marriage help Archives | Being Confident Of This

Has a book ever touched your life in a way that you knew would forever change you?

Hope for the Hurting Wife has changed me.

From the early years of marriage when I lived out the reality of this book, I’ve seen the hand of God at work in my marriage. It’s a good thing, too, because without His intervention, I probably would have ended up divorced.

Yes, this book has changed me. Writing out your struggles, reliving them for the world to see, is no easy thing. It requires time and patience and lots of shaking-in-my-boots bravery.

As an imperfect wife, I never planned to write about marriage. In fact, I purposefully avoided writing about marriage for quite a while until the Lord convinced me otherwise.

You see, friend, I wanted nothing more than to be the good, Christian girl and the good, Christian wife. But when my life became tainted by sin and doubt and suffering, upholding my good, Christian girl facade became impossible.

And I’m thankful it did.

I’m not the same person I was ten years ago. I’m not the same wife, either.

But for many years, I believed my marriage was tainted, too. I thought we might never find our way back to happiness.

I lost all hope.

For a time, I even contemplated divorce, but I knew it was wrong, and I didn’t want my children to grow up in a broken family.

So, I cried out to the Lord for rescue. I allowed him into my anger and my brokenness. Instead of hiding the emotions I was so ashamed of, I started being brutally honest with God about my pain and my anger. I quit living in denial and allowed Him to open my eyes to the truth of our situation.

If not for family support and godly mentors during this season of life, I’m sure my story would be very different, friend.

I needed other Chrisitan women who were willing to admit that marriage is hard work. I needed other Christian women to show me there is no such thing as a perfect wife. I needed women to sit with me in suffering rather than sit with me in condemnation.

I needed women to sit with me in suffering rather than sit in condemnation.

I know some of you are searching for the same. You’re desperate to be the wife God wants you to be, but you don’t quite know how when your marriage is so troubled. You don’t know how you can possibly fight for your marriage when you can barely stand under the weight of it.

Fellow hurting wife, listen closely: You. are. not. alone.

My co-author Rebekah Hallberg and I hear frequently from women just like you (and just like us), who truly desire to avoid divorce. We know the shame and guilt you often bear. We know the loneliness you experience. We know what it is to feel unloved and rejected.

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That’s why we wrote Hope for the Hurting Wife, for women like you who have lost all hope and don’t know where to turn.

Hope for the Hurting Wife

Hope for the Hurting Wife is a thirty-day devotional journey that meets hurting and heartbroken wives right in the midst of a difficult marriage and gently encourages them to find hope that truly lasts.

Through our personal stories of heartache and scriptural insight, we address topics such as:

• Moving forward after trauma
• Loving even when you feel unloved
• Protecting your heart
• Understanding the power of choice
• Trusting God while waiting for redemption

You will never experience a perfect marriage here on earth, but you can experience real hope.

Our God is the God of the impossible!

While the world is quick to throw away marriage and run straight to divorce, we who are in Christ know that our present troubles never accurately reflect our future.

We serve a God who invested His very self into us through the work of Jesus, and He continually works to transform us from the inside out (Phil. 1:6). He continually works to transform our relationships, too.

My marriage of eighteen years is stronger than ever, but not because of me. Only God could take a marriage so messy and so broken and transform it into something truly beautiful. Not perfect, but beautiful.

And I’m more certain now than ever that the Enemy just hates to see what God does when women hand over their lives and their marriages into His trust.

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;perseverance, character; and character, hope.And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans :3-5 (NIV – emphasis mine)

You don’t have to be a wife who has lost all hope any longer, friend. Cry out to the God of all hope who comforts us in our troubles (2 Cor. 1:4).

Don’t be afraid to hope lest you be disappointed because God’s hope does not put us to shame!

Choose today to fight like a warrior wife for your marriage!

Choose hope over fear!

Jen 🙂

Marriage Resource Bundle Giveaway

To celebrate the launch of our book, Hope for the Hurting Wife, we’re giving away a four-book bundle of marriage resources! These resources were hand-selected by Rebekah and I specifically for wives who have lost all hope, but they would benefit any and every married woman! Here’s what the winner will receive

1. Hope for the Hurting Wife paperback – see info above!

2. Every Wife’s Choice by Sarah Fairchild (paperback) takes an in-depth look at how our emotions come into play in marriage. Sarah uses both humor and insightful key-word study to examine the famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. I promise you will laugh out loud when reading this book!

3. A Wife’s 40-day Fasting and Prayer Journal by Kaylene Yoder (paperback) is a devotional combined with a prayer journal. It is beautifully designed with spaces to record what you learn from relevant verses, your own prayers, and even how you intend to fast should you choose to use that portion. Kaylene understands that marriages are often under spiritual attack, so she encourages women to fight back by covering their marriages in prayer!

4. Blues to Bliss by Ngina Otiende (ebook version) speaks to those times when marriage fails to live up to our expectations (especially in the early years). Ngina shares from her own marriage, as well as the Bible, about how to navigate areas such as intimacy, submission, communication and even finances!

We are especially hopeful that some of these resources will make their way into the hands of wives who have nearly lost all hope.

Enter for your chance to win below! (And stop by Rebakah’s blog for a chance to win in her giveaway, too!)

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It’s no secret to those who know me well that my marriage isn’t perfect. Whose is, really? 🙂

So maybe you’ve spent time there lately, struggling in marriage, battling through in that part of the vows that we all like to ignore – the “for worse?”

And with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, your pain is magnified because while everyone else is celebrating love, you’re left wondering where the love has gone.

Perhaps you don’t even want to celebrate Valentine’s Day at all?

You’re not alone.

I’ve been in that place, too.

Early on in our marriage, my husband revealed a secret about past trauma that he had kept hidden for years. He had survived things as a child that nearly made me vomit when I heard them, yet he never spoke a word!

That revelation (and other difficult circumstances) led to a really dark time in our marriage.

After talking with some trusted friends, we finally sought professional help, but it was years later before we learned that my husband really struggled with PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). Yes, the kind that soldiers get when they’ve been to war, only his was induced by childhood trauma.

At some point, I began to wonder – who is this man that I married? Followed by the thought – this isn’t what I signed up for.

We continued on, struggling in marriage, partially because of his own personal fight with demons from the past and partially because I was believing lies from the Enemy about myself, about him, and about us.

I worried a lot about whether we would make it.

Sometimes I even longed for the release and relief of a separation. Wouldn’t it be so much easier on my own?

But I knew that divorce was a sin. I also knew I didn’t want that life for my children, and I knew that part of me still loved my husband in spite of not feeling the love at the moment, so ultimately we decided to stick it out.

Yet it wasn’t easy.

And then came Valentine’s Day, a day for celebrating love and marriage.

The problem was that I didn’t feel “in love” anymore. In fact, at times I didn’t even like my husband, and I don’t think he liked me very much either. I didn’t want to celebrate Valentine’s Day at all.

So, how can you buy a Valentine’s Day card for your husband when it feels like a lie to even say a simple, “I love you” or “You’re wonderful?”

There are no Valentine’s Day cards that talk about staying committed even though marriage is hard right now.

There are no Valentine’s Day cards that talk about how you weep at night, yet you hold onto hope for better days.

You cannot find a card that demonstrates how much you value your commitment and value your spouse in spit of feeling unhappy, nor cards that express the hope of longing for a healthy marriage.

No, those cards don’t exist.

What could I do? To buy a sentimental card felt like a lie; it would be dishonest. Finally, I settled on a more general card, then added my own note to it.

I wrote about how hard life had been lately for both of us.

I wrote how sorry I was for my own failures as a wife. I wrote about what I saw in him when we first fell in love. Most importantly, I wrote how I planned to stick by him, for better or for worse, even though marriage seemed so much more than “worse” at the moment.

In so many words, I told him I believed in us and I believed in our God.

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My husband still keeps those cards, even the ones from the rough years (yes, years). They mean something to him. They mean something to me, too.

We survived that rough Valentine’s Day and some painful anniversaries, too. Although I’d love to tell you we never visited the dark times again in these last 15 years, it would be a lie. We have.

I’ve since learned that every marriage has its ups and downs. That’s just normal. 🙂

So, this Valentine’s Day, my heart goes out to you, the wife who doesn’t feel like celebrating love, the wife who feels so unloved and maybe even trapped.

I know that Valentine’s Day shines a great big spotlight on your source of pain. I know you are tired of struggling in marriage and you long for just a small slice of peace in your life.

I know you often feel alone in this. And I know the loving feelings just aren’t there at the moment, as much as you wish them to be.

Take heart, lonely, wounded wife.

You are not alone! The Father has not forgotten you!

Psalm 34:17-18

“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them;
he delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

This is just part of my story of surviving Valentine’s Day when you feel unloved… and unloving. I hope you’ll join us for Part 2 in which I share six practical tips for stirring up love when marriage just plain stinks.

Until then,

Jen 🙂

This post is an excerpt from the book, Hope for the Hurting Wife: 30 Days of Encouragement for Your Marriage by Rebekah Hallberg and Jen Stults.

6 Ways to Stir Up Love in a Difficult Marriage

How to Love When You Feel Unloved

Through My Grace-colored Glasses

It Was Ugly

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