Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough (24 page)

Wherever sin lives, intimacy dies. That is true in your relationship with God, and it is true in your marriage. But the good news is that wherever intimacy lives, sin dies. This isn’t meant to be an indictment of what you watch on TV or the movies you see. But for Trisha and me, we watch very little network TV. We attend very few movies these days. That is a price we have chosen to pay. Even saying it is a “price” feels weird. The people who have the hardest time with our decision and who make fun of us the most are Christians. They feel that because we choose not to go to movies with nudity, we are saying we are holier than they are. My response is, “I’m not saying I’m holier than you; I know I’m not holy. I know I don’t want to place my heart and mind in that situation because I know how easy it is to fall.”

Making this decision has paid off in so many ways. When our oldest son, Micah, turned twelve years old, he had some friends over for a birthday party. They played video games for a while, and then they wanted me to take them to the movies. They started
talking about different movies to see, what movies some of them had seen, and what was good and what wasn’t. I just prayed that God would give me the wisdom I needed to help my son navigate the situation.

Here is the cool part: we have talked so much about this principle of purity and how to protect our hearts that I didn’t have to say anything. Micah went to the Plugged In website and reviewed all of the movies that were playing. He then told his friends the two or three movies that he would feel comfortable watching. End of discussion. It won’t always be that cut and dried, but that is just one instance of “whatever is pure, whatever is holy, whatever is right” paying off in a big, big way. And when we set the pace and tone, others will follow, in our households and even outside them.

We are still on this journey. There are seasons of our relationship when we are on the same page and we are in tune with one another and we feel like our level of intimacy is high and our sex life is extraordinary. Then there are seasons of life that bring uncertainty and anxiety and busyness and ordinary. One of us feels neglected or misunderstood. Our differences in this area are often more prevalent than our desire to be on the same page. We have to constantly choose to start the conversation all over again. We have to choose to remind ourselves of truth. We have to choose oneness in this area, because none of us drift toward oneness.

The oneness that God desires for you is daily under attack. You will have to fight for it. You will have to fight for each other. You will have to be intentional. Extraordinary isn’t about how many times you have sex in a week; it is how passionately you are pursuing oneness and intimacy. It is in that pursuit that our sexual desires are not only met, but also satisfied.

QUESTIONS

1. Before you got married, what role did you believe sexual intimacy played in a marriage? In what ways was your belief right or wrong?
   
2. What do you feel are the greatest barriers to sexual intimacy in your marriage? Why do these barriers exist?
   
3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you understand your spouse in this area? What questions do you have for your spouse?
   
4. Surrender is a beautiful but scary word to embrace. What do you need to surrender in order to fully embrace the role God intended for sexual intimacy in your marriage relationship?
   

When we walked into the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the Grand Cayman Islands, I (Justin) knew we would never go back into vocational ministry. After two months of working at P. F. Chang’s, I was offered a job at a recruiting firm. It was a commission-only job, which meant if I didn’t close a deal, I wouldn’t get paid. But there was no limit to how much I could earn if I could figure out how to be an executive recruiter. “Executive recruiter” is a fancy way of saying “headhunter.” Companies would pay me a fee for placing employees with their organizations. I had no idea people found jobs through recruiters. I thought that was what Monster and CareerBuilder were for.

There is a high turnover rate in the executive recruiting field due to the commission-only pay structure and that all sales are over the phone. So as a rookie, my job was to make eighty to one hundred calls a day and hope that I could find companies that needed employees, then find employees who were qualified for those jobs and willing to explore new opportunities. Most rookies last sixty to ninety days. At that point they either get it and start closing deals or get frustrated and move on.

It had been a year and two months since I started, and by God’s grace, I had figured it out. Not only did I figure it out, I was the highest-producing rookie in the country. In my first year, I had earned just about every award you could earn, including President’s Club, which gave Trisha and me an all-expenses-paid trip to the Grand Caymans with other high producers at our firm. God was good—and so was being out of ministry.

When we walked into the hotel, tears filled my eyes. I knew there was no way I could ever make up to Trisha for all that we had been through, but we were a little more than a year into our recovery, and this trip was confirmation that we were going to make it, that God’s best was in front of us and not behind us. I said to her, “If a million people showed up at our church, they wouldn’t send us to the Grand Caymans on an incentive trip. I could get used to life outside of ministry.”

We sat on the beach and drank fufu drinks. We sat next to the pool and drank fufu drinks. We walked and talked and enjoyed being with each other in a way that we never had before. It was like being on the cruise again, except we were living as a brand-new Justin and Trisha. One of the things we talked about on that vacation was how much of the journey I had missed because I was so focused on the destination. I had spent the past ten years building something. I was building a student ministry, building a reputation, building a bank account, building an image, building a leadership structure, building an organization, building a church.

None of those things are bad, but the focus I had of “what’s next” usually caused me to miss the pleasure of “what’s now.” I hadn’t enjoyed the journey because I was so focused on the next destination. Arriving was more important to me than becoming. As we sat on the beach and talked, there was no doubt we still had healing to experience, but I had joy in my heart. For the first time as an adult, I was joyful.

One of the goals of this book has been to help you give Jesus more of your heart and more of your marriage. Only Jesus can restore the joy you had when you said, “I do.” When you are pursuing the destination more passionately than you pursue the journey, you are likely to miss both. Intimacy, being fully known, is experienced as we find joy in the journey and not just in the destination. We were finally understanding that and living with joy.

TRISHA:

After moving to Zionsville, Justin and I went back and forth about attending church. I was in a great place with Jesus, just not with his bride. We continued to watch church online for a while, but then we took a leap of faith and went to Eagle Church because . . . well, it was convenient, being right across the street. It was the first time we walked into a church without one person knowing who we were. It was bittersweet to be anonymous. It was great to
worship without added responsibility, while at the same time we felt incredibly lonely.

If I had known what God was up to when he brought Eagle Church into our lives, I’m certain I wouldn’t have gone.

After a year of just attending, Micah was now old enough to be part of the youth group, so I decided to volunteer in whatever capacity they needed because in my mind students were
safe
. In 2008 I was talked into going to a conference in Orlando with a group of our high school students. There my whole “students are safe” theory was blown to smithereens.

These kids were not safe at all! They loved me with reckless love. They tapped into a place of my heart surrounded by caution tape with a large sign that said, “You will be shot if you enter this area!” but they didn’t care. God used these students, our youth pastors, and the other adult volunteers on this trip to soften my heart for a message God was about to pour over me.

One morning at the conference, I sat in a room along with three thousand students and youth leaders. I listened to this pastor I had never heard of before talk about God’s greatness and his “crazy love” for us. As Francis Chan spoke, I could feel my heart beating so hard I thought I might be having a heart attack. My sweet friend Mary could tell I was struggling and put her hand on my back. My body temperature rose and I started sweating. I went from anger to panic—and the conversation began.

God, don’t do this to me! I don’t want to be called or affirmed back into ministry! Please don’t break my heart for what breaks yours! I can’t do it! I want to enjoy President’s Club trips with Justin—because they are safe!

After Francis Chan finished speaking, a missionary from the missionary conference that was going on at the same time rose to speak. The man shared a story about himself and his wife and their three small kids purchasing fruit at a small market somewhere in Africa. He stayed in their Jeep with all three kids in the back as his wife got out to purchase fruit. As she glanced over the selection of
fruit, three armed gunmen approached the Jeep. When she looked up to see where the commotion was coming from, she saw the gunmen jump her husband, throw him out of the Jeep, and take off with all three children in the back.

At this point, I was trying so hard to hold back tears that my head began to hurt. My anger had almost become a boiling rage.
God, why on earth am I listening to this? Do you seriously want me to not like you? If these children die in this story, I’m out of here!
My heart already felt fragile from the unexpected thoughts and emotions this trip was unlocking; it never crossed my mind that God would use this trip to call us back into ministry.

The missionary continued to share that after stealing the Jeep, the gunmen realized they were headed straight for a police post, so they turned around and drove back by the fruit stand, and as they did, the missionary desperately ran after the Jeep, jumped on it with feet dragging, and managed to pull only one of his children out of the back as the gunmen took off with the other two. He paused, took a deep breath (as did I), and said that during all of this, his wife—while tearfully watching her children taken captive—shared with those around her that although she may lose her children, “they will be in the most glorious place with a heavenly Father who will love them so much more than they could be loved here on earth. This heavenly Father longs for you to be with him too. All he asks is for you to believe in him.”

The missionary finished his story and told us that about a mile down the road, for some unknown reason, the gunmen threw the other two children out of the Jeep unharmed. The audience released a collective sigh of relief, and the missionary finished by saying, “The call of God on your life is not about the destination but about who you are becoming along the way.” I spent the next two years trying to figure out what exactly that meant.

JUSTIN:

I believed moving from Noblesville to Zionsville meant starting over. In many ways, we did start over, but my hope was that we could leave the past in the past and not share it with anybody. It didn’t mean that we wouldn’t deal with it, just that it was our story and should stay our story.

The problem was that God didn’t see it the same way I did.

As our life outside of ministry continued, we lived with the tension of Trisha feeling called back into ministry and with God bringing individuals and couples into our lives who had heard our story or just felt drawn to share their marriage problems with us. We began to meet with couples over coffee or dinner, and they would just pour out their hearts to us. God used our experience to give them hope and a plan to pursue healing for themselves. That felt right. I knew God couldn’t (or wouldn’t) use me in vocational ministry again, but it was amazing to see God redeem our story in the lives of these hurting couples. I was comfortable allowing God to use us in small, unnoticeable ways.

God continued to use Brennan Manning’s
Abba’s Child
to utterly destroy any preconceived notions I had of him and of our future as a family. One of the things Manning said in that book seemed very relevant to where we were:

The question we had to ask ourselves was, would we allow our past to be a healing gift to others? Or would we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame? One day I was willing; the next I was terrified. One day I could see what God was calling us to; the next I was convinced I was manipulating God and Trisha again to get
back into ministry. There was so much work left to do in my heart. I had no idea where to start or what to do next. God would have to orchestrate this because I wasn’t willing to pursue it without him.

In August 2008, I met with Kerry, the senior pastor at Eagle. Kerry and his wife, Melissa, had become trusted friends. They had spent over two years encouraging Trisha and me and providing a safe place for us to heal. Kerry and I had shared meals and conversations talking about our journey, and he knew of our love (and at times hatred) of ministry. Trisha and I had talked to Melissa and him about Trisha’s experience in Orlando and the call she felt back into ministry, but we didn’t know what to do with that.

I walked into his office and he spun around in his chair to face me. If there was small talk, I don’t remember it. What I do remember is a game-changing statement he made: “I’ve seen the restoration journey you’ve been on in your marriage. I’ve seen the influence you’ve had with couples here at Eagle. I believe in you. I believe God isn’t done with you. I’d like to help you find complete restoration and healing back into ministry.”

Lots of thoughts flooded my mind:
I’m not worthy. I’m not qualified. I’m not ready. I’m not sure our marriage can handle that. I’m not sure
I
can handle that. What if I fail again? What if I hurt people again?

I told Kerry I didn’t know where to start or how such a thing was even possible. Kerry said he would be willing to walk with us through the process. He introduced a plan that would involve my commitment for up to a year. It started with two things.

First, Trisha and I had to be willing to dream again. One of the things God revealed to us is that we are dreamers. We love to dream together. We started out with dreams of what God had in store for us, and slowly those dreams shifted to ministry and the church. But in our years of ordinary marriage, we had almost lost our ability to dream for ourselves and for one another. At this point in our journey, I felt as though I wasn’t allowed to dream again. I had messed up so bad that I had forfeited any dream that
God had for me and that I could have for myself. It was a life-giving process to dream again about my life, my future, our marriage, our kids, and what God might do through us as we chose to step out again and follow him.

Second, I had to be willing to seek reconciliation with those I had wounded. When Trisha and I left Genesis, we left for good. We never went back. We cut all ties. We followed the advice of our counselor that the best thing for them and for our marriage was to completely disconnect from them. Now, almost three years later, I was being asked to seek out the leaders, staff members, and some attendees of the church and ask for forgiveness. That seemed self-serving to me. “I know I haven’t talked to you in three years,” I imagined myself saying, “but I want to go back into ministry, and in order to do that, I need to meet with you.” That seemed like the old Justin. That seemed manipulative, and I wanted no part of it. God was going to have to intervene.

A few days after I met with Kerry, I got a call from one of the elders at Genesis. We hadn’t spoken in several months, and his call was totally out of the blue. He told me of a marriage issue one of our friends at the church was facing. He said, “I know we haven’t talked in a while, but you are uniquely qualified to help. Would you meet with them?” I told him I would do whatever I could.

That afternoon Trisha went over to their house, and that evening I met with them too. God used that situation over the next six months to strategically reconnect me with every leader and staff member at Genesis. When I say every leader and staff member, that doesn’t include Trisha’s best friend and her husband. When Trisha’s letter went without response, she felt she had been faithful in seeking reconciliation and to this day has left the timing and healing up to God. But that didn’t prevent us from walking through the relational doors God opened.

We shared meals. We went out for coffee. We talked on the phone. I asked them to forgive me and told them how sorry I was for how much I had hurt them. I was able to share with them
the painful yet redemptive journey Trisha and I had been on the past two and a half years. I had the opportunity to personally thank them for loving us well and leading the church with such integrity and obedience. It was painful and sad and emotional and remorseful and beautiful and redemptive and healing all at the same time. God had come through again and provided us with another step in our healing and in the reconciliation of so many broken relationships.