I had to go back home, of course, into that violent environment with all that went on behind that pretty door, that pretty house. But now I've got Jesus, and I've got my group of 14-year-old friends that I'm going to Bible study with, praying for my family. And when you've got teenagers on fire for Jesus, isn't it just fun to watch? It's a force.

I mean, it is a force. We were amazing. Just looking back on it, Kenny and Harley believe how powerful we were at 14. But we prayed for my family.

And then I'm going to fast forward. My parents thought that my excitement for religion, they called it, would wear off. But it didn't. But I was still a teenager. I still got on their nerves and all that teenagers do. But we prayed for my family. And when I was 17, I had an opportunity to go away for the summer.

It was a foreign exchange program. But I told my friends that I could not go because by this time, I was the parent really in the house. And when they fought, I broke up the fights. My brother would leave. I would stay, break up the fight.

If I leave, who's my mom going to turn to? But we continued to pray. And then my now 17-year-old friends that we'd been doing this journey for three years, they said, We really feel like you should go. And so I decided to go.

And God was saying, Will you trust me here? So the night before I left, my friends came over. We prayed the blood of Jesus over my house, marched around my house.

We were amazing. So the very night that I left, my dad came home drunk and he started a fight with my mom. I wasn't there to help. She runs down to Mrs. Henderson's house because I told her, Mom, I'm not here to help you. If something happens, you go down to see Miss Henderson. And that's exactly what she did. And that night, my mom gave her life to Jesus. So that's step two for that story.

And listen, I would never, ever tell a woman who's in an abusive relationship to stay with a man who is abusing her. And I just hear me saying that. But my mom came home and she told my dad, You know, I accept Jesus tonight. I'm going to follow him and I'm going to forgive you for everything you've done. It was a long list. And that night forward, my father never drank again. No way.

What? Stopped cold turkey. But he said to her, I'll go to church with you, but I could never be a Christian because there's too many things I've done in my life. God could never forgive me. Now, this was back when there was no email, there was no Internet, there was no cell phone. So when I was away, I started getting letters that my parents were now going to the Bible teaching church. And my dad was going to church and they were holding hands.

And I thought, What am I going to come home to? But when I did come home at the end of the summer, my dad said the same thing to me. He said, I am going to go to church with you, but I never could be a Christian. God could never forgive me because of all that I've done. I could never be good enough. And I said, you know, Dad, none of us could be good enough. If we could be good enough, then Jesus wouldn't have had to die on the cross. But he could not understand.

And even though he quit drinking, some of those vices continued. But let me fast forward three more years. Now I've got the teenage friends praying. My mom in a Bible study, she's praying. The power of praying women. Absolutely. I got a book on that too.

Yeah. You know, and I tell this story at the beginning because this is the first example that I saw the power of a praying wife. And three years later, my father was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because he had left the company where he worked to start another company that was in competition.

And there was a restrictive covenant. So he was being sued and taken to court for honestly, God only knew what. And this is what I want to say about this next part of this particular story is that when it looks like everything is falling apart, things are really falling together.

God's putting the pieces together. But my father was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and he felt like he needed my mom. And he got in his car because she was at a meeting in Pennsylvania. Got in his car, drove to Pennsylvania. He stopped by a church in Pennsylvania because he couldn't find her. Said, I need the priest to pray for me.

The secretary, bless her heart, says he's not here. But I know a pastor, a Baptist pastor out in the woods building his church. And you're laughing because, you know, as soon as I say Baptist pastor. So my dad, he follows this map that she drew on a scratch piece of paper and he finds this man building his church, hammering his hand, Jesus in his heart. And dad says, I need you to pray for me. And the man said, well, tell me your story. So for the first time, my dad told somebody his story, all of it. And then the man put his arm around my dad and he said, now, Alan, let me tell you my story. And my dad said that everything I had done in my life, this man had done too. And I knew that if God could forgive him and he could be a preacher, then he could forgive me. And my dad accepted Jesus in the woods of Pennsylvania with a man I never will know. And he became one of the sweetest men I've ever known. But let me ask you this. We're all in tears here of just the grace and the miraculous power of God.

Amen. But it's also the power of that man's story. Because, you know, my father, when he went to church with us and he said, I'm too far gone. Do you think there were other men in that church who had that story?

Maybe not all of it, but parts of it. But they never told it. And God had to take him all the way to Pennsylvania to find a man in the woods to tell him, you know, I had that same story and let me tell you what God did for me.

That's the power of our story. You know, it says in Revelation 12, they overcame him, talking about the devil. They overcame him by the blood of the lamb and what?

The word of their testimony. And you think that your story and your story, Dave, your story has so much power in it that it's in the same verse with the blood of the lamb. No wonder the devil doesn't want you telling it.

He wants us to be ashamed of it and to keep it quiet. But it's combining those two things, the blood of the lamb, the word of our testimony. That's how people see Jesus. Yeah, and you know, your whole ministry and really our ministry is birth out of a broken story, out of pain.

It's exactly the title of your book when you don't like your story. What if the worst chapters could become your greatest victories and those victories point to the victor? And give God glory. You know, I mean, I'm over here tearing up because my dad came to Christ later in his life, too.

And you would think it's never going to happen. God can't redeem and God always does redeem. What a beautiful. Thank you, Sharon. That is powerful. And I can't wait because we didn't yet touch on that still part of you that thought, what's wrong with me?

Yes. So we'll get into more of that to think, how do we heal the brokenness that we feel inside? Through a bad series of events that happened just two days ago, I remember looking into the sky and screaming, Jesus, what are you doing out of anger? And as I reflect on that kind of embarrassing part of my story, even just recently, that helps me to know that God is working in a million different ways that I'm simply unable to see sometimes. As David and Wilson have been talking with Sharon Janes, she's reminded us that now is the time to stop picking at emotional scabs and start allowing God to heal our wounds.

What does it look like to forgive others? What does it look like to use our story to break free of the shame of the past and see God work in the present? We believe that the book that Sharon Janes has written called When You Don't Like Your Story, what if your worst chapters could become your greatest victories?

We believe that this resource is incredibly valuable and can do much good work, not only in your life, but in the lives of others around you as well. And that's why when you head over to familylifetoday.com and make a donation of any amount all this week, we want to send you a copy of Sharon Janes' book When You Don't Like Your Story as a way to say thank you for contributing to the gospel efforts of family life today. Again, you could go to our website familylifetoday.com, make a donation, and receive your copy of When You Don't Like Your Story, or you could pick up the phone and call us at 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today. If this topic today as we've been talking with Sharon Janes or any of our family life programs have been helpful for you, we'd love for you to share today's podcast with a friend or a family member, and wherever you get your podcast, it could really advance the gospel effort of what we're doing at Family Life today if you'd scroll down and rate and review us. Now tomorrow, Dave and Ann Wilson are going to be talking once again with Sharon Janes to help us get on the solutions side and heal the brokenness that we feel inside when we look at our stories. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you can join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.