Taking Courageous Steps to Save Your Marriage (Part 1 of 2)

And I just remember breaking down completely and just begging God and just saying, Lord, I have no clue what to do. I don't know where to go, where to turn, what to do.

And I said, you've got to help me. You can hear the desperation in her voice. Their marriage was in shambles.

In fact, it was one of the worst scenarios that their counselor had ever seen. And yet God helped Anne White and her husband to work through their brokenness and to find healing together. You'll hear about that today on Focus on the Family.

Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller and your host is Focus president and author Jim Daly. John Anne White is an author, speaker, a Bible teacher, Christian talk show host and the CEO of Courage for Life. She helps others out of her own painful experiences in marriage. And I think that's one of the best teachers, someone who's gone through the valley and come out the other side of it through God's strength. And she's written a great book called Courage for Life, which offers steps to finding courage to face our fears and be vulnerable and real with others and struggled with being open with others for decades, hiding emotionally. And now she shares hope and strength in Christ. And her husband, Mike, met in high school and they've been married for a number of years.

They have two adult sons. And Jim, here's how you began the conversation with Anne White on Focus on the Family. This is really hard to do. I mean, you do it with such grace, but to talk about the most painful areas of who you are in your relationship with your husband, with the Lord, it's got to be very difficult. Have you found that to be helpful to others? Is that why you do it? That's absolutely why I do it is because it is helpful for others, because I think many of us walk through life veiled at the possibilities because we're hiding what's really holding us back.

Fear comes into play and just keeps us tripped up all the time. And I know for myself, for 40 years, I just kept it under the radar and pretended that everything was okay. So if there was a difficulty in my marriage, I hid it. And I think everybody tends to do that. I was afraid of what people would think.

To some extent, I think everyone does it, if we're honest. I mean, because there are things that you don't lay out there, you know, it's not there's probably negative things that you shouldn't hide, obviously, or behavior, sinful behavior, those kinds of things. But there's also courtesies that you would hide, you know, when you feel irritated, the right thing to do is to kind of bury that I would think there is a healthy bearing, is there not?

There absolutely is. And I was gonna say that because, you know, I think we need to be transparent with our spouses, our family members, loved ones, friends, we need to come out and speak truth and love. But we don't have to tell everything, you know, so that goes for like what you said, you know, if we're agitated, and we just needed a moment to calm down and, you know, gather ourselves back together. Or if we're talking to a close friend, or someone who's come up to us and said, you know, tell me what you've been through in your life. And you know, how that might help me get through what I'm going through.

You don't have to tell all the details, right? The important thing is that people understand we're fellow strugglers, we're the body of Christ, and we're in this together. We don't have to be alone.

We don't have to walk these difficult journeys by ourselves. When I heard John talking about in the open their year marriage and what the counselor had said, there's one of the worst marriages he'd ever seen. I mean, that that's kind of jaw dropping. Well, so what was going wrong? That a counselor would say that will paint the picture of your early marriage.

What was happening? Correct. He did say that and what but what he actually said was, I've not seen a marriage in as much difficulty is what you guys are mess as big a mess is what you guys are in that's ever made it. So he'd seen many difficult marriages that the majority of them had broken apart and split. Well, that right there is the confidence people should have in what you're about to show.

So let's get into it. Where were each of you in your walk with Christ when you got married and in your early years of marriage? Where was God in your foundation? So we both grew up going to church occasionally. My husband grew up church of God. I grew up in the Methodist Church, but we would go occasionally. My parents were Christians. I believed I was a Christian, but I might be in church once a month and didn't have a clue what God's word said.

Didn't know other than to take my Bible to church with me on Sunday and listen to what the pastor had to say and then bring it back home and set it back on a shelf. That's basically all I knew about God and his word. I believed in Christ. I believed he was real, but that was the extent of it.

So I think it's a dangerous place to be, but that's where I was. And so there was no life change in my life because as a kid, I simply believed I was a Christian. I believed I had my ticket into heaven and that's all I needed and yet go ahead and just live life as it comes at you. My husband was going to church as well, thought he was a Christian and his mom would take him occasionally, but we both at 14 and 17 when we met, we were both very broken. We came from very broken homes with very broken relationships within our homes. So that obviously impeded our ability to have a healthy relationship even in high school. What would people on the outside looking at your marriage, how would they have described that marriage that you're living in? From the outside looking and we hit it very well and that was part of our problem. Use some of the words that people you think, and don't be shy, I mean what would people have said about Ann and Mike's marriage? They thought we had the perfect marriage, the perfect family, had it all together.

My husband started a business at 19 years old, knocking on doors selling insurance, became very successful. And so we had the two children, everyone was healthy, had a nice home, everything looked great on the outside. And we got really good at hiding it, but that's what we grew up learning that you're not to show your weaknesses, you're not to show that you're struggling. Well take us back to that, your family of origin. You know the scripture talks about how the sins of the father are visited upon four generations.

And when you think about that it sounds almost not understandable, but a practical application of that is the things we learn as children through our parents and grandparents, we take them forward. Describe how you took the sins of your fathers and mothers before you into your marriage. What was your childhood like? Well when I was born I was the baby. My parents had both had prior families before they divorced their spouses and married and then had me. So I was the product of the typical at that time modern family, the his, hers, and theirs. Huh, his, hers, and theirs.

Yeah. So started out that my father accepted my two brothers, my mom's two boys. And the first few years I remember mom telling me that things were really good. But by the time I came along my dad didn't accept my brothers.

And so there was a lot of verbal abuse, a lot of emotional abuse of just making them sit at the other table, not being able to have dinner with us. My dad had lost a son. There's a lot that goes behind this and my dad's brokenness. So my dad grew up the baby of nine in inner city Charlotte with an alcoholic father that beat him. Things that I learned much later on in life.

As a matter of fact it didn't really learn it until I started writing this book and doing more research really on my family. And that's usually what you find. There is a history that's going to propel somebody in those bad directions. Right. And so he became successful just simply out of a drive that he was going to make it regardless. And so he was a fighter, strong personality, dealt with a lot of insecurities and a lot of anger. And so his first wife that he married he lost their first son at two years old.

And so that compounded this hurt on top of theirs. So when he and mother married he took in her two sons as his own initially. But I don't know if it was out of guilt or what the issue became he decided that he couldn't raise another man's child.

Right. And so that attitude kind of carried itself throughout my brother's lives. So they felt rejected.

Absolutely rejected. Now they had their biological father who loved them dearly and they would go and see him. But they were growing up in a home with a man who rejected them.

That's really tough. How did that impact you? You talk about the anger. Did you bring anger into your marriage? Was that part of it?

Absolutely I did. How did that manifest itself? Well it manifested itself because I grew up feeling isolated from my brothers. And I grew up watching my brothers be disrespected, rejected and mistreated. And I became very angry with my father. And yet I carried that anger into my relationship but I learned to stuff that anger. That's what I saw my mom do. What does that look like?

I tend to be kind of just out there as John can attest to. So when you talk about stuffing anger I think I understand that. But describe it for me more deeply.

What does that look like? For me it was an internal processing. So if I was ever hurt, disappointed, angry, whatever I simply would just deal with it internally and allow it to continue to build up. What's the thought conversation you have when somebody would wrong you and that anger would flow? Let's say your husband Mike said something or did something that irritated you. What was the conversation you would have in your head?

Good question. The conversation I think I would have in my head when I would be hurt or angry would simply be, I've got to deal with this. I've got to find a way to get through this, to process it.

And I would think to myself, you can do this. And it got to a place in my life at one point where I might even deny that things happened. So if Mike and I had a terrible fight or we had difficulty in our marriage or we ran into a situation where we had hurt one another in some way, I might even say, you know what, I can't deal with that pain. So I'm just going to deny that it happened because if I want my marriage to continue, if I want my family to stay together, I need to just pretend that everything's okay and just go on. Just put it behind me and just go on. Just put it behind me and just pretend it never happened and go on.

And I became really good at that. But what happens is that just continues to build up. It doesn't go anywhere. It just sits inside you. Inside you feel like you're building this big wall of protection and you're putting those bricks up to where no hurt, no pain, nothing can penetrate you.

And you just move forward and go forward and say, I can handle anything. How many years of wall building did you go through before God started to tear your wall down? Twenty-five.

So twenty-five years of marriage. And then what was the precipice? What did the Lord use between you and Mike to get a hold of you to say, this is unhealthy, you've got to change. And did it happen to both of you at the same time or was it you first or Mike first? Or what happened? It happened to me in 2012. It's kind of when the dam broke.

And it was about eight years prior to that. And God had been working on me since about 1999. And I talk about that in the book Courage for Life. I kind of go back and tell that journey of where that part began and God began to woo me in as he does.

And as we go through difficult times and we stuff those hurts and we have no one else to turn to or we feel that we have no one else to turn to, we obviously turn to God. But what that did for me, which is a good thing, is it drew me closer into him. It drew me closer into a personal relationship with him. And so about eight years prior to the dam breaking, to that crisis moment where everything kind of fell apart, God drew me to his word. I remember in 2004 we had just moved to a new town that was about an hour and a half away from our church. And I had been really involved in our church there in Woodstock, Georgia, and had been really receiving a lot of benefits from being involved at church. I was – Dr. Darrell Bock Describe that. Help us. What does that mean?

Accolades? Dr. Debbie Wade And as we moved about two hours or about an hour and a half to two hours away from our home church, I really questioned God. And I said, Lord, why did you take me here? I was drawing closer to you. I was getting fed. And I remember the Lord saying to me specifically, I don't want you to be fed at church.

I want to feed you personally. And I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what it looked like. But shortly after that, it was within a month or two, we were living in Rome, Georgia, and we were just maybe 45 minutes from Chattanooga. And I had someone tell me about preset ministries. And I went to a women's conference there and learned that Kay Arthur was still doing pilot studies during the week on Tuesdays and that you could go and she'd give you the workbooks to work through a particular book of the Bible.

So in 2005, I started going on Tuesdays and I could not get enough. And it changed my life. God began to feed me.

Like he said he would. And so I learned I could do that. And that's what led me to the point in 2012 where I think God got me to that point where he said, you can no longer live like this. You can no longer hide your pain, your sin, your brokenness, all of the difficulties, all of the stuff, all the hurt from childhood. You can't go any further with that.

It's time for you to come out and be open and get this dealt with. Well, Anne White is our guest today on Focus on the Family. And your host is Jim Daly.

I'm John Fuller. And you can find out more of Anne's story and some great encouragement in her book Courage for Life. And the subtitle is Discover a Life Full of Confidence, Hope and Opportunity. We've got the book and a CD of our conversation today.

Stop by the show notes for all the details. And when you look back on that, it's not that long ago, actually, you know, that surrender to God, what you were going through. And I think there are many churches that are great churches that are people are going to be fed in those churches through precepts.

So the church plays a critical function as well. Absolutely. But I want to concentrate more with you and Mike and where you were at. What was his attitude seeing you move more closely into God's orbit, reading the Word, reading the prophets?

Were you having discussions about it? Was Mike intrigued or was he like, what has happened to my wife? You know, I think Mike has always loved the Lord. You know, we both have loved the Lord.

We just didn't know kind of where we were. And I can't speak for him, certainly. But I can say what I observed was he was busy growing a business, a very successful business. So he had those pressures.

He had a lot of those pressures. And so while he loved the Lord, he would go to church with me on Sunday mornings. I was growing deeper and closer to the Lord. And I think it probably put a little pressure on him, probably made him feel a little know the right word outside. Maybe so. Yeah, probably so. Just a little outside your relationship with the Lord? Yeah.

I could understand that. In fact, you went to Israel. I think that was the trip that that surrender actually occurred. Set that up for us and speak to the environment, what you and Mike were dealing with, the phone calls you were having, and how God used that separation time, you being in Israel, I think with your son, right? With our oldest son. Yeah, what happened?

He was 24 at the time. So that's actually how the book Courage for Life starts out. I start out with that crisis in Israel, because I had gotten there, I think, right before we left, the night before I left for Israel with this trip. It was a church trip, and there were about 40 other church members. We headed to Israel the night before Mike and I were in our typical argument, because our relationship, not simply because of him, not simply because of me, but simply because of our brokenness and what we were doing to each other. It was a duel. You know, we were both responsible for allowing our marriage to deteriorate, and we were arguing. And we both knew that our marriage was on life support, and we both knew that divorce was in our future. So as I left for Israel with my oldest son, who knew very little about what was going on in our life, because we'd hidden it from our kids as much as we'd hidden it from everyone else, left with my pastor and his wife, my son, and 40 other church members, we get to Israel.

And after our first day, we come back that evening. And as I talk about in the book, I came back. Blake was on the phone with Mike. And Blake, as he intuitively would have done and did, said, Hey, Dad, you want to talk to Mom? And of course, that puts Mike and I both on the spot. You know, we had been arguing and probably needed that break from one another. But I got on the phone with Mike.

Blake went back to his room to take a shower. And we proceeded to continue to disagree and talk about what we were going to do about the mess of our relationship and really how we were going to amicably divorce. Yeah.

And what stopped that from happening? I mean, when a couple's at that point, in fact, you know, one of the things, John, that we have is Hope Restored, which is an intensive marriage counseling experience for people with an 81% post two year success rate. And this is one of those things that many of the people that go have actually signed the divorce papers. And this is a critical point, because some listening right now might be there, and that they've just had that conversation, they may not be in Israel, they may be at work and one at home. And they're at this point where they're saying, Okay, how are we going to amicably in this thing, as believers?

Yes. And that's not the will of God. That's not his heart for their relationship. How does a person pull back? What happened in your life as an example, and as a witness to the others listening who might be at that same point? Well, you know, Jim, I think we often try to control our situations. And I know I did and Mike is very strong personality and a very successful man. He, you know, is in control of all his life. Yeah, we had no problem controlling many situations in our life. So we tried to control our marriage. But we knew at that point, I knew at that point, I could no longer control the situation. I had no control. I couldn't save it.

I couldn't do anything in my power to save it, or to allow it to dissolve amicably. I mean, had no clue what to let me ask you this was that in hindsight, when in that moment, could you see that was a good thing? Or did you feel it was a bad thing that you couldn't control your marriage? Of course, at the moment, I thought it was a bad thing. You know, I thought that I could control anything. And it was a God thing. But it was a God thing.

God allowed me to get to the end of myself to where I couldn't control anything anymore. So Mike and I actually ended up hanging up. I don't know who hung up first. But it wasn't friendly.

It wasn't a friendly into that phone call when I was in Israel. And I remember just sitting there on the edge of my bed, like, had an adjoining room. So he was over in his other room. And I just remember breaking down completely and just begging God.

I remember being face down on the floor. And just saying, Lord, I have no clue what to do. I don't know where to go, where to turn what to do.

I said, you gotta help me. And I think that's the sad thing. Sometimes we wait until it's so bad before we turn to the Lord and say, God, tell me what to do. Yeah, well, that's so true. And for those that are experiencing desperation, that's really what you're describing. The Lord is there.

I mean, that's the that's the truth of everything. And it's a matter of recognizing it and turning toward him. You wrote a note, though, I would say reading the book, your first step was the vulnerability step to share with somebody who was that somebody. And was it during the Israel trip? It absolutely was. So that very moment when my face was on the floor, and I was asking God what to do. He immediately gave me the answer.

He immediately I knew immediately what I was supposed to do. I felt the Lord speak to my spirit, and tell me to write down the reality of our situation on a piece of hotel letterhead and take it to my pastor and his wife in there. They would have seen you as a together couple back to our description before for 15 years, we were great. We were still great friends with him, obviously. But for 15 years prior to that moment, we'd been great friends traveled internationally with them traveled many times spent vacations with them. They had no clue. Yeah, wow. You were good managers of the pain.

We were I mean, really. So unfortunately, you slipped the note. How did you get the note to the pastor and his wife?

And what did you do that took that kind of courage? In fact, your book courage for life. This is the beginning. It's exactly the beginning of where it all started.

So describe that for us. So in that moment, I wrote on the front and back of this letterhead and just really just told them kind of where we were a marriage was on life support. And, and I knew if I didn't deliver that letter, if I waited until in the morning, when we'd be getting back together as a group, I wouldn't give it to them.

I knew I would check it out. So I called their hotel room. And Janet, my pastor's wife answered the phone, dear friend of mine, and I said, Are you in your room? And she said, Yeah. And I said, I need to bring you something.

I'll be right there. So I walked out of that room with a note in my hand scared, scared to death. And I and I say scared to death. I mean, at 46 years old, you know, 4748 years old, I was scared to death, I was trembling to tell someone the reality of my brokenness in my situation. Well, for the first time, it sounds like you're doing something against your nature.

Yes, the nature that you had learned as a little girl, what you had learned as a young wife, that burying and hiding in the Lord's pulling you out of the weeds. Yes, saying, Okay, take this step. It's marvelous to hear how God would you into that in a loving way, he gave me the courage to be able to get that note into their hands. And as I talked about in the book, I talk about that moment as I handed that note to her in the elevator door, opens up like 20 feet away, and I hear the bell and then out of the elevator comes my pastor and his two grandkids that they brought on the trip with them and they're holding ice cream and saying, Hey, come on in. Let's and I'm like, No, I just need to give you this note. And I just want to ask you to pray for Mike and I love you guys.

I'll see y'all tomorrow. And boom, I was out of there. But still, an amazing step occurs that the Lord used, obviously, it cracked your heart open, didn't it? Absolutely. I mean, that's the key thing. And, you know, and for people listening, hopefully, we all go through that experience where we have to do something that takes us out of our comfort zone.

And what I mean by the comfort zone is the cover up zone. You know, it might be that vulnerability in your marriage where you've done something you need to share with your spouse. And what is amazing with that, hopefully, and it doesn't always work out that way. But that vulnerability ends up developing even greater trust, and a platform for that relationship to be stronger than it's ever been. It is. And it has been and it is.

And I was very fortunate. You know, I could have been the only person to take that step of courage in my marriage. We knew we couldn't go any further. It was literally going to be over if we didn't do something. But I remember coming back to the room and in a short time after that, letting Mike know that I just uncovered our brokenness to two of our very best friends.

And we are out of time. I need to quickly hear the Mike's response. In three words, what would it be? In three words.

At first, he was not happy. But God worked on his heart and he, as a man of courage, came forward and said, Let's get help together. Let's get help.

Three words. And you have a wonderful story, a powerful story. We're in the middle of it.

Let's continue the discussion next time. And I want to talk about the steps that you offer to others that can begin their healing journey in your wonderful book, Courage for Life. And we'll do that. If you can make a gift of focus of any amount, we'll send you Ann's book as our way of saying thank you. If you can't afford it, we want your marriage to thrive. So get a hold of us. We'll get it into your hands.

Others, I'm sure, will cover the expense of doing that. The bottom line is we're in this together on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ to help marriages thrive. And Ann, I so appreciate you and Mike's story and how it's unfolding. Let's come back again and continue the story. Can we do that?

We absolutely can. Thank you for having me. Well, get a hold of us here at Focus. If you'd like a copy of Ann's book, Courage for Life. And if you can, please make a generous donation, as Jim said, to Focus on the Family so we can continue our efforts through these broadcasts and various resources. And Hope Restored, the marriage intensive Jim noted a few minutes ago.

That's an incredible opportunity, by the way, for couples to see God work and rebuild their relationship. Now, we do need your partnership to continue Hope Restored and other outreaches. So please donate as you can when you call 800 the letter A in the word family, or stop by the episode notes for all the details. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family.

I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. One in five households cares for a child with special needs. Is yours one of them? If so, we know you want your child to be taken care of no matter what happens. If you want to secure your child's future by preparing a will, but need extra guidance for your unique situation, Focus on the Family can help. Download our resource, 15 questions to ask if you have a child with special needs. It's our gift to you at focusonthefamily.com slash special needs ebook.