Fortifying Your Marriage for the Storms of Life

Announcer: Welcome to Focus on the Family’s weekend broadcast. We hope the following program will challenge you and encourage you in your faith journey.
John Fuller: Today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, we're exploring the topic of storms, which can change very quickly and unexpectedly. A light rain can transform without warning into a howling gale. It’s really damaging, even life-threatening. Your marriage is going to go through storms at some point. The question is, are you ready? I’m John Fuller, and thanks for joining us today.
Jim Daly: John, the voice actor. I like this. You should go out for Odyssey and become a voice there. It bothers me that I had one little part there once upon a time, but it’s true. Marriage at times can be a struggle, just like voice acting. Jean and I have our struggles too. Jean is always saying you need to let people know we’re not perfect, and we’re not. We have things in our own marriage that we have to work on, and that’s okay. That’s kind of like what life is. Today we want to hear from a great friend and guest who wants to prepare you for those inevitable storms in your marriage. Let me remind you, Focus on the Family is here for you. That is key. We want to help you in any way we can. We are a treasure trove of resources here at Focus. Almost 50 years doing this, we have accumulated great wisdom with our counselors, our resources, and the books we select and approve.
John Fuller: Gary Thomas is our guest today. He’s a wonderful speaker and author. He serves on the pastoral teaching team at Cherry Hills Community Church in Highlands Ranch, outside of Denver. Among the many books Gary has written, the one we’re talking about today is *Making Your Marriage a Fortress: Strengthening Your Marriage to Withstand Life’s Storms*.
Jim Daly: You have written some incredible books on marriage. I would say you’re the foremost expert on marriage. I hope your wife, Lisa, is happy. Jean and I always talk about that. It’s tough to be in that marriage space where you’re the expert, and then you and your wife have an argument and you’re thinking in the back of your mind, "Wait a minute, this can’t be happening to us." Does that happen to you?
Gary Thomas: What’s been a blessing, because people often ask Lisa what it's like, she says what’s made it easier for her is he really does live out what he writes about, except for one book. We talked about it. *Every Body Matters*. She thinks I could do a better job eating a little more healthily than I do. But as far as marriage, she seems to give me at least a passing grade.
Jim Daly: Now you made the rest of us feel better when we eat that In-N-Out burger. Let’s get into it. Explain the idea of storms in a marriage. I get it generally, but I understand it’s related to your experience of surviving that hurricane down in Houston.
Gary Thomas: It happened in 2017, and I think a lot of people can relate to this. We’d been in Houston for seven years at the time. Every time in the fall, you have the signs blinking on the freeway saying hurricane season is here, get your preparedness kits ready and all of that. For the first few years, we take it seriously. We’re from the Pacific Northwest, so the thought of a hurricane is terrible. After four or five years, you’re like, "Yeah, I’ve heard that before." Then in 2017, they said this big thing, Hurricane Harvey, is coming. It hit, and it wasn’t that big of a deal at first. Then it moved a little inland, camped over Houston, and dropped over 50 inches of rain in three days. It felt like Noah’s flood. The water keeps coming up and up. At that point, we see it coming into the yard and I thought, "I’ve got to take this seriously." I go in the garage. This is so pathetic. All I had was cardboard and blue painter's tape, which to hold out floodwater is about as much luck as carrying a gallon of water in a paper bag. I realized just because a storm didn’t come last year or the year before, people who are from that area of the country know eventually it is coming and you need to be prepared. The same thing is true for marriages. Just because it has only ever happened to your neighbor or you haven’t seen it, just the way that life works, even for believers, and sometimes especially for believers, the storm is going to hit. At that point, will your marriage be part of the problem or part of the solution? That’s why you want to prepare.
Jim Daly: You say these storms will reveal one or two truths about a marriage and a couple. What are those?
Gary Thomas: All of these couples, one thing that they had in common was that they never imagined that they would have to face the depth of pain and struggle that they faced. They were all caught by surprise. Secondly, God is faithful, and not theoretically. There are two verses that have really come true as I’ve written this book and think about it and am speaking on it. Psalm 9:10 says, "Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you." There hasn’t been a single person who seeks God that God has forsaken. Then Jesus’s almost fierce promise, but comforting one: "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart; I have overcome the world." Every couple found that to be true. They did face trouble, but when they sought refuge in God, they found refuge, a new relationship with God, and a new relationship with each other.
Jim Daly: One of the great breakdowns in marriage can be those expectations, especially early in marriage. Speak to that expectation problem.
Gary Thomas: It’s not just the expectations we have of our spouse. I think it’s the expectations we have of God and ourselves. I think of one couple, Darryl and Stacey, a wonderful godly couple. Stacey came from a dysfunctional childhood and so she really wanted a strong man who would take care of her. Darryl was a weightlifter. He could bench press 400 pounds. His expectations were, "I’m going to be there for my wife physically. I’m going to protect my wife. I’m going to be carrying in the groceries" or whatnot. Three years after they were married, they got the diagnosis of MS on the part of Darryl. Really what motivated Stacey to get married, wanting a strong man who’s going to make her feel secure, would never come true. She had to completely die to those expectations. Darryl thought his relationship with Stacey would be, "You can count on me. I’m going to be there for you. I’m going to take care of you." Now he says, decades later, "She takes care of me." Stacey said, "When I married Darryl, I thought I would just bask in the glow of Bubba." He was a weightlifter, he was a big guy, but charismatic, loved the Lord, and great with kids. Today Stacey says he’s marked by humility like no other guy I know because MS has humbled him. She thought he would impress people with his strength. God decided he’s going to impress people with his humility, which only would have come through the severe road that they walked together.
Jim Daly: The other part of that is how Darryl embraced what God’s journey for him is. He didn’t walk away from the Lord in that respect. He said, "Thank you, Lord, and let’s move on." That’s amazing.
Gary Thomas: It wasn’t easy. When he was first diagnosed, he was an athlete and thought of himself that way. He had a one two-word prayer: "Heal me, heal me, heal me." He just kept praying. Who wouldn’t, in your 20s, facing this? Until God finally said to him, "Darryl, I am going to heal you, but not of MS. I’m going to use MS to heal other things in your life." It ended up being the pride. Darryl talked about getting into bed at night. He gets his chair right up to there. He still has use of his arms somewhat so he can lift his body onto the bed, but he can’t get his legs over. Stacey has to lift up his legs and move them over onto the bed. He said to me, "Gary, I’m tempted sometimes to say, 'Why bother? I’m just going to let Stacey do everything. I’m only doing a little bit.'" He was really challenged. He said, "I think I could probably physically only do about 20% of what I used to do, but I’ve been convicted by God. I want to do 100% of that 20%." So often when couples go through challenges, they just give up. "Well, if we can’t do everything we wanted to do, let’s just go into early retirement." Maybe it could be a financial calamity, not just health, where we can’t afford to do the resorts or go to the Michelin three-star restaurants. But don’t say then you’re never going to go out. Do 100% of what you’re able to do. That’s the humility that was carved out of decades of seeing their expectations crushed, but the surprise they found was God was there in their greatest fear.
Jim Daly: The next one was Baron and Christie. He was in the Navy, a chaplain in the Navy. He was deployed for three to six months at a time. Describe what they were dealing with and how they sorted that out.
Gary Thomas: Baron is a soldier through and through. He was a Marine before he became a chaplain. He often serves with the special ops guys. These are the kinds of guys you don’t want to go down an alley with. If they’re on your side, you have no truer friend. This is valuable for a long deployment in the military or if you’re traveling for business. They talked about leaving, but they didn’t talk about reentry. They just learned. None of these couples say, "We’re just unusually wise, unusually connected, unusually mature." They share how they messed up. Christina knew that Baron likes a clean house and a clean car when he comes home. She cleaned the car, but she forgot the steering wheel and the steering wheel was sticky. Baron says, "Well, in the Marine Corps, sticky is sticky and sticky isn’t clean." This is where you have to talk about it as a couple because I traveled a lot when the kids were younger without Lisa because she had to be home with the kids. Rather than having the house clean, I just wanted peace and quiet. I’d been in front of groups, I’d been talking to people all day, I just wanted to chill out and have a relational time. Lisa thinks her love language is cleaning, acts of cleaning. So when I’d come home, she’s furiously vacuuming and wiping. I’d say, "Honey, I don’t see the crumbs. I’m not inspecting the floor. I just really want to relax and say hi to you and say hi to the kids." What Baron wanted isn’t what I want, but what I learned from their experiences is to talk about it and then talk about it some more. So often we have these expectations of our spouses, but we don’t tell them, but we still hold them accountable to it. Baron talked about one deployment where he was available, because a lot of times when he’s in the field he’s not, but he was meeting with other chaplains. It was a training thing. For three or four nights, brothers-in-arms are having a great time, they’re laughing, and then Christie started to say, "Hey Baron, we haven’t connected for three or four days." He said, "Gary, I realized I would never go out three evenings in a row if I was home and not be connecting with Christie. So just because I’m on the road, I’m still married and I have to act like a married man on the road." They were intentional about, "You know what? Just because you’re on the road or just because you’re the one at home, you still need to make time for your spouse." They’ve learned being in the military that if you aren’t intentionally connecting while you’re on the road, you learn how to live separate lives. If you learn how to live separate lives, you become comfortable with separate lives, and that is a gateway to divorce.
Jim Daly: Create a communication pattern. I try to call Jean at least once during the day when I’m traveling. It’s usually two or three times when I have a little break. I probably bug the daylight out of her. "Hey, what are you doing? Didn’t we just talk an hour ago? I’m not doing much more differently now." But it’s just good to stay connected.
Gary Thomas: Christie really stressed this because she has a friend whose husband is a pilot and he didn’t do that well. She says, "I’m talking to him on the phone and I can tell I have about 10% of him. He’s watching a game, he’s watching SportsCenter." My conclusion was, if you know you only have 10 minutes of solid conversation, give your spouse the full 10 minutes. That’s why I like FaceTime, because you can’t cheat. Look at each other face-to-face. It’s better to say, "I’m yours for this amount of time," and then say you’re tired and have to go. One woman said her husband would call her when she was at work and she would just be up front. "Hey babe, I’ve got five minutes before I have to be in this meeting, but I’m all yours for five minutes." Then she would listen and engage. Be intentional when you are communicating and then just admit when you’re at the end. For Baron and Christie, "high-low" was really helpful to set up their conversation. What’s the high point? What’s the low point?
Jim Daly: Let's move to the other couple, Keith and Roxanne, who brought quite a bit of baggage into the relationship. When you bring childhood wounds and things into the marriage, boy, you have got to deal with that stuff. Describe what they brought into the marriage and how it unfolded.
Gary Thomas: First, a word to wives. It’s so devastating. Wives can be unfaithful too. There’s a story in the book where a wife had the affair. So often wives think if my husband is cheating or he’s looking at porn, "What could I have done? Am I not keeping myself up? Am I not active in?" Every husband insisted, and Keith was among this, there’s nothing my wife could have done to stop me from straying. This is not about her; it was entirely about me. Keith said Roxanne was my perfect wife, and because I thought she was a perfect wife, I thought I’m certainly going to lose her when she finds out the real me. "Why don’t I just get it over with, act so outrageously that it’s like pulling off the band-aid and getting it done?" For Roxanne, her father had been unfaithful to her mom. She just had these real deep wounds and a lot of insecurity. Keith grew up in a family where he was not brought in as part of it. He always felt left out. Then he was molested as a young boy. A counselor in Houston that I often go to for these issues told me, "Gary, whenever a client comes to me and says that this happened to him as a young boy, I wait for the dominoes to fall." He’s not excusing it, but it’s such a deep wound. Because Keith didn’t deal with that baggage, marriage gives guys about a 9 to 12-month pause. In the freshness of marriage, a lot of those old things go away, but eventually, if they’re not dealt with, they’re going to come back. It’s about getting strong so that you can be strong in your marriage. Roxanne couldn’t cure or help or heal Keith. He needed a professional. She’s not a PhD counselor. If you have some hurts, maybe kids laughed at you or bullied you a little bit, maybe you’re fine to talk with a pastor and receive spiritual care. But when you have the level of hurt that Keith had and I think that Roxanne had, you need a professional. I can brush my teeth, I can't give myself a root canal. We often demean that in the Christian community because we think, "Well, really, all you need is God." Of course that’s true if the Lord can wipe that slate clean, that’s wonderful. That’s not typically what happens. God puts us on journeys to learn things about ourselves and about the world around us. So I love that encouragement to get good Christian counseling. Instead of just saying, "Oh, it makes me so angry when he does this" or "when she disrespects me," I want to say, "Why does this make you angry? Why does this make you feel so disrespected? Why are you so sensitive to this or that?" It might be what your spouse is doing, but it might not be. It might be what your dad did, what your mom did, what your siblings did. It’s just recognizing that we bring a lot of baggage into our marriage and I don’t want my wife to have to carry it. That’s where I need to go get help and say, "Can you unload this so I’m not just dumping it on my spouse?"
Jim Daly: Temperament plays into this. It could be either the husband or the wife. Either one can be very pro-counseling, the other one not so much because for some it marks failure, that I’m not measuring up, all those performance issues. It’s not about that. It’s about getting healthy. The impact of isolation in a marriage can really wreak havoc on that relationship. We as men tend to pull in and go the way of the little boy. We don’t want to deal with it, we don’t want her harping on us, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to fix that in me, so we just pull in and we go news, weather, and sports. For wives, they find it in other activity, girlfriend activity, they get distracted, and you end up isolated. Speak to the verse in Proverbs about the downside of isolation. It feels like it’s a medication, but it’s medicating in the wrong way.
Gary Thomas: Proverbs 18:1 says, "Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment." Keith felt like his downfall into affairs was fueled largely by isolation. He didn’t deal with feeling isolated from his family of origin and so he felt the same thing in his marriage and thought he had to look outside of his family to do it. I think isolation is sort of like Focus on the Family. Publishers say they want books that are Tylenol, not vitamin. What they mean by that is if you have a headache, "I need this." Vitamins are supplements for long-term health and they don’t seem as urgent. I bet when people are going through an affair or a kid is rebelling or things are crazy, they’re listening to 10 Focus on the Family episodes. This is why you need the supplements as well because if you wait until the crisis hits before you try to gain the wisdom or before you’re part of a church group, they wouldn’t have had anybody to call. When things are going well, you don’t think you need church. It’s like an obligation, "Well we should go, it’s Sunday." But if you know the storms are going to come, you’re going to say, "We need to be a part of a church. The day will come when we need them, and the day is here when somebody needs us." 耶稣说："在这个世界上你会有麻烦。" 如果你相信耶稣，总有一天你需要那些教会成员用他们的双臂搂着你，如果你等到那个时候就太晚了。因此，请继续收听 "关注家庭"，获取每日维生素。在圣经中成长，这样你就能在需要的时候吸取那强大的真理。建立这些关系，让你们能在一起。 On the sunny day, get the sandbags ready because you’re going to need them tomorrow.
John Fuller: Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family's weekend broadcast. We’ll take a quick break and then return with the second half of this program for your family. Stay tuned.
Jim Daly: ChatGPT and AI can offer you ideas and attempt to give you answers, but it can’t listen with compassion, pray with you, or offer biblical wisdom. Real connection is what brings true hope. Focus on the Family offers a free confidential consultation with a Christian counselor to guide you and help you find hope with whatever you’re facing. Go to focusonthefamily.com/gethelp or call 1-800-A-FAMILY. That’s 1-800-232-6459.
Erin Smalley: Marriage is a journey with lots of ups and downs, so navigate all the twists and turns with *Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage*, a podcast from Focus on the Family. I’m Erin Smalley and I co-host the podcast with my husband, Dr. Greg Smalley. Each episode will help you tackle problems you may be facing or just help make your relationship even sweeter. Listen to *Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage* and other podcasts from Focus on the Family at focusonthefamily.com/podcasts.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family broadcast. Let’s resume now with the balance of today’s programming.
Jim Daly: Gary, I like the way you structured the book in that you're pulling on a lot of stories from various couples that people can see their own lives in. Three years after they were married, they got the diagnosis of MS on the part of Darryl. Really what motivated Stacey to get married would never come true. She had to completely die to those expectations. Darryl thought his relationship with Stacey would be, "You can count on me." Now he says, decades later, "She takes care of me." Gary Thomas is back with us today on Focus on the Family. Gary, welcome back.
Gary Thomas: Thank you. It’s so good to be here.
Jim Daly: Last time we started with that theme of the hurricane in Houston that you didn’t prepare for. You had blue duct tape and cardboard, didn't work too well. My storm story: in August, I bought a snowblower when we bought our house here in Colorado. I thought I’m ahead of the curve. In fact, the guy at the store said, "You’re really thinking outside the box, it’s August." I got it, put the oil in it, put the gas in it, started it up, it ran great. I shoved it into the corner of the garage. The first snowstorm here came, two feet in October. I went and pulled that thing out, went to start it, and the engine had seized after running for three minutes. All that preparation and it still went down. How’s that relate to marriage?
Gary Thomas: There are three building blocks of emotional connection. I relied somewhat on the research of Dr. Archibald Hart and Dr. Sharon May, a father-daughter team. They talk about trust, which is so key and it’s not just issues of betrayal that you’re not going to be unfaithful to me. It’s "if you say you’re going to pick up the bread, pick up the bread." Trust is so key to intimacy. Betrayal is to a marriage what dynamite is to a door. I mean, it just blows it apart. We too often think of betrayal just in the terms of sexual unfaithfulness, but we need to build trust in other areas. The second thing was emotional availability. This can be tougher for guys. It’s just that I’m making myself available for my wife, I’m letting her explore, I’m exploring, I’m being there so that I can be present with her in her issues and she can be present in mine. Then sensitive responsiveness. This was helpful for me because so often as a guy, our wife says something that’s hurting her and our first thing is, "Okay, I’m going to fix that." What they really want to know right now is that there’s this sensitive response. You want to fix it because you don’t want to have to live through this with me. The process matters so much to our wives. If you lose trust and emotional availability and sensitive responsiveness, you’re on your road to getting further and further apart. But those are also three tools that couples can use to begin to rebuild their marriages. Give an example where a wife had had an affair. Her husband was really grilling her one night. He was trying to catch her like a detective. "Well, you said you went there and you said he called you there and how could those both be true?" She said, "David, you’ve asked me that question a hundred times and I’ll give you an answer a hundred times. I’m so sorry for what happened and I understand why you’re doing." She wasn’t being defensive. She was almost saying, "I get why you’re suspicious, it makes sense, and so I’m going to be sensitively responsive." Where it doesn’t go well, and I see guys do this more than women, they’ll confess and say, "Well, when are you going to get over it?" Maybe never. That’s not a sensitive response. I put this fear in you, I put this hurt in you, I put this suspicion in you. I get it, it’s on me, not on you. I’m not asking you to get over it; I’m willing to bear it.
Jim Daly: You also write in the book about the mundane things that create breaches. I thought one of the interesting ones, and I experienced this when our boys were little, I remember coming home from work. I had a long day and I was exhausted. I literally got one foot in the door, Jean was at the door with Trent and Troy, one in each arm, and she says, "You’ve got to take the kids. I’m done. I’m done for the day. Take the kids." I put the briefcase down, I throw my jacket on the ground, "Okay." I took the boys and took them to the basement and played with them. But it was hard because I was saying to Jean later, "Man, I just need five minutes, just let me change my clothes, put a T-shirt on and some shorts, and then I’ll do whatever we need to do with the kids." That is a little bit of drift that you talk about.
John Fuller: A storm can be a good thing that happens, like bringing a new baby into the house. A great thing, but disruptive. When a new baby is born, a new marriage is born. Even if it’s the second or third baby, it’s a different family. It’s not the same family.
Gary Thomas: The couples that made it, John and Deborah from the book and others, where their kids were older but during COVID he had to double down—he was a pastor and launched online services—they were ruthless in cutting out what they could and they were intentional, I mean industriously so, in saying, "We’re going to come out of this closer together." I think every time a couple brings home a new baby, there should be this pledge, and I think spoken out loud: "Our first goal is that 18 years from now we’re closer because we brought this baby home, not further apart." It’s the best thing for the baby, it’s the best thing for the marriage, it’s the best thing for the legacy that they would leave behind. But they made tough choices. In the case of John, now he’s an eye surgeon, but he talked about what they do for their Sunday night check-ins. He talked about residency. Every picture of him that first year, he's laying on the couch asleep with the baby on top of him because he was so tired. They realized, "Okay, this can't go on. This can't happen with baby number two." He now works three days a week and he works five minutes from home so he can come home from lunch. You might say, "Would you make that sacrifice?" He goes, "Yeah, I drive an older car." But if you could have the relationship with your wife that I have, it’s an unmatchable connection. "I like the life of intimacy that we share, the fun we have, the joy and connected. I would rather be this connected to my wife with maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars less in the bank than have money that I may never spend and feel like we don’t know each other and be frustrated with each other all the time." Hannah says, "You know, we even occasionally do marriage seminars and everybody says you guys are so lucky, you’re such a good match, you found each other." Luck has nothing to do with it. We didn’t find this marriage; we created and we work hard to keep it. We can be distant easily. When they didn’t do the three different ones, they had a date night. They live in British Columbia. Beautiful sunset, paddleboarding, and they wrecked it because they had one of their worst arguments ever. Friends came by in a boat and said, "Oh, this is such a romantic evening, isn’t it?" They’re like, "This has nothing to do with romance." Younger couples often think you find the right person and you reap a great marriage. These couples discovered you have to be intentional. For John and Deborah, Sunday evenings, two to three hours, that was their time. It was inviolate. The kids could not come into their room; they would not schedule anything. That kind of intentionality pays off big time.
Jim Daly: Let me ask you, how finances can create such a storm in the marriage and what can couples do practically to get their hands around that issue of finance?
Gary Thomas: I featured two different couples. One that were buried in debt to where they owed more than they earned in year, and that was a wake-up call. Another couple that was very poor when they got married, then very wealthy, and then they lost it all and they’ve been dealing with that for a decade and a half. The two key lessons I got from this on finances were this: communication is so important. In both cases, one spouse didn’t communicate to the other just how bad it was. With one couple, the wife was an accountant and husband thought, "Well, she’s an accountant, she knows what’s going on." But she just didn’t share that they were going a little bit more into debt, a little bit more. When they found out they were more in debt than they earned in a year, he was just angry that she let them get into this situation. Even if you’re in a family where one person primarily handles the finances, in my marriage that’s my wife, we still have to have these quarterly meetings where I know this is where investments are, this is where we’re giving, this is where we’re settled. If you don’t want finances to pull you apart, there’s got to be great communication. The second issue was the anger that resulted from that and learning how to deal with it. I found one verse that I think a lot of couples take too literally in a way that hurts their marriage, and that’s that verse, "Do not let the sun go down while you are angry and do not give the devil a foothold." So they think they have to keep working this out before they go to sleep. That’s what happened with Randy and Hannah. They’re going around and around and around, "Well we don't let the sun go down on your anger," and it only got worse. It took Randy three days to come to grips with his anger and frustration before they could deal it productively. When you look at that scripture, there are three statements, not one. "In your anger do not sin," that’s one. "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry," that’s two. "And do not give the devil a foothold." We pull that second phrase out of context and make that the whole message. In the Old Testament times, that was "don’t delay paying somebody because at that point if you did, they might go home hungry." If you’ve taken somebody’s coat, return it by midnight so that they’re not cold through the night. It was just a way, Paul’s just using language from scripture they would understand. But what he’s really saying is, "In your anger do not sin, and don’t give the devil a foothold." If you’re going around and around and it’s 2:00 AM, my suggestion is get a good night's sleep, wake up, have a bagel, a cup of coffee, process it, maybe talk to God, and then come together. I don’t think you’re disobeying that verse. I think you’re saying, "Okay, I don’t want to sin in my anger and I don’t want to give the devil a foothold." That’s what the couples found was most helpful for them. These marriage challenges teach us how to handle things like anger, like fear, like a lack of forgiveness, like arrogance.
Jim Daly: Gary, I'm circling like a buzzard coming back to some of the themes that you're mentioning, but one of the things you said that caught my attention was that busyness can be the sucker punch of a marriage. Describe how we need to be aware of the sucker punch.
Gary Thomas: Most of us see sickness as a serious assault on our marriage. When you get a diagnosis, you have MS, you have cancer, you have Alzheimer's, okay, this is something that we have to face head-on. Busyness is more by degrees. It’s like gaining weight; you gain a quarter pound every two weeks, which means you gain half a pound in a month, which means you gain six pounds in a year, and 12 pounds and it’s not that much. I think with marriages you can experience that distance where you don’t know more. So I would just ask couples today listening, do you know your spouse’s greatest temptation right now? Do you know their greatest frustration at work? Do you know the greatest fear they have for their children? Do you know the greatest hurt from their childhood that they’re trying to deal with that keeps coming back and really challenges how they view themselves? Do you know their best way of connecting with God? Do they feel far from God? So often we just assume that we know our spouses and that we’re walking this life together. Those are basic things that we often just never get around and it’s just because we’re just too busy. It’s a sucker punch, we don’t see it coming until all of a sudden we’re knocked out and say how did that happen? How many times have you heard this: "I love him, I’m just not in love with him anymore." More often than not, that’s just busyness, you haven’t worked on the marriage, you’ve slowly grown apart, so you can’t even see your way back. There is a way back, but it doesn’t feel like it at the time.
Jim Daly: In your book *Making Your Marriage a Fortress*, you describe a couple who lost their 19-year-old son. My brother and his wife had that experience with their 30-year-old son. I asked him one day, "How often do you think of Bobby?" He said, "Jim, every day I think of Bobby." I don’t know that there’s any greater loss than the loss of a child.
Gary Thomas: I don’t think there is. When it’s a loss of an only child, it’s not just your current loss, it’s the future losses. Every Christmas now, we don’t have Garrett with us. Garrett’s friends graduate from college, they get jobs, we don’t have that. His friends get married, we’re never going to have a daughter-in-law. They have kids, we’re never going to have grandchildren. It’s an ongoing loss. It’s not like a one-time hurt; it’s the hurt that keeps on hurting. What they found that kept them through was the they had been serious students of scripture. So often we go to the Bible if we need Tylenol. We’ve got a headache, we’ve got a hurt, "Okay, what will solve it?" Vitamins is a wiser approach because you need to draw upon it. Janelle said to me, this is faith in action as they’re sharing freely about the devastation of losing this beloved son, a really good kid. God didn’t just call Garrett *from* us, he called Garrett *to* something. Applying the scripture to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. "I know today Garrett is perfectly serving the God who created him." My friends, they have issues sometimes with daughters-in-law or there’s alcoholism or work problems or depression or whatnot. Garrett has none of that. He’s doing exactly what God created him to do. "He’s just perfectly serving God in a way that my friends’ kids aren’t yet because they’re still here in a fallen situation." The faith and the excitement, he’s just perfectly serving God. I was blessed by a woman for whom scripture became real. She needed it to be real and she found scripture to be true and it was a refuge and it was balm in the midst of her tremendous hurt. Another big help for them was just the community. She mentions grabbing the lapels of one of her best friends the morning she found out. She said 70% of marriages end up in a divorce when this happens. "Please don’t let me lose my husband. I’ve lost my son, I don’t want to lose my husband." This church just wrapped their arms around her. She was getting five or six texts every day. After the first year, Joe’s friends kind of dropped off. Janelle’s friends, maybe I don't not saying it’s a gender thing, but they were right there. But I think Joe’s friends said, "Okay, we’ve traveled through this a year, it’s time to move on." At 18 months is when he kind of broke. Janelle said for the first year, it was 95% Joe and 5% me. Joe was the strong one, he was holding me up. The second year she says it became 75% me and 25% Joe. He was devastated and what was so devastating to her, every time he saw Janelle’s face, he was reminded of Garrett. Garrett looked so much like her. He wants to love his wife and yet just the grief that he’s reminded of his son. They had one of the biggest arguments of their marriage about 18 months after Garrett had died and Joe stormed off. Janelle just got on the phone and she called his friends. "You all got to go get him. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but he doesn’t need to be alone right now." And they did. Church does matter. God doesn’t want us to walk through this life alone. It’s not just husband and wife, it’s husband and wife and church. Because right now people need you if you’re not going through a storm. But the day will come. What Joe and Janelle have today is so precious. It’s buried 70% of couples who have faced it, it’s given them a 100% increase in their love for each other.
Jim Daly: That’s what God does in our hearts when we lean into Him, not away from Him. The test for us is where that bitterness and that anger goes. Do you trust God to bring you through the valley and out the other side and raise you up on a mountaintop, even if circumstances aren’t dictating that’s the joy you should have? That’s the joy God brings. Gary, thanks so much for spending the time with us. Gary has poured his heart into this book, *Making Your Marriage a Fortress*, and there are so many nuggets of truth in here. You need to get a copy and we’d love it if you would participate in ministry with us. Your support helps to strengthen marriages and rescue couples who are in trouble. We have something called Hope Restored. It’s a four-day intensive. We have an 80% success rate. About 30% of the couples come with divorce papers ready to go. It’s a remarkable program. I don’t know of anything more successful in recovering marriages. We had a woman named Christie who she and her husband attended and she said, "I could have never imagined how God would use this experience to grow us closer to him, to each other, and into the individuals he designed us to be." So often we fell in love, we got married, and somehow now we’re angry at each other. Hope Restored does a wonderful job of recovering that desire to be one.
John Fuller: Contact us today to ask more about Hope Restored and to donate to make Hope Restored possible. Our number is 1-800-A-FAMILY, or donate online and get a copy of Gary Thomas's book *Making Your Marriage a Fortress*. We’re at focusonthefamily.com/weekend. Gary, we’ll come back next time and continue the talk.
Gary Thomas: Looking forward to it.
John Fuller: We hope you’ll join us then. Thanks for listening today to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
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Jim Daly: ChatGPT and AI can offer you ideas and attempt to give you answers, but it can’t listen with compassion, pray with you, or offer biblical wisdom. Real connection is what brings true hope. Focus on the Family offers a free confidential consultation with a Christian counselor to guide you and help you find hope with whatever you’re facing. Go to focusonthefamily.com/gethelp or call 1-800-A-FAMILY. That’s 1-800-232-6459.
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