Sideswiped and Going Backwards

Posted on February 26, 2013 by RichWildman

This weekend we attended a marriage conference lead by our friends from Grace & Truth Counseling and Coaching, Jeff and Jill Williams. We were not presenters but because we know their material and the conference was relatively large, we had been asked to be there to help with any questions as couples were doing their exercises.

When it came time to do the exercises as couples, we went ahead and did the exercises ourselves. We know the exercises well and we always grow when we do them. Much to our surprise some issues surfaced in our relationship that brought some tension between us. Thankfully we kept doing the exercises plus some others that we also know and we got to a lot better place between us.

I just wanted to encourage you that if you have been in rough spot in your marriage and are starting to come out of it, there are likely to be setbacks, but just keep going with God’s help and things can get a lot better.

I think most couples, no matter how great their marriage, at one time or another go through setbacks. The ones that survive persevere through the setbacks and choose to believe that God can heal whatever the problems are.

Some of the best comments of the weekend were from a couple who had been married 63 years. They didn’t say much but they seemed to truly enjoy one another and they indicated they had had their own bumps in the road. I admire them for showing up to learn something new to improve their relationship.

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“I Knew What I Was Getting Into” by Misty Edwards

Posted on February 13, 2013 by RichWildman

Sometimes it is easy to get down and wonder where God is or why He would even care about us. Sometimes we want to give up. This is an awesome song of encouragement of how much God loves us and that we don’t surprise Him with our struggles. The most important thing is to hang on and not give up.

What songs have you found helpful when you were down and thought God was distant and just weren’t too sure if you could go on?

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National Marriage Week

Posted on February 13, 2013 by RichWildman

National Marriage Week February 7-14 is an effort to raise marriage awareness across the country. Even though the official week is drawing to a close there are a lot of great marriage resources and references at their website here.

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Divorce Care for the Separated

Posted on February 13, 2013 by RichWildman

I know I’ve talked about this resource before, but it bears repeating.

Divorce Care is a 13-week program primarily for those going through divorce but also for those who are separated – even those who are separated and want to reconcile. Each week there is a key topic that is discussed on video by experts and also by people who have been through separation or divorce. Here is the list of topics covered. After you watch the video people discuss what they heard plus share a little about their own situation if they feel so led.

I actually went to three groups a week for awhile during our separation. The videos almost always connected with what I was feeling and experiencing on many topics and the encouragement from other participants was great. I believe that participating in Divorce Care helped me come out of a major depression during our separation. One thing that also helped was that I realized that other people were often in worse situations than I was.

Here are some special tips about the Divorce Care groups if you are separated and want to reconcile.

a. Some people are already divorced and maybe their ex-spouse is already remarried, so they may be clueless about your desire to reconcile.

b. Some may have tried to reconcile with their spouse and it failed so they maybe cynical about your hope for reconciliation.

c. In my case, one of the groups was so hopeless about reconciliation in general that they had lost the CD on reconciliation, but at my request they repurchased it and watched it.

I just determined that it was my desire was to reconcile if at all possible so I just tried to ignore any hopeless comments from others in the group. Not everyone was like that though.

One concern in a Divorce Care group is the possibility of meeting someone new prematurely. I realized that there were a couple of different types of women in Divorce Care. Some had already been around the block of new relationships and having smooth-talking guys hit on them while they were separated or divorced, so they were very cautious about getting involved with any man.

Some women were still in so much shock and pain about their own situation and dealing with betrayal, financial struggles, and kids that they certainly weren’t my fantasy girl of having life all together and all ready to walk blissfully into the future with a new man. I found myself having a lot of compassion for both types of women and any fleeting ideas of forgetting about my desire to reconcile went away.

The other thing to realize about Divorce Care is that each group has it’s own dynamics and style. One reason I went to three at once was that I had tried one group that just didn’t work out. I looked on the web for more groups within driving distance and liked each one for different reasons, so I kept going.

One other thing to consider is whether you want to be in a group in a local church where you may know others and they may know you, or if you prefer to drive a little bit to be in a group that is more anonymous to you. That is a personal preference decision.

I am thankful for my time in Divorce Care because in many ways it helped me get to a more stable place where I was more truly ready for reconciliation when it came.

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Modern Reject: The Mystery of Marriage

Posted on February 12, 2013 by RichWildman

The phrase Jesus used about marriage, “and they became one flesh” (Genesis 2:24), I think is more profound than we have often realized. I thought this post from the blog Modern Reject was great about what one flesh means.

This was great insight when she wrote: “We knew, in that moment, that the spiritual health of one, could and would, affect the spiritual health of the other.”

After Sharon and I got back together from our separation and really talked, we found out that often God had been working with us each on very similar issues. Even today sometimes we will realize that we are a little bit more out of sync with each other than normal, and we figure out that one or both of us has let our relationship with Jesus slide. If one of us gets back on track with our relationship with Jesus, it often inspires the other one to be more intentional about that relationship also.

I figure that we will get to our 50th wedding anniversary and still not totally understand the depth of this one flesh relationship, but that is okay because Jesus is always growing us.

What insights have you had about what it means to be one flesh with your spouse?

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Things to Remember When Divorce Sounds Like a Good Idea

Posted on February 6, 2013 by RichWildman

Sometimes when there is a lot of pain in marriage a divorce sounds like a solution that will do away with it. Unfortunately, there are often painful consequences that people don’t think about at the time when they pursue divorce. Here are a few observations that I have had over the years from working with couples and with singles, and also just from knowing people who have gone through divorce.

If you and your spouse have kids the ramifications of divorce are never completely over as long as either of you are alive and sometimes not even after the death of one of you. At major life events for your children such as engagement, marriage, birth of children, etc., you are quite likely to have contact with your ex-spouse, or if you aren’t part of those events because you don’t want to deal with your ex, you are going to miss some special moments.

Many people think that they will just marry someone else and life will be so much better. My observation is that those who have a good second marriage go through a lot of pain and learning and change because they realize that they had a part in the collapse of their first marriage, even if their spouse was mostly at fault. I have had people say to me that if they had worked as hard on saving their first marriage and making changes as they have on learning to do it right the second time, they would still be married to their first spouse.

Jesus said to let no man put asunder what God had joined together. There really is a special bond between husband and wife and when it is broken for whatever reason, there is going to be pain. I have watched people who were naturally tough and aggressive and nothing much phased them still deeply struggle during the divorce process.

I met a lady once who said that she and her husband had an ideal divorce – no kids, no acrimony – and yet five years later she still wasn’t totally healed and recovered.

I met a lady in Divorce Care who had never married the man she lived with for several years and whom with she jointly owned a house. They broke up. If she had not told me that she had broken up with her live-in rather than divorcing a husband, I would have never known that she hadn’t been married because her pain so closely matched those who were getting divorced.

There have been some long term studies done that have shown that people in unhappy marriages who stayed together were happier after five years than ones who had been in equally unhappy marriages and had divorced.

My encouragement to those in unhappy marriages is to really think through the ramifications of divorce and to do all that they can to see if the marriage can be saved before they give up. There is so much help available for marriages with many different kinds of problems that it is worth a long hard look before a marriage is ended.

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Julie Sibert: Do Some People Believe Your Marriage Won’t Make It?

Posted on February 5, 2013 by RichWildman

This is an article that hits close to home. During our separation there were Christian friends telling me that Sharon was done and letting me know sometimes quietly, sometimes not so quietly that I should quit moping around about her and get on with my life. I am so thankful that I kept stubbornly pursuing reconciliation. What is so wonderful now to me is that Sharon and our kids are thankful that I didn’t give up either.

Often there is only one spouse who keeps pursuing reconciliation and believing with God that all things are possible. Do you need to be that one spouse that holds on for dear life to hope for reconciliation with God’s help?

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Gungor: “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”

Posted on February 1, 2013 by RichWildman

I thought this was a well written post by Mark Gungor about endurance in marriage. If you talk to almost anyone who has accomplished great things in their life you will find out that they persevered through some tough stuff and this especially applies to marriage. I like Mark’s concept that sometimes courage is being willing to admit that you have a marriage problem, even if that rocks the boat.

What is a courageous thing you could do to build your marriage or transform your life?

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Thoughts on Death

Posted on January 31, 2013 by RichWildman

As Sharon mentioned in a recent post, my mother passed away in early December which has brought on a time of reflection about how fragile life is and how none of us knows how long we have left on this earth. She had some health issues that doctors were researching but nothing that was raising emergency warning flags. She had just seen my brother, drove home a mile, apparently went to get ready for bed in the bathroom, and suffered a burst aortic aneurysm; her life over at 81. Her mother had lived until she was 98 years old, so we thought Mother had a pretty good chance for quite a few more years.

After Mother’s death, a contractor, whom I have done business with on the farm, passed away very unexpectedly at 52 years of age. His passing again brought home the realization of how young my dad was when he died of a massive heart attack at 50 years old. I always knew in my head that Dad was young but to know someone about the same age who has died suddenly just gives me new perspective.

One thing that I often think people overlook when they think divorce is going to solve their problems is that if they have children with their ex-spouse they are tied to that person the rest of their lives through major life and death events.

I felt so sad recently for a  lady I know. Her ex-husband, with whom she had her children, had divorced her after 25 years of marriage and gone on with other women in his life. At his death she felt very left out in not feeling welcome to go to the calling hours or the funeral with the current wife there. She was puzzled how she was to grieve all of it appropriately. At other times I have witnessed the ex-spouse showing up at the calling hours and things were tense. Bottom line is that divorce tends to have many unintended consequences for many years.

I was so thankful at the time of my mother’s passing that Sharon and I had reconciled and that she was with me to comfort me and both of us to walk through all of the varied emotions with our children. Hard for me to imagine what  all of that would have looked if we had been divorced. Times like these are good reminders to live life to the fullest and to treasure our relationships.

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Radio Interview

Posted on January 16, 2013 by sewildman

We were privileged to give our testimony and be interviewed by Penny Bragg of Inverse Ministries on WAPN Radio from Daytona, Florida just after Christmas. You can listen here: 01 Richard & Sharon Wildman – WAPN R. The first half is our interview and the second is call-in prayer.

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