Healing Our Hurting Marriage

As I look back, I also realize that I had actually lowered the bar when it came to the definition of a great marriage at some point in my life. And of course, when you lower the bar for a great marriage, it's easier to hit it.

Well, that's a good point. And you're going to hear how this couple's marriage hit rock bottom and how it was saved on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. That's the best part, how it was saved. Today we're going to hear the nitty-gritty details of the near-death of a marriage from the point of view of both the husband and the wife. Pastor Paul Westbrook and his wife Melody were very active in ministry for 20 years until their marriage hit the wall in the fall of 2014. And that's the story we're going to share with you today. Here are Paul and Melody Westbrook speaking at their home church.

And you're going to hear Paul lead off, and Melody will join in a bit later on, on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. In November of last year, we found ourselves at a point where our marriage hit rock bottom. I actually was a little self-deceit. I thought things were going pretty good. And about a month before that, we'd had what I thought was a really good conversation, and I thought we were just humming along.

But what I didn't realize was that Melody was carrying some deep hurts and frustrations in her life that were largely a part of things that I had said and done, just ignorant things that I'm embarrassed and ashamed of. That, along with my drivenness and my focus and the long hours that I put in with church stuff and all that, threw us into this major crisis mode. It was like this wakeup call for me. And I realized, man, I've got to do something to try to save my marriage. Have you ever found yourself hurting so bad that you fall on your face before God?

That's what this time was for me. I had spent a lot of my life pretending that I was okay. If you know me, you would be surprised, because you probably thought everything was all right with me. Even my closest friends were shocked that I was hurting so deeply.

For me, this story goes much further back than four months ago. We've been in this church for 23 years, ministering here. And for 23 years, we've poured out our hearts to this church.

We've poured out our souls, believing that this is what God had in mind for us. But I learned over time that as we sacrificed so much, that we were losing our marriage. And when I looked deeper, I realized I was kind of sacrificing things for the sake of the cause. And as I looked deeper, I realized that that is not what God intended for this to be.

God does not design or desire for us to give up our marriage or family for the sake of the cause. As my husband became more and more focused and driven in the growth of this church, I became smaller and smaller. The more focused he became, the less I felt. But what began to happen was he did his thing, and he focused over here, and his church and his ministry and stayed focused over here.

And then I did all my stuff over here, and I had my own ministries. And I look now that I did that in my life, so I didn't realize how much I was hurting and how much I missed him. And as we did this, we came like two ships passing in the night, kind of missing one another. So at the beginning of November as Paul said, well, back up, one of my biggest complaints was that I couldn't get his attention. I kept trying to get his attention, and I couldn't. So at the beginning of November, I shouted really loud and really long, so he kind of had to listen to me. And actually I look at that, and he did have a choice.

He didn't have to listen to me, but he chose to do that. So as I realized, I thought I was starting a battle into one thing. I realized I was in a battle. We were in a battle to save our marriage.

But I wasn't as hopeful as Paul was. I wasn't as convinced, because I had taken all of these hurts and all of these frustrations and had stuffed them really deep inside. So I sought help with a Christian counselor and called up and made an appointment and went in by myself to see him. I'll never forget when I first sat down, he looked at me and he said, so, what did you do to cause all this, to put all this in motion? And I told him, and he just smiled at me, and he said, it's okay. It's okay, because God can handle all of this. And as time went on with him, every time I went in to the counselor, he'd look at me and say, so, is your anger done? And I would just bow my head in embarrassment and shake it and say, no.

It's like a bottomless pit. And he said, it's okay. You're going to be okay. Paul's going to be okay.

You guys are going to make it through, and eventually your anger will stop spewing. Well, as we moved into this, I started pretty much immediately going to a Christian counselor, the same Christian counselor. And I remember very early on one of the most impacting questions that he asked me. And at the time, it seemed kind of strange, actually, but it was a very impacting question. He said, Paul, do you ever waste time with God? And I was a little taken aback, and I go, well, I mean, yeah. I mean, I spend time with God.

And he said, oh, no, no, no. I know you're a pastor. I know you spend time with God.

But do you waste time with God? And I said, I don't know. I don't know what you mean.

What do you mean by that? And he said, well, that's your homework for this week. Figure out what it means to waste time with God. And while you're at it, start wasting time with your wife and with your family. Well, what I realized was that I was not good at wasting time. Just about everything that I did in life is just so purposeful. Even my time off, I was very committed to taking a day off every week, but that was geared at recharging.

You'd be able to hit the ground running and just be able to take the next hill, whatever it was that we were doing. Everything was purposeful in my life. But as I started doing that, as I started learning what it meant to waste time, and I started wasting time with God and with Melody and with my family, things began to happen inside me. And one of the things that I realized is any time that you waste time with God, you're not really ever wasting time. There's a passage of scripture that God really used in my life at this point. It's found in Psalm 46, verse 10.

We're going to throw it up here on the screen. It says, be still and know that I am God. Just be still. Be still and know that I am God.

That's what I needed to do. And what began to hit home was that I could relax in Him. One of my big fears, and we'll talk about that in just a second here a little bit more, is a fear of failure. Failure of what was going to happen with the church and my life and stuff. And I began to realize through this that I can relax and trust God.

Jesus is the one that said, I will build my church. It wasn't up to me. I realized I didn't have to put in crazy hours. God was the one doing that. And I began to learn to relax in Christ. And as I started wasting time with Melody, even when we really weren't talking very much yet, I realized that it was strengthening me. It was softening my heart. And I felt like it was helping me understand myself better. It was helping me see Melody in a new way.

And I didn't know whether God was really doing anything in her life or not during this time of wasting time. But I knew that He was doing something in me. He was deepening my love and my commitment for her and my commitment to our marriage.

At first, I didn't know what Paul was doing when he was wasting time. We weren't talking and we definitely, I didn't really want to spend a lot of time with him. But every time I would look around, he was there. It was like I couldn't get rid of him. I would sit down and watch a movie and he'd kind of walk in and, you know, can I sit here with you?

Yes, I guess so. But over time, I would admit it to him at that time. I was beginning to enjoy it. And as time went on, I did start admitting it to him. And I realized what I had longed for, to have his undivided attention.

I had it as he wasted time with me. And I learned and we've talked a lot even recently that, you know, it's not going to stop here. We're going to learn to waste time, a lot of time with each other.

And we look forward to that. About a month into this ordeal, I remember Paul coming into the room and asked if I would be willing to go to what they call a marriage intensive. And I said yes because I knew that that was the only hope that we had through Christ to do something like this. So we signed up for a 3-day, 20 hours of counseling, of intense marriage counseling. And before we left for this, we had to fill out some sheets. And one of the questions that they asked was, are you willing for God to do a miracle in your marriage?

And I marked yes on there because I did. I believed that God could. But to be honest, I couldn't pray that God would heal our marriage.

I could only pray that God would heal me. So the next day we started out on our 20 hours of counseling. And they're not kidding when they say it was intensive because it was really, really intensive. The first day after lunch, our counselor had asked us to fill out a whole bunch of sheets. But one of the questions, several questions it asked was to go through this huge long list of fears and to start just marking off all the fears that resonated with you, that you identified with. And it had kind of some descriptions of the fears. So the counselor took us through each of our fears and tried to help us to see how those had really affected our marriage.

And I see how they affected me. So as we finished that 20 hours of counseling, it was really good. It was really positive. And we walked away with a definite newfound hope that God was going to save our marriage. We were very excited. And also during this time, we were given some insights.

I'm not sure that we would have ever picked up without all this happening. And one of the things that they began to help us with was what Melody was just talking about, what they referred to as relational fear cycle. When we have these fears and one of our fears, the fear button gets pushed, in this case say that it starts with the husband's fear button gets pushed, then what naturally typically happens is we react to that. A lot of times in not the best way, not necessarily a real healthy way, we react. And then in turn, what was so interesting about this was discovering that so many times when we react, our reaction to our fear then triggers, pushes our spouse's button. And then once our spouse's fear button gets pushed, hitting one of their core fears, they tend to react. And a lot of times their natural reaction then in turn triggers our fear button again, and we just keep cycling. That was the story of our marriage.

We've been doing that for 27 years, just going around and around. One of my big fears, as I said earlier, was the fear of failure. Fear of failure in my marriage, fear of failure the church wouldn't go and stuff. And so when that fear button in me would get pushed, I would typically react.

And there are lots of ways you can react. Sometimes you go into a fix-it mode. Sometimes I just get frustrated with Melody.

Why doesn't she understand? If I don't do more, then things might fall apart or whatever, and I'd just get frustrated with her. Well, when I would get frustrated with her, I'd go into the fix-it mode. Her feelings, which were her core fears, were feeling insignificant and unimportant.

Well, I'm frustrated with her, and I'm putting in more time, and that just made her feel even more insignificant. And it would tap and push those buttons of fear in her. And so what would she do? One of her typical reactions was to withdraw. So then she would withdraw, and then I would start feeling it would push my fear button of failure again, but related to the marriage. Like oh, she's withdrawing. She doesn't love me.

She doesn't really care about me, doesn't want to be with me. And so then I would react, and we would just cycle. And we'd just keep going round and round and round.

And we looked at this and go, oh, this is a mess. And we were doing that all the time, and we realized part of what was so powerful, and this was one, understanding that we both contribute to this, both individuals do. But what was also powerful about it was realizing that all it takes is one individual to stop this.

It doesn't even take both individuals. One individual can take responsibility for their fears and decide that they're going to pause or create space in order to keep from reacting in ways that just keep this fear cycle going round and round and round. And the way that you create this pause and care for yourself is beginning to tend to your heart, care for yourself. There's a past scripture that talks about this, Proverbs 4.23, look at this here.

It says, above all else, and any time you run across a scripture that makes that kind of statement, above all else, you want to pay special attention, above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. We've got to guard our hearts. You see, we can't change our spouse. I mean, that's what we all tend to want, isn't it? When there's some kind of problem or issue, oh, if she would just change, if Melody would just quit doing this, if she would start doing that, she would just change, and everything would be great.

It's all her fault, right? To your eyes, that never works. We can't change the other person.

The only person I can change with God's help is me. And so I need to pause, I need to care for my heart. And when I begin to care for my heart, that sets us up to be able to break this fear cycle. And both individuals commit to caring for themselves.

Man, just amazing things can happen in a marriage. Without going into the deep details, I was raised in a very severely dysfunctional home. And so in my home, it was kind of like my heart was just up for grabs for whoever wanted to trample on it.

When you're raised in a home like that, the concept of taking care of yourself, it just doesn't exist. So I got in this pattern of caring for everybody else in my life except for me. But one of the things that we realized and I'm learning is that I can take care of my heart first before I even take care of Paul's. Paul talked just briefly about the fear cycle. Well, the care cycle is actually the antidote to the fear cycle. So our counselors have given us permission basically when things are triggered to take a pause, kind of a time out.

And for me at times, it's actually walking out of the room to take care of my heart first to figure out what is going on in my heart before I can go back and communicate with Paul about whatever issue that it is. If you look in your outline, we've got it listed on here. They gave us five As. And it's kind of funny when I pick up my book that the manual that they gave, and mine's kind of worn out because I keep going back to it, trying to figure all this out. So if you take a look at it, the first A is aware. Being aware of the signals that alert myself to my feelings. Do I feel flushed?

Is my heart beating faster? The second one is accept. Welcome my feelings. Rather than trying to immediately rid myself of these feelings, am I willing to care for my feelings? The next one is allow. Take a moment to invite and allow God to provide guidance in ways to care for myself.

The next one is attend. Identify the feeling and explore what is needed to move towards well-being. What am I feeling?

Where is it coming from? Am I contributing to the feeling? What is the truth? What do I want? Who do I want to be?

And then the last one is act. What can I do to care for me while maintaining my honor and integrity? So this right here, this is the antidote to the fear cycle, is caring for our heart. Because when we begin to take responsibility for ourselves, and we begin to deal with these fears, instead of responding in an unhealthy way, we begin to respond in more appropriate ways.

Now even as we bring this up, as Molly's talked about this, some of you may think, well, but caring for yourself, man, that just sounds selfish. I don't know. But you need to understand, this is biblical. Jesus himself taught this. Look at this. In Matthew 22, 39, this is what Jesus said. He said, love your neighbor, and your neighbor is the people around you, including your spouse. You love your spouse.

But then look at this. As who? As yourself. As yourself. You see, God assumes, God expects us to love and care for ourselves. If we aren't caring for ourselves, we will invariably end up interacting with the people that we are in relationship with in unhealthy ways.

It's interesting. As I look back, I also realize that I had actually lowered the bar when it came to the definition of a great marriage at some point in my life. And of course, when you lower the bar for a great marriage, it's easier to hit it.

And through this, I realize I don't need to lower the bar. With God's help, as we keep him at the center of our lives and our marriage, and as we're willing to deal with our stuff, with our baggage, with our fears, we can have a better marriage than we've ever had. Not just a fine, not just an okay marriage, but a better marriage than we've ever had. And I would just challenge you, don't be satisfied with just a mediocre marriage, with just a fine or an okay marriage. One of the statistics that I came across during this time was that only about 12% of the married people even begin to come close to enjoying the kind of marriage they dreamed of.

That's so sad. 88% of people walking around with way less of a marriage than they hope to have. And what I hope and what we hope and we're praying that you'll get hold of is that there is hope. If you'll anchor your life in Jesus and you're willing to do the work, it's not necessarily going to be easy. You're not necessarily going to turn things around overnight.

But you can have a better marriage than you've ever had. Things are so different for us. We're not perfect.

We haven't arrived. But we're in a whole different place and we are so excited about what God's doing. Wow, such passion.

You can hear the gratitude for what God did. Those words of encouragement bring to a close this message from Paul and Melody Westbrook on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Boy, Jon, this is such a great testimony of how a marriage can be saved with some hard work and a willingness to look at your own faults, not just the faults of your spouse.

Look at your fears and how you act when they're triggered. Seek God's help in the process and make your relationship with your spouse a high priority. And let me just point out if you're in an abusive situation, take the steps necessary to get to a place of safety before you seek help. But for anybody who's experiencing difficulty in their marriage, our counseling staff are here to talk with you and guide you through options and provide additional resources to help you. We have a team of caring Christian counselors and it would be a privilege for them to give you a call at a time that's convenient and hear you out.

Find out where you're at. They'll offer some guidance. They'll perhaps point you to some resources. They can connect you with somebody in your community and they'll pray with you. Help is a phone call away. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459. I also want to thank the Westbrooks for their honesty in sharing their story and for giving you a taste of what's going on here at Focus on the Family's Hope Restored Intensives from Coast to Coast, which by the way, have an 80% success rate.

It's a great program and I'm so glad Hope Restored gave Paul and Melody the tools they needed to save their marriage. Our research shows that we're helping to save about 300 marriages in crisis every day. Husbands and wives are coming to us for help and we need your financial partnership to be able to meet these needs.

Here's just one example. We received this note from Gina in Texas. After nine years of marriage, I divorced my husband. He became a Christian soon after we separated and a few months later, so did I.

We remarried, but the first two years of our reconciliation were tough. I started listening to Focus on the Family on my way to work every day. The encouragement and biblical marriage advice was just what I needed to hear. During that time, the Lord used your program to teach me how to be a better wife.

Thank you for your ministry. When she says your program, everybody that's supporting the ministry, it's our program together. If you'd like to be part of that team to help Focus on the Family do this work and help marriages like Gina's, please partner with us financially. Remember, when we save a marriage, we also save a family.

We are helping to provide a stable home for raising children and sparing them from the pain of divorce and the poverty that typically comes with it. Regardless of whether you can give to the ministry, we have a gift for you. We've put together a collection of free audio downloads featuring marriages that have come back from the brink of divorce, plus insights from Dr. Bob Paul and his wife Jenny about how our deep-seated fears impact our relationship. It's a full five hours of biblical wisdom and encouragement just for you. So look for the collection called Restoring Hope to Your Marriage when you visit us online. Yeah, these free audio collections are really popular with our listeners. Get yours today.

You'll find that Restoring Hope to Your Marriage Collection. We've got the link in the show notes. You can also call us, of course, if you have any questions or need immediate help. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family.

That's 800-232-6459. Let me mention that we have another free resource you might find helpful. It's our marriage assessment. Over a million people have taken this assessment and found it to be super helpful. It's about 10 or 15 minutes of your time, and it's going to show you and your spouse how you can stay strong and where you can grow together as a couple, maybe finances or communication.

This terrific resource is free, and you'll find that marriage assessment on our website, and we've got the link in the show notes. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. If you would, please take a moment and leave a rating in your podcast app and then tell a friend. That word of mouth really helps grow the audience for the show and spread the impact of what we're doing here.

So thanks in advance for all your help in doing that. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Culture is changing so fast.

How should Christians respond? At our next Lighthouse Voices event, you'll hear from John Stonestreet with the Colson Center. We live in what is called a civilizational moment. Civilizations ebb and flow, and we are at a pivotal moment. I think a lot of us have felt that existentially for a long time. Learn how to face this moment with clarity, confidence, and courage. Lighthouse Voices is on April 15th, and you can register for the free live stream at lighthousevoices.org.