Episode 213
What do you think of when you hear the word “marriage?” Perhaps the words love, sacrifice, or happily-ever-after come to mind. Maybe you think of the fact that marriage is hard work: difficult, but worth it. Still, perhaps others have negative connotations of marriage, like heartbreak, divorce, or abuse. The Bible says that marriage was established in the beginning — a mystery and metaphor of Christ and his bride, the church. In this episode of the removing barriers podcast we sit down with Mike and Patricia, a couple in whose marriage is the full message of the gospel: a good thing that was marred and broken by sin but gloriously saved and restored by the power of the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They share with us timeless biblical wisdom on marriage and all its ups and downs, and how Christ as the center of the relationship serves as a bulwark against the many attacks sure to come. You won’t want to miss this amazing testimony of God’s incredible mercy and power to save what appeared to be an all-around hopeless marriage situation. Be encouraged and reminded that with Christ, all things are possible.
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Transcription
Note: This is an automated transcription. It is not perfect but for most part adequate.
And then probably a few days after that, my parents came to visit and shared some concerns I had as a marriage student wife, because when I was a elementary school aged child, my dad had gone back to school to be a pastor. So that was familiar to me. And instead of saying, you know, this might help, let me pray with you, let me share some scripture with you, ’cause at that time my dad was an ordained pastor, they said to me, which our children were one week old, And 20 months old, they said, we’re taking the kids. You can come if you want.
[Jay]
Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG. And we’re attempting to remove barriers, so we can all have a clear view of the cross.
[MCG]
This is episode 213 of the Removing Barriers podcast. And this is the third in the series of Lessons in Marriage. And in this episode, we will be sitting down with Mike and Patricia. to learn about their 20 plus years of marriage and the lessons they have learned over the years. Mike, Patricia, it is indeed a pleasure. Welcome to the Removing Barriers podcast.
[Mike]
Thank you both. Thank you. Really appreciate you wanting to get to know us a little better.
[MCG]
Great.
[Jay]
Hi, this is Jay. MCG and I would like for you to help us remove barriers by going to removingbarriers.net and subscribing to receive all things removing barriers. If you’d like to take your efforts a bit further and help us keep the mics on, consider donating at removingbarriers.net slash donate. Removing barriers, a clear view of the cross.
[MCG]
All right, well let’s start from the beginning. Tell us about yourself, your upbringing, A little bit about your life before salvation, your family, stuff like that. Let’s start with you, Patricia.
[Patricia]
Well, I’m the youngest of three girls. I was born in Illinois, a little town named Galesburg, Illinois, south of Chicago. And when my parents were in their 30s, they made a profession of faith. And for a certain amount of time, they were very evangelistic and they had children’s Bible clubs in our backyard. And during that time, my mom witnessed to me and explained as much as I can understand as a six-year-old, explained to me that Christ died for my sins, that I was a sinner, Christ died for my sins, and that if I did nothing, that I would go to hell. But if I asked Jesus to come into my heart, I would go to heaven to live with him forever. So I prayed a prayer that night, asking Jesus into my heart, and he’s been with me ever since. We moved several times during my upbringing. Lived in Illinois and Alabama and I’m trying to think of other states, but many multiple cities and went to Christian schools and went to a Christian college. I graduated early from high school, so I was in college when I was 17 and transferred colleges. I was at one college and then transferred to another one to get more specific of what I wanted my major to be.
[MCG]
Cool. How about you, mate?
[Mike]
I’m also from the Midwest. I’m from Minnesota, and I’m the oldest of my parents’ children. It was five of us. I was raised in a Roman Catholic home, and my parents wanted to have a house where they could walk us all to church from our house. And that was my mother’s stipulation of where she would live and they would raise us. Didn’t have any knowledge of salvation, had never heard of that until I was in my 20s. But I went to Catholic school till the 6th grade and went to public schools. But when I got out of the workforce as a young man, there was a couple of guys that were Christians that were examples to me, and they were just different. They weren’t that great of Christians, I don’t think. But they were different in a good way. And eventually one of them invited me to church. But we would have Jehovah’s Witnesses come around, and my dad would just kind of shoo them away. He was polite with them, but we just, being raised Roman Catholic, we just kind of thought that we were better than other people, just to be honest about it. So the Lord saved me when I was 25 years old, and then after that went to Bible college. That’s where Patricia and I met.
[MCG]
Yeah, that was good to be a question.
[Jay]
So, Patricia, you were six when the Lord saved you. Mike, you were 25. After your salvation, and those were the points where you heard the gospel for the first time, after your salvation, did you have any major struggles? with your salvation, whether it was assurance or anything like that. Typically, if you’re raised in a Christian home, or in your case, Mike, a religious home, when you grow up and you become an adult, you tend to wrestle with whether or not the faith is genuinely your own. Did either of you experience any of that, particularly you, Patricia, since you were very young when you got saved?
[Patricia]
Yes, I did. I did struggle some with assurance, but that was pretty much settled when I was in my 40s, I guess it was, but I still continued to read the Bible, pray, go to church, be around other Christians, memorize scripture. And so I was continuing to, you know, stay close to God, you know, and things like that. It was more like, you know, I didn’t feel worthy type thing. So when that was settled, then it was settled once and for all. But yeah, I did struggle with assurance.
[Jay]
Mike, did you have any struggles with that at all?
[Mike]
Only a little. Only a little. After I was saved, it wasn’t long after that I went to Bible college. Life was just so exciting being a new Christian. People were different. The Lord changed my desires. I began to love his word. And it wasn’t until I got in the workforce where things were just kind of, it seemed so meaning a little more meaningless, you know, but Bible college was fun and all like that. But so when I got responsibility, it was like I had to kind of walk my faith more. And so I struggled a little bit, but not a whole lot. Cool.
[MCG]
So you guys met at Bible College. Why don’t you dive into that and tell us how did you guys meet? What was the first encounter and stuff like that? And how did you guys start dating? a quote in which some of you use.
[Mike]
Well, I noticed Patricia was a busy young lady. It was a big Bible college, but she was very involved in the student ministries there with playing the piano and chapel services and working in the dining hall. And so one couldn’t help but notice her. So I wanted to get to know her better. And so I met her in the dining hall and approached her and introduced myself. And the Bible college we went to had very strict dating standards. There was no holding those sitting clothes together and this kind of thing. But they did have occasions to go out on visits together with other students on a bus who might go on a big boat ride or something like that. But it was strictly a friendship type thing. I guess it’s called courting nowadays, but it was, you know, strict, I guess is the word.
[Patricia]
Yeah.
[MCG]
I appreciate that. He couldn’t help but notice you. What about you? Could you help but notice him?
[Patricia]
I didn’t know I was being watched by him.
[MCG]
Oh, okay. I just want to make sure.
[Patricia]
I didn’t never even see him until he came up to me and introduced himself to me. So that was quite the surprise that he made a wonderful first impression. So he was an older freshman, your freshman at that point. Yeah, he was an older freshman and more mature, and he was all dressed in a three-piece suit. Oh, wow. Looked very nice and was very respectful and just amazing. Immediately like, wow, this is so different than most of the guys in college.
[MCG]
Oh wow.
[Patricia]
I was very busy. Yeah, I was very, very busy. So he had to wait till I stopped before he did talk to me. So.
[MCG]
Did he happen to have a rose in his hand as well? No.
[Patricia]
Okay.
[MCG]
No.
[Jay]
So when you actually came to the point where you stopped or at least slowed down, when did you begin realizing that, hey, this is actually pretty serious and I might marry this person? When was that moment for you?
[Patricia]
Well, I would say that, you know, because of the atmosphere that we got to know each other and we became best friends first, which was really, really neat, you know, and we were very comfortable talking with one another and doing things together. I will say too, at the college campus, they had an indoor bowling alley. indoor putt putt golf course and stuff. So I mean, even if you didn’t get on a dating bus, you still could go down and play ping pong or play putt putt or go bowling or whatever. But yeah, we’ve dated for two years. I guess it was. And just so comfortable, told each other we loved one another. And I was getting ready to graduate and he was what? Sophomore at that point, yes, yeah, and so I was thinking, Well, where’s this going? Yeah, graduate. Are we gonna part ways? Hopefully not. I mean, we were so comfortable and best friends. We’re still best friends today.
[Jay]
Love it.
[Patricia]
What would you say?
[Mike]
Yeah, we just really seem to communicate well with one another and… I’m the oldest of the siblings in my family. Patricia’s the youngest, so that seriousness I had was kind of offset by her playfulness and need to have fun.
[Jay]
Right.
[Mike]
So it’s, you know, opposites attract, right?
[Jay]
Yeah, So what ended up happening? So Patricia, you graduated and… By this time, he’s probably, what, sophomore, junior? Did you all get married after college or how did that work out? When did you all get married and how did that play out?
[MCG]
Well, Jay’s jumping the gun. I want to know how did he propose?
[Jay]
Oh yeah, that would be.
[Patricia]
It was the week of graduation and they had a lake right by the campus. that we were walking around the lake and he asked to see my class. I wore my high school class ring. He asked to see my high school class ring, which was a thin band on the back and it had like a stone type thing on the other side. So he looked at it and then he’s handed it back to me in a stone down and I turned it around to put it back on my finger and it was an engagement ring. Very, very smooth. Asked me to marry him and I told him he had to ask I asked my dad. So my parents were coming to our graduation that week. So he met with my dad and asked him and my dad gave us approval. So we got engaged before I graduated. And that was 2023. Yeah, 2020. No, not 2023. 1983. Yeah. And then we got married a year later.
[MCG]
Okay, cool. Wonderful.
[Patricia]
Yeah.
[MCG]
So what made you said yes? I can see why he would ask you, but I can’t understand why you would say yes.
[Patricia]
He was just way steps ahead of any other guy, the maturity in him, the calmness that I needed in my ****** you know, going everywhere, activities that I had, and this steadiness, gentleman, patient, just, there wasn’t a comparison between him and the other guys, at the campus, I was looking around too. But, like I said, I never saw him until he came and stood in front of me, saying, I’m Mike and stuff. And, it’s just, yeah, that’s what I would say that he stood out on the other men. And like I said, we were best friends. Why not marry your best friend?
[MCG]
Of course, yeah. Go ahead, Mike. Go ahead to jump in here.
[Mike]
Well, I’ve been talking with my parents a little about Patricia. And so when I was going to propose the idea of marriage before I said anything to her. I contacted my folks and asked my dad what they thought of Patricia, you know, what I told them about her. And they said they approved of that. So, yeah, that’s, I was very glad.
[Jay]
Great, great. So you 2 get married. It’s all sunshine and bunny rabbits. Everything is great. I would imagine you’re marrying your best friend, right? So what were the early years of your marriage like? And did you stay in the city where your college was, or did you move elsewhere? And what were the early years of your marriage like?
[Mike]
We moved to my hometown, and Patricia taught Christian school, elementary school. She has a degree in elementary ed. Secondary ed. Secondary ed and homemaking. And I had been working as a carpenter and was a journeyman carpenter, and I’d been doing that since I was about 19. So by this time I was like 28 or so when we were married. And so, but I wanted to take a break from college. They told all the students, they said there’s a biblical principle like when a couple is married that the husband not go out to war. I can’t think of the Old Testament, one of the… I booked. So they said that’s the principle we would suggest that you follow to just to get to know your wife and help to settle her and everything. So we were going to be out a year. We ended up we were out about 3 years. Oh, wow.
[MCG]
So Jay asked about the early years of marriage. What about some problems you might have had to iron out in the first couple of years, maybe the first five, 10 years of marriage? What was those like? What are some problems maybe on a high level that you had to work out?
[Mike]
Well, I will try to answer first. We were out of school about 3 1/2 years before we split up. So I’ll talk about those years, start to talk about those years. You know, as I said, the excitement of college wore off. The responsibilities of providing, you know, income were real important. And I felt like being out of debt was especially important. So I didn’t want to borrow money for a house. I had a pretty good job, pretty good paying job and things. But I didn’t want to borrow money for a house or borrow money for another car and things like that. And when you go back to someplace, everything, nothing stays the same, right? And being that I was saved and had been off to college, I came back home. I think it’d been a little abrupt with my family. They didn’t want as much to do with me. But we wanted to have to do with family, and we did. Patricia was completely away from her family.
[MCG]
Right.
[Mike]
So except for the fellowship we had at church and in the ministries there, we didn’t have much to do with family and we were just all of a sudden busier. Patricia and myself. Right.
[Patricia]
We saw each other less after we were married than we did in college. Yeah. It was a totally different atmosphere for me, I went from being super busy and around a lot of people to being mainly just in a little apartment. And, you know, by myself, we started having kids because it was a.
[Mike]
We wanted to have a building from the get go, Lord blessed us. And after about a year or so.
[Patricia]
Yeah. So, you know, it was everything’s hindsight. at this point about that time period, you know, and you asked MCG about what things do we have to work through. We didn’t. Right. Obviously, we didn’t work through it. So, and I guess looking back again, looking back on it, we were bad to make assumptions and to not communicate like we needed to. And just too trusting of people outside of the marriage, you know, establishing, you ourselves as a couple. That’s what I would say. I was very, very lonely. And Mike was focused on his work and, like I said, getting out of debt. And we decided that we’d go back to college for him to finish. He was studying pastoral theology. And it was probably, we were there maybe, what, three months, two and a half months and stuff, up until the time that our son was born and stuff. And that’s where things really got wild.
[MCG]
Tell us about that time period. When you think that while, what exactly do you mean, if you’re comfortable going into it?
[Patricia]
Well, our son, it was a planned home birth. So that son was born at home, and first his parents came to visit, and it went pretty well. And Mike was, like I said, a married student, very difficult at that time to try to have enough money for tuition and stuff. We didn’t have a car, and we didn’t have a phone. And this was before cell phones and stuff. So I was really, really isolated. But I did walk to different places around there. And so when his parents came, they brought us a car, right? Helped us to get started with a phone. And then probably a few days after that, my parents came to visit and shared some concerns I had as a marriage student wife, because when I was a elementary school aged child, my dad had gone back to school to be a pastor. So that was familiar to me. And instead of saying, you know, this might help, let me pray with you, let me share some scripture with you. Because at that time, my dad was an ordained pastor. They said to me, which our children were one week old and 20 months old, they said, we’re taking the kids, you can come if you want.
[MCG]
Oh, wow.
[Patricia]
Yeah. And they said, you can’t tell Mike you’re leaving. I was given a choice between staying with my marriage and let them take the kids, which I was very vulnerable, you know, just given birth. Our daughter was only 20 months old or leaving with my parents, which I thought in my mind, which I did end up doing. I thought in my mind it was a temporary thing. They would help me to get back to him, you know, but that’s not what happened. So I had me write a note. leave a note to Mike telling that I was leaving, you know, and stuff. So, yeah, it’s completely changed our lives from that point forward.
[MCG]
Oh, wow.
[Jay]
I think these days we understand a little bit more about how vulnerable women are after children are born. So much is happening during that point. You’re responsible for a little human being now, the hormones and how I could speak from personal experience. I was not prepared for how much your babies need you in that particular timeframe. So you’re vulnerable to other people perhaps getting their way or perhaps, I’m not saying that they were manipulating you, but you know, you’re just vulnerable to different things. Now that we have a better understanding of that, in terms of society, we’re a little bit more open to talking about these things. When you look back on those first five or seven years or so, Do you think that things would have been different if you had that kind of support, perhaps someone to talk to about these things? And let me put a caveat in there because I realize there’s a little bit of a different dynamic with you because this wasn’t just any old person. This was your family coming in and saying, hey, this is what we’re doing. When you look back on those years, what would you have done differently or what do you wish were different? Would you share in terms of wisdom looking back on those friends? first five or seven years or so.
[Patricia]
Probably prior to when my parents came to visit, I probably should have worked harder to build, know in those days how to build a support group. I don’t know if that term was even used.
[Jay]
Right.
[Patricia]
Just, I had no idea. And I was back, Mike said, when you go back to some place, it’s never the same. So all the girls that I was friends with, I was in a singing group and stuff. I played the piano for a group of seven girls and stuff. So I was pretty well known there. But when we came back, nobody knew me, you know, because they either graduated or got married, whatever. So that wasn’t in place anymore. But you know, I’ve tried to fit in with family and tried to fit in with Mike’s family, which, like he said, they’re Roman Catholic. So I’m a Protestant girl. Never been Roman Catholic, never will be. So that was a little, you know, tense, you know, they’re good people. I think they would try to communicate. if I could try to communicate better with Mike and not be assuming so many things. I was more like, if I was upset about something, I was shut down. And I think we both kind of did that.
[MCG]
Yes.
[Patricia]
Yeah. So yeah, just trying to communicate better with one another, make a more of a priority our marriage so that people can’t come in and be the authority over me instead of my husband.
[MCG]
Right.
[Patricia]
It was really hard because, you’re taught, you don’t dishonor your parents. So that was going through my head. I didn’t know what was to come. I mean, who knows, what’s going to come after that. But yeah.
[MCG]
I have a follow-up for you, Patricia, but I want to bring Mike in here. I can only imagine as a man if I come home and found a note. that my wife has gone off with the kids. Take us through that journey for you, the emotions, the rage. What was it like when you got home and you found a note that your wife and kids have gone off with their parents and you have nowhere to reach them or get to them or not knowing what’s going on?
[Mike]
Yeah, well, I want to say, first of all, that I was not surprised that she left. It was frustrating for her to be alone. I was real tired all the time and not very conversational. And I knew that she loved her parents, her family. But yeah, you’re asking about the anger and things like that. I mean, my family, they were probably wanting to see my faith tested. So they weren’t especially sympathetic. They wanted to see how his God was going to get him through this. Financially, I thought, there’s no way that I can hire an attorney to get out of this. and I’ll go after her. And I just thought the court system is not especially sympathetic to the husband. So I thought that’s a losing battle, even if I did try to do that. So, yeah, I cried pretty much daily for a couple of years.
[MCG]
Oh, wow.
[Mike]
Spent a lot of time in prayer, a lot of time walking and just spending time in prayer because I knew that because I loved my wife, and yet I knew that God had a plan for my life, and that I wasn’t going to give that over to anybody, any other human. Not my parents, not my pastor, not even my wife. I wasn’t going to do that. So my pastor advised me to just remain there and to finish school and get a degree. That’s what I did. So I stayed there for about 2 1/2 years in college.
[MCG]
Okay, so you guys were married for about three years. before this happened. And then what was the time frame between that and potential coming back together?
[Mike]
It was 16, a little over 16 years.
[MCG]
Wow. Wow. So Patricia, for you, was it easier because it was your dad who was demanding these from you as opposed maybe to your mom? Or was it because these were the authority figure in your life that, you know, the Bible say leave and cleave. Was it because these were the authority figure in your life for 20 plus years at this point and all of a sudden they’re not giving you biblical advice or maybe was the emotions? What was going through your mind seeing the authority figure making these demands of you?
[Patricia]
Well, it was actually my mom.
[MCG]
Oh, wow.
[Patricia]
To me. So I thought at the time that she was wanting to help, because there was three of us, and stuff. So my sisters and I, and I thought, well, she’s going to help me with this little newborn. I was pretty much by myself. Like Mike said, he was working and attending college. So I think I saw him like, what, an hour or two a day, something like that.
[MCG]
Wow.
[Patricia]
So initially, that’s what I thought, you know, I’m going to have some help. You know, it was kind of a little traumatized by the home bird, you know, stuff, but I thought it was going to be a little easier. I did not realize that as it turned out, my parents were actually trying to take the kids, first of all, away from Mike and split us up. and take the kids away from me also. Wow. So that’s what ended up, you know, there were things that were said to me over and over again during that 16 years. I guess the way I would describe it became a matter of survival for me because they ended up being not just controlling, but ended up being actually verbally and physically abusive to me. Wow. And Mike, in the meantime, which was a huge help to me when God put us back together, God was strengthening him and really, sanctifying him and making him stronger. Even though I had been safe since I was six and he had been safe since he was 25, that was a huge sanctifying thing. So when I came back to him, his strength then helped me to heal.
[Jay]
You mentioned that you were traumatized by the home birth. And I know this now that I’ve had children of my own, that the whole process, even afterward, can be very trying, very traumatic. Do you think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of your marriage? I’m not saying that the children are a particular issue, I’m just saying just childbirth and having children in general. It really changes relationships, whether you’re in a healthy one or in a non-healthy one. How did your marriage change when you began having children?
[Patricia]
I think that we found out that we agreed on everything up to that point in communicating fairly well, and we assumed. that word again, that we had the same ideas about training and discipline and everything and found out very quickly we didn’t. So that was hard. I had it ingrained in my mind. I grew up in a household and for generations, actually, where the woman was the strong one in the family, in the marriage. So you just assume that’s how everybody was raised. And it was just the opposite. Mike grew up in a very stable, very loving family, and for generations, And I didn’t realize it at that time and stuff. So yeah, I would say having children, we both wanted children, which Scott had given us more. But yeah, that really seemed to expose what we really believed about training and disciplining children.
[MCG]
So Mike, what advice would you give to young husbands? You know, let’s say in the first couple of years, first kid, because what I’m hearing here is not, unique in terms of the husband is busy working, the wife is home to the kids, the husband come home tired, men seem to be less communicative. Maybe I’m talking about myself. Exposing himself. What advice would you give to someone who’s in the early years of marriage as a man? Then I’m going to shoot the same question to you, Patricia, but let me have Mike come in first.
[Mike]
Just learn to be content with the basics. You know, I think they say that the polls show that the young men in America, even as far back as 25 years ago, they didn’t settle down to their life’s vocation until they were like in their middle 30s. And nowadays, people have a job for four or five years and go on to another one and another and another, you know, and our parents’ generations, they would stay with the company, you know, for 35, 40, 50 years. I’m sure it wasn’t always pleasant for them. But they just thought it was just sort of a means to an end. And, they weren’t looking for fulfillment and even to get rich. It was just a means to get by. And, when God’s. saves a young man, he might not be a special calling on him, with his spiritual gifts that he gives him or her, and maybe can see the value in that and leaning towards ministry or something like that. But you would have to do that in God’s time. and it costs, especially nowadays, just a tremendous amount of money, and time to prepare for ministry. And I met at least one student that, people were paying for his education. And the college we went to, nobody got loans in those days, unless it was just a credit card loan or something like that. But they didn’t have these FAFSA things in the Christian college genre. Right. And again, my feelings about debt were I just, I didn’t want to, but I would just say, just be content. Be content with your, with your wages, be content with your, career, just try to make the best of things. And then in the meantime, exercise your spiritual gift however you can. And just, I went to my pastor, pastor that I had at that time when we were first married, and I said, And I’d even told my Sunday school teacher, I said, I want to be a public speaker. I’d been a carpenter for about 10 years or so prior to that. So that wasn’t in my background. But anyway, I just felt like it was so much value to people to be talked to about the Bible. It’s important for me to be. passing that along too. And he said something to me. He said, Mike, are you familiar with the verse in the Psalms where it said, promotion cometh not from the east or from the west, but promotion cometh from the Lord. And I said, no. And so he said, he tried to encourage me that if that was going to be God’s plan for my life, that like with, he didn’t use the example of Joseph, but I’m going to use that now. Just like example of Joseph and all these, he had several calamities befallen, you know, he was kidnapped by his brothers and then left for dead and then went to prison and different things. I mean, he never could have imagined that he would become second in charge of the kingdom, but that’s what God had in mind for him. But that happens, not that people get promoted to be the king of the land, but people get promoted all the time, saved and unsaved people. And I just wasn’t, I mean, Patricia will verify that I wasn’t content. I was making pretty good money, but work takes a lot out of a man. It was physical work. It was working in the cold year-round in Minnesota. It was not usual. Most of my peers were experiencing nothing like that. You know, we had a rule. The company I worked for, if it was colder than 20 below 0 at 7:00 in the morning, you didn’t have to show up. You used to have your job. You didn’t have to have an excuse. But many times it would be 54 degrees below 0 wind chill. And you’d be outside working, you know, with just little canvas gloves or cotton gloves and be up on a roof shoveling the snow. And I just thought, how can this count for God’s kingdom? I mean, it’s his kingdom. Nobody’s getting saved. Nobody’s. Here in the world, we were discouraged from speaking to one another because it was all about production. And so the advice I would give is just try to learn to be content. Make the best of the situation you’ve got. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? You know, understand the meaning of our circumstances, even at our ages and even at your age.
[MCG]
Right. So Patricia, what advice would you give to young ladies now who would find themselves in similar situation that is not, again, not very unique because a lot of young couples, they get married and a year or two later, one kid and maybe one another one on the way and the wife is home and maybe lonely and husband is not communicative as he should be. What advice would you give to young ladies?
[Patricia]
I guess I would say make sure that your first priority is to God. And don’t think for one second that you’re there to complete your husband any flaws or whatever you think that you see in him, or that you can by any way make him content. You know, I tried. Only God can make him content. And love him the best. Ask God for wisdom for how to love him the best. Make him your top priority. work a little harder to communicate, you know, observing, you know, since we were apart more than we were together, we were just the opposite of when we were in college and stuff that spend time getting to know each other in your first years, you know, and just keep that focus. Don’t look at it. Don’t look to your family to be part of the marriage or be part of the completing. so to speak.
[MCG]
Yeah, well, why don’t we go into the break and then we’ll talk about their coming back together after the divorce. You’re listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. We’re sitting down with Mike and Patricia, and we are learning all about lessons they have learned in their many years of marriage. We’ll be right back.
[Jay]
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[MCG]
All right. So if I’m understanding correctly, about three years or so after the first marriage, you guys went through a separation and eventually divorced for about 16 years. Take us through those years and take us through the coming back together. How did the Lord bring you guys back together in a second marriage?
[Mike]
Well, You know, Patricia and I saw one another at visits with the children. I paid child support visitation. Patricia granted me visitation. She would come to those visits occasionally, but they became fewer and fewer and then just eventually stopped. But I remember a time or two, I sent her a little extra money, that $50, something like that. And one time she put on there, when she endorsed it on the back, she said, Thank you, which she had seemed pretty bitter. But when she said, Thank you, I thought, well, that kind of gave me some hope that maybe the Lord could put this thing back together again. And the Lord showed me off, put on my heart a verse from the get-go, from the time she left, in 1 Corinthians 7, and it says, And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her husband. But if she depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife. So I felt like even though she was somewhat didn’t want to talk on the phone, we’d just leave voice. In those days, we just had, you know, answering machines. So we just only purely communicated by those messages on voice machines for visitation details. I’m going to meet you at the shopping mall at 1 o’clock with the kids. We’ll see you then. Let me know if there’s.
[Patricia]
It wasn’t even that nice.
[Mike]
It wasn’t even, it was just real turf. So anyway, but I had hoped that we could get back together. And I didn’t have any, you know, examples except for this admonition from 1 Corinthians 7. It kind of goes back to the thing about contentment, whether a person’s a widower or a widow or never married or what have you, you know, or separate or divorce. So anyway, that was kind of my heart’s desire was to get back together. And I would get little things for the kids, maybe bicycles or something like that on their birthdays or for Christmas. Because somebody along the way told me, this sounds so basic, but somebody said, Mike, the way that you can show your wife that you love her is to love her kids.
[Patricia]
Our kids.
[Mike]
It was our kids, but I mean, and vice versa, the way you can show your kids that you love them is to love their mother. So I’m not the most kind person in the world, but I tried to be kind of her to reach out to her with letters and things expressed into her how I felt a few times. And apology letters even. Apologies. And then I was able to buy, start it into a house making mortgage payments on a house and let her know I wanted them to come with me, you know. And so I ended up working for a church as a maintenance man. Kind of more like an assistant pastor at times too. I did some pastoral type work. But anyways, the pastor encouraged me to just be happy. And after seven years, he said, you really ought to try to be more friendly to people. You should even consider dating, dating around. And I thought, well, Patricia’s not coming back. It’s just like talking to a, just say talking to a telephone pole. I mean, just no response. And so I did go out to eat, went to a movie once, just a few little dates. I talked on the phone some with others, but you know, invariably in a situation like that, one or the other will say, well, How do you feel about your ex? Well, if you’re going to be honest, you’d say, well, I still love them. I miss them. Well, then why would they want to cultivate a friendship with you? So those went nowhere. So anyhow, God was kind of slowing down my life, going from production to working for a church, going from all about output to how do people feel about themselves after you left them or after you talked to them and things like that. So it was just slowing things way down, which was good for me. And I read a lot of books on divorce, tried to be sure what I believed about divorce, reconciliation, and remarriage, because remarriage is so prevalent, remarriage to others is so prevalent.
[MCG]
Right.
[Mike]
So I tried to learn what my parents thought. My dad just wanted me to be happy. He didn’t care if I got married to somebody else or not. My mother, she just, She just said, I just don’t think that would be the best for you. I just think it would be better that you didn’t remarry somebody else. Which I’m very grateful for her advice now. Anyhow, I was working in Patricia’s life also. And when our daughter was going to graduate from high school, she sent me an invitation to her graduation, which I hadn’t seen her in over 2 years. offered a visit and just get no answer and write things. I think at that point, I even went to court, tried to go to court and hired an attorney. At that time, it was $250 an hour.
[MCG]
Wow. I was.
[Mike]
A carpenter and working for a church as a maintenance man, I was making maybe $300 a week or something. I wasn’t making $250 an hour. I went into debt on a credit card for a retainer to pay for hiring an attorney. So anyhow, I thought this is really, to borrow from today’s vernacular, really random. My daughter and teenage girl would want to reach out to me. And so I’ll let Patricia tell the rest of it, but things began to slowly change. That was the same year, 16 years. We actually were part of about 16 and a half years, or maybe even a little more than that. But at the 16-year mark, after not seeing my children for two and a half years, our children for two and a half years, And I get this out of the blue, this nice formal invitation to, attend her high school graduation. And I was really surprised.
[MCG]
Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, Patricia, why don’t we bring you in? Tell us about those years from the divorce going up to the remarry.
[Patricia]
First of all, we didn’t want to get divorced. And there was no reason really to get divorced. There wasn’t any adultery, there wasn’t any abuse or anything like that. It came to the point where my parents said, you have to divorce him. And when it took me to the law office, they said, if you want to keep your kids, you have to divorce him. And my kid come to to the law office to try to stop the divorce. And they told him, if you want to see your kids, you have to sign the divorce papers. So that’s what happened at that point. And after that, during the 16 years, my parents told me over and over again, if you have anything to do with Mike or his family, we will take the kids away from you. So during that time, in my effort to convince my kids, convince my parents that I wasn’t having anything to do with Mike or his family, I developed a really bitter, hard heart. It talks about in the Bible how, because of the hardness of your heart, God allowed divorce. I developed a bitter, hard heart after the divorce. I just felt so much despair, just like, Why is this happening? So I treated him very badly during the divorce, trying to convince my parents. Basically, my parents became my God. whatever they wanted me to do. During that time, as Mike said, he would send gifts for the kids, but he also would send gifts to me with the kids after the visit, you know, little, he wrote letters, he wrote apologies, you know, and I kept all the letters. I didn’t keep them after we got back together, but kept all the letters and read them over and over. I had them in a bag and stuff. So what happened with all of this going on, God started working in my life in a big way to deliver me from my parents. It all happened one evening with the last time my mom beat me, physically beat me. Our daughter, who I wasn’t even aware, she was 18 at the time. I didn’t even know she’d even knew that my mom beat me. She called the police. And the police came and helped us leave. Wow. And I moved in temporarily with another family member because we didn’t have any place to stay or anything. And I didn’t know how Mike would think about it or anything. And like I said, it had been two years since he had seen the kids, which basically what was happening is I would tell the kids, Your dad wants to see you. And they say, We don’t want to visit. And I told them, If you don’t go, I could be put in jail. And they said, So? It was very difficult. I couldn’t communicate that to Mike. So when I got away from my parents and all of a sudden had this freedom to finally do what God wanted me to do, and it came time for our daughter to graduate from high school. And I said, Why don’t you send your dad a graduation invitation? I mean, it was unbelievable the things that God said are opening up to my life. And I got some counseling. some one-on-one counseling for probably a month trying to sort through all of that happened and how to get my mind straight and my heart straight and very, very helpful. And so I started reaching out to Mike because my heart started changing to him. You know, once I was away from the evil influence family, then things started becoming clear to me. So I decided that it was time that I needed to apologize to him for leaving. So I tried to call him and it didn’t surprise me, but he kept hanging up on me. So I knew where he lived. So I drove out to his house to talk to him face to face and he wasn’t home. So I grabbed a piece of paper. It was actually an old bulletin from church in my car and wrote a note out and stuck it in his door and apologized in great detail how wrong it was, how I treated him and put in the end, I never got over you. and put my phone number, which he hadn’t had my phone number all that time. He just had the phone number of the landline at our house. And then just waited. I had such a peace about that God was going to work in this, even if he just forgave me, which I hoped he would. I wasn’t even really thinking about reconciliation at that point. I was just thinking, I just need to apologize, particularly in how I treated him during the divorce and stuff and kept the kids, didn’t let him get to see the kids. as much as he asked to see them. So he got the note. I don’t know if you want him to tell what happened after when he got the note. It might be interesting.
[MCG]
Yeah, definitely.
[Mike]
Yeah, I found this note and I was just stunned. I was surprised. And yet I was very glad. I mean, this is what I’d wanted. It was an apology after all these years, but I couldn’t earn that from her. It’s just something that would have to be given to me if it was going to be given at all. And so I didn’t trust that it was completely sincere. So I took it to my pastor and showed it to him, to his mother, who was the church secretary. And she said, she was probably 60-something years old, she said, You’ve got to call her back. And my pastor was just like, Well, whatever, brother, you know. And so I had been keeping her informed, the pastor’s mother informed over the years, the fact of what was going on. And so being a female is relationship oriented and want everything to work out for the best, you know, she was just like a mother to people there, you know. And so I called Patricia back and we talked and talked and she was having lots of trials still, but she was repentant and I could sense that. So we agreed to meet at a Chick-fil-A. restaurant and went on a little walk around a lake there and talked. And she explained to me what had been going on with the kids and herself and things like that. And so we continued to date like that for a matter of months, just fizzing, talking, talked on the phone every day, I’m sure. And eventually she came and visited our church and she introduced herself. She said, somebody introduce themselves to her, some ladies introduce themselves, some older ladies to her first. And she said, I’m Mike’s ex. And they said, oh, we love Brother Mike. They were kind of protective.
[Jay]
We love Brother Mike. What are you doing here? Sort of, you know, all right, gotcha, gotcha.
[Mike]
Yeah, but eventually, Patricia, you can correct me if I forget something, but eventually we wanted to get married. So I floated the idea And we arranged to get married and we just had a, it was just the pastor and his mother. The pastor performed the ceremony again, another. And so he did not marry us the first time, but he married. We had a legal marriage, went and got a marriage license, legally remarried one another. So then that opens up another door with the kids, but I may be forgetting. some, but the kids were responded to this.
[MCG]
Now, before Patricia jump in, I want to know, was the second proposal better than the first?
[Mike]
Yes.
[Patricia]
This is biblical, you know, it’s more biblical that same verse that he talked about, 1 Corinthians 7, is the same verse that he used to help me. The kids were 16 and 18 at the time. And since I’ve joked before, what 16 and 18-year-old likes anything their parents do. So to try to say, well, we won’t get remarried until you’re okay with it. I thought we thought they weren’t there at the first marriage. They’re not required to be there for the second one. I mean, it would have been wonderful if they had, been a part of it and they’d rejoice with us and stuff. But 1 Corinthians 7, if a woman leave her husband, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled. And I just thought, remained unmarried you know so this sounds very clear you know they were to be reconciled you know we can count on one hand how many people we know that have reconciled after divorce you know not as long a divorce as ours but they have reconciled and they’ve stayed together couples that are Christians stuff so you know it was just kind of like it was a natural thing that we realized you know you know this is ridiculous saying goodbye to one another and And we’d been married before, it seemed ridiculous to be dating. How do you date somebody you’ve been married to? And we never really thought of one another as not being married together. So it was just kind of like, for us, it was a formality to get the license and get married. We didn’t think that we needed to have the whole big ceremony the first time because we thought, we still believed in our vows and stuff, that this was all something that, In a way, it felt like it was done to us, but we participated in.
[Mike]
Numbers of people were glad that we were getting remarried. But there was a number of people just ambivalent, just like, well, we’ll see if this works out. And then one of our children said to Patricia something like, I don’t want you to get married, remarried. She said, well, would you rather that I remarried someone else?
[Patricia]
Yeah.
[Mike]
Not thinking, it’s just stupid thinking. Right, So, and the family felt like it should have been okay with the children. We should have had their permission to get remarried. And we thought, you know, like Patricia just said, you know, that isn’t their decision.
[Patricia]
Right, But again, you know, And I’d already had the thing about the choice between the marriage and the children. And I knew now that the marriage is first. Right. Not the children. And God was leading us so strongly with the scripture. And we did get counsel, you know, before and during and stuff.
[Mike]
And after, yeah.
[Patricia]
Yeah, and after.
[Jay]
Sure. So the 16 years, 16 and a half years of divorce and separation, and now you’ve remarried. And Now, this second time around, it’s being done with clearer biblical truth underpinning the union and underpinning what it’s supposed to be. What are some of the things that you’ve done since in the years after the divorce that keep Christ first in your marriage? And what has these past few years since the getting back together, what have they been like overall, especially compared to, you know, your marriage before the divorce?
[Mike]
They’ve been fun. They’ve been adventurous. We’ve spent a lot of time together and gone little short trips nearby where we came from and where we were living in Alabama and some here too. But we’ve been able to spend a lot more time together and look at the differences between men and women. You know, men need respect. Women need to be heard, be listened to. So we were told that and we’ve tried to heed that. So I hope I’ve become a better listener, a more empathetic listener and And a communicator, and Patricia’s been more respectful. She put notes in my lunch. She makes a lunch for me every day, and lots of little thoughtful things she does in four minutes. She wouldn’t have to do, which a lot of wives don’t do. It just makes me feel real important.
[MCG]
Amen, brother. How long have you guys been married since the remarry?
[Patricia]
21 years.
[MCG]
Amen. Wow. Amen.
[Jay]
Wow.
[MCG]
Amen.
[Jay]
I don’t know if you noticed this, Mike, but you described when I asked, what has your marriage been like since getting remarried? And you described it in the same way you described your relationship when you were in college. Fun. when you had time together. And now that makes me think of the scripture. I’m going to pull it up here real quick. Something about the Lord being able to restore all of the years that the locusts have eaten and how that has been crystallized and demonstrated in your lives. And I praise God for his work in your hearts and in your marriage. And now we can share it with the world. No pressure, of course, but to share with everyone how doing marriage God’s way turns out to be beautiful, and it’s demonstrated in your story and in your marriage right now. So I just praise God for that, for him performing his word in your hearts and in your marriage. I praise God for that. What do you say would be the thing or maybe the things that keep your marriage going strong?
[Patricia]
I would say what’s really helped us from the get-go of getting back together is keeping a laser-like focus on our marriage, no matter what anybody else is saying, family, children, other Christians, because as one of our counselors, we’re blazing a trail. Not many people that have been divorced for whatever reason get back together. Whereas in the Bible, God describes himself as the God of reconciliation, first of all, to himself, reconciling us to himself, and then to each other. And I think it should be more common that people that have been divorced, particularly Christians, work at reconciling. It’s hard work. It’s a lot of hard work. But once you’re committed and you know this is what God wants you to do, you’re following his word, then it’s much easier that way. But I would say spending more time together, you know, planning fun things. Working together at church, if we’re in a ministry, we’re in it together. When we’ve been in choir, other choirs and other churches, we stood next to one another, even though he’s almost a foot taller than me. He’s a tenor, I’m an alto. We did that for several years, sitting with one another in church, doing whatever ministry we’re in, giving each other time to read God’s word and study. and encouraging each other in that, sharing versus praying together multiple times throughout the day, reading scripture at night before we go to sleep, sending scripture to each other. Hey, did you see such and such sermon? This is great. You wanna add anything to that?
[Mike]
I was just thinking as far as, we had our own business for 16 years, from 2006 to 2022. We did home improvements and remodeling and repairs and things like that. And I did it because I knew how to do it, because I’d been involved in that business as a younger man. But when you have your own business, we had workman’s comp, we had business licenses, we had estimated taxes, we had payroll at times. Then we had the estimating and doing the work and hiring subcontractors and 1099s and all kind of forms from the government. Patricia helped me with that a good bit, but it’s not really quality time. So now I’m employed by someone else. And I’ve been there just a few years, but it’s really nice that I can just, work my time there and come home and can just leave that with them. I don’t have to pick up the phone. I’m under no deadline. I mean, that’s their problem. They pay for the leave.
[Jay]
You don’t have to bring it home with you. Yeah.
[Mike]
All that, yeah. I’m not saying I don’t. I’m just saying I don’t have to. We’re still a work in progress.
[Jay]
Still a work in progress. Praise the Lord.
[MCG]
We all are.
[Jay]
We all are.
[Mike]
Yeah. But I think, the old across to keep it simple, those kind of little things like that are really key to, life, happiness, contentment.
[MCG]
Yeah. So this is a question we normally ask in the series lesson in marriage, but I think you guys have proven it already in your life. The question is, is marriage worth it? And the follow-up to that would be, would you do it over again and why? And I think you guys have done it over again. So comment on that because usually in the Christian realm, Divorce is kind of looked down upon if you’re a divorced person in the body, whether sometimes it’s just mental or it’s just people treat you differently because they understand you’re divorced and stuff like that. Go into that. How has the remarriage been? How have you been received? What make it all worth it again in the fact that you have done it again and you say, hey, I want to spend the rest of my life with this guy. And now I’ve been with him again for another 20 something years.
[Patricia]
I think it’s just, you know, we didn’t just leave things as they were. God gave us the opportunity to work through all of the things that help each other heal, frankly, from the things we hurt one another with, which is amazing. As far as how our marriage is looked at is we actually have more, it seems like, if you use the word, judgment from people that have been married, divorced, and married to somebody else, or people that are divorced or going through a divorce. Because I think that we might be contagious, that they might have to remarry their ex, or we might try to convince them to. Which at times we have been called on by pastor to speak to a couple that’s going through a divorce. And I was able to talk to two ladies that approached me that were thinking of leaving their husband, thinking that I was for divorce. I said, oh no, I am not for divorce. that is not solve problems, because they’d heard some of my testimony. And so I talked to them and they did stay with their husbands, but one of them, their husband left them. But, and Mike has been a counselor to men whose wife had left them to encourage them and to try to help them through that process. So we kind of have a burden for that, particularly if a couple says they’re thinking of getting divorced or they’re separating, we’re like, that is not the answer. Yeah. That is not the answer. That is not what’s going to help you. may feel some relief right after it or something, but it opens up a whole new bag of problems. As a single parent, divorced single parent, I had a stigma that stayed with me for a long time while we were divorced and stuff. But I guess we just really want people to know as a Christian, you really need to be pursuing reconciliation, you don’t need to be thinking, the divorce, the marriage is over, find somebody else. Because we ran into that with non-Christians, family, Christians, churches, stuff like that. So it would kind of, to tell people that we’ve been married, divorced, and remarried, we kind of cringe waiting for, how are they going to think of this, and stuff. And we want to say, no, this is what God did in our life. This is a glorious thing. You know, this is a good thing. Like you quoted the verse says, restore the years that the locusts have eaten. You know, this is absolutely what God is doing, has done, and is doing. I will say too, as far as Mike showing, Lock toward me, having had a lot of physical difficulties over the years and stuff, is tender care of me during that. It’s just been amazing. When I couldn’t even walk at times, it pushed me in the wheelchair, load that heavy wheelchair in our car, unload it, you know, pushed me into the wheelchair into church so I could come to church so that, you know, if one of us gets sick, one of us come to church and the other one who’s sick stay home. We stay home with the one that’s sick. So we’re always together. Right. Love that. Sitting together. And when we’re in church, you know, I always try to work at sitting close. You know, I always think to myself, it shouldn’t be people that are not married, they’re engaged or whatever, sitting the closest. It should be the married couples. Everybody’s like, it won’t hurt you. It won’t hurt you, sit close.
[MCG]
How about you, Mike?
[Mike]
I would just, you know, as I think back as I was pondering whether to remarry Patricia or not, I thought, well, this is an opportunity to make an investment in another person’s life. I didn’t know it was going to work out for another 21 years, and hopefully to the end of our life. I didn’t know it hadn’t worked out previous, but I thought, well, this is an opportunity to be a good influence. And my influence had seemed to be a help at that time. And then I thought it would be good for the children’s sake, for the cohesion, you know, that we displayed. The Bible talks about like in the Ephesians 5, uses marriage as an analogy of Christ in the church. And I just thought, well, it’s a very simple decision really to make to remarry to one another. And then there’s the aspect of reconciliation. You know, God is, I think it’s in 2nd Corinthians 5, where it talks about God’s given to us the ministry of reconciliation. And Our journeys as Christians hasn’t remained static since we got saved, but He’s continued to draw us closer and closer and closer to Him. We had our downs and ups and downs again and ups, and our closeness to Him. But Christians are really special to God. But we won’t be fully glorified till we get to heaven. But in the meantime, He’s helping us to understand his ways. And the Bible says, it’s not good for a man to be alone in it. I’m not sure if that means it’s a male or a female. I think it’s both. It’s just not healthy for people to be alone. It’s just the most beautiful thing of all things.
[MCG]
I know, Patricia, you said to me once, you know, the marriage is not over until one or the other person will marry.
[Patricia]
Yes. I think we heard this from someone. the marriage isn’t over until you remarry someone else if you’re divorced. Because I was told, the marriage is over, he’s never going to change, find somebody else. And I think he was told, she’ll never come back. The words never. Again, should a Christian never use the word never in relationships? That’s a challenge to me, how easily we write people off. And we don’t factor in the Holy Spirit, we don’t factor in God, we don’t factor in the power of His Holy Spirit and of His Word working in His children. And so, yeah, that’s… the marriage isn’t over until the remarriage. So, when we had these people come and we were either told about or we noticed that they were going through divorce or someone made an announcement, so-and-so was going through divorce, we would try to talk to them. Sure. You know, and up until they remarried somebody else, you know, we would talk, plead with them. Don’t do this. It’s not going to solve all your problems that you think it’s going to. You know, you need to work at things. Particularly, they had kids. These couples had young kids, you know, and some had teenagers and stuff. Some had no kids. But then when they remarried, then we withdrew, you know, and prayed for them. Right. You know, like God would still work in their lives. Because, you know, then once you’re married to somebody else, you don’t get unmarried.
[Jay]
Right.
[Patricia]
Divorce that person and go back to other kids. Really, that’s biblical. I think that’s in First Corinthians also.
[Mike]
Yeah, and in the law too.
[Patricia]
But God kept us, you know, as Mike said, he dated while we were apart. I dated also, but God kept us from marrying anybody else. You know, we dated because we were lonely. I wish I hadn’t dated anybody, but I’m glad that God kept us from marrying anybody else while we were divorced. Praise the Lord.
[MCG]
All right, why don’t we go into a little bit of a fun section and find out some of your favorites and lighten the conversation a little bit. So let’s start with you, Patricia. What is your favorite scripture verse?
[Patricia]
Mine is actually a chapter and it’s Psalm 119.
[MCG]
Oh wow, the longest one. Yes.
[Patricia]
Because it’s all full of the emphasis on God’s word. It uses many different words to describe it, precepts, statues, law, and then there’s all kinds of verbs in there. I started out trying to memorize it actually one time.
[Jay]
How far did you guess?
[Patricia]
The first section. But as a child and as a young adult and teen, I did memorize whole books. I did memorize the whole book of James, five chapters. when I was a teen and stuff. So brain doesn’t work quite as well as it did when I was a kid for memorizing.
[Jay]
I tell our kids, look, memorize all the scripture you can now, because the older you get, the more difficult it becomes, for sure.
[Patricia]
Yeah. That’s my most favorite. I’m actually reading through it right now. I go section by section, because it has the Hebrew letter at the end of each section. That’s where I stop. And I read through the Bible on a regular basis. and stuff. I don’t say I’m going to read it from January December. I’m just continually reading through. So I’m in Psalm 119 right now. It never gets old to me. Holy Spirit’s always bringing something out to my attention. Just the emphasis on his word.
[Mike]
My favorite verse is in Hebrews, and it talks about faith. And, you know, 1 Corinthians 13 talks about the way of all faith so we could remove mountains and have not charity, but it comes with sounding brass and things. No, I’m not as faithful as I’d like to be. Verse 6 in chapter 11 says, but without faith, it’s impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, that he’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And that’s always a challenge to us.
[MCG]
Right.
[Mike]
You know, and that’s my favorite.
[Jay]
All right. What is your favorite historical biblical account in the scriptures? Some people call them Bible stories and we hate calling it that because it carries the connotation of it not being true. But what’s your favorite Bible history or historical account in the scriptures?
[Mike]
Mine would be the story of Joseph. There’s all things that went through and the Bible was saying God was with him.
[Jay]
Yeah, amen. What about you?
[Mike]
He just persevered and persevered. I mean, and it’s amazing what God did for him, you know?
[Patricia]
It’s the story of Job, the account of Job. A lot of people do not think of it this way, but I think of it, you know, even though Job’s wife said, curse God and die, she was the one that was still his wife in the end, and she had more kids. So she replaced, you know, that God still trusted her with that and didn’t take her away, you know?
[Jay]
Yeah.
[Patricia]
So, yeah.
[Jay]
Wow, never thought of that. Yeah.
[MCG]
The funny thing is our oldest son recently asked us if Job had married a godly woman, because his mother emphasized to him that he should marry the godly woman. So looking at the story of Job, he wanted to know from us if Job married a godly woman. And of course, we told him yes. And the reason why I say yes is because a lot of folks look over what grief can really do to a person.
[Patricia]
Yes.
[MCG]
I recently read a book about grief and stuff like that, because I just want to understand it better. And grief is one of those things that, unless you have been through it and really grieve, you don’t really understand it. So a lot of the things she may have said, think about it, she lost all her kids. She lost all her money. She’s about to lose her husband. She was probably in some deep grief and she said what she said, not because she was ungodly, but because she’s human, Yeah.
[Patricia]
I always say that I’m glad that my story is not in the Bible to be read through. The words that I said that I wish I hadn’t. Hadn’t, right?
[MCG]
We only got to put it on the internet forever. All right, what is the most convicting scripture passage to you?
[Patricia]
To think about that. There’s so much of it. I have to go back to Psalm 119.
[MCG]
Okay, that’s good. That’s good.
[Patricia]
Yeah. You know, that’s why I read it, to remind myself of what I should be working at.
[MCG]
Right. What about you, Mike?
[Mike]
I’d say apart from Hebrews 11, 6 and being faithless, a verse that from the Proverbs jumps out on me, only by pride cometh contention.
[MCG]
Yeah.
[Mike]
Even when you have the truth, even if with the most tender heart that you can have, you talk to some people and they’re going to feel like you’ve contended with them, and perhaps that’s just on their part, but oftentimes, with the Bible say that something about the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, sometimes he’ll use the rebukes of unsaved people to help us understand where our hearts are, you know?
[Jay]
True, very true. Yeah.
[Mike]
Pride in the USA is a huge problem.
[MCG]
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
[Mike]
Starting here at the Mike’s chair and beyond. But, you know, I said to a guy at work, I said, he and I were bannering back and forth and got angry with one another about a year ago. And he labeled me as something. And I said, you’re proud. And he said, you’re blankety blank right on. I’m proud. He had no idea what, that pride could be a bad thing. he thought that pride, personal satisfaction had to be good. His is in respect to a task that he was performing.
[Jay]
What about the most comforting scripture to you? What would you say that is, Patricia?
[Patricia]
I think it’s in Matthew. Lord, I’m with you always.
[Jay]
Amen.
[Patricia]
Even the end of the world.
[Mike]
Amen.
[MCG]
Mike.
[Jay]
Mike.
[Mike]
Psalm 37, one, I think it says, fret not thyself because of evildoers. Yeah. Either be not envious against the workers of iniquity.
[MCG]
Yeah.
[Mike]
You know, it kind of goes back to like Psalm 1, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. You know, so it does a company. Yeah. In a world that is so completely opposed to God, you know, that whether somebody is agreeable with us or not, or hostile to work, you know, their end is coming too, you know. Yeah. Our end is coming. We’re all going to be. not getting out of this alive, but I mean, it’s comforting to know that, God will punish, God punishes, that we don’t need to take vengeance. That was a big thing. My dad told me when Patricia and I were astranged, he said, Mike, he said, no matter how difficult it gets, don’t ever try to take things into your own hands as angry as you might get at the situation you’re in. You know, and I appreciate him saying that, you know, because many a time I thought, you know, I’ve got a right to this and I’ve got a right to that. I mean, my anger wouldn’t have improved it.
[Jay]
Yeah, for sure.
[MCG]
Yeah, definitely. All right. What is your favorite hymn of the faith?
[Mike]
One of them I was thinking of again recently is just Faith of our Fathers. Faith of our Fathers, we shall be true to thee till death or something like that. A real old song like that with good words.
[Jay]
There’s something about those old hymns that just I’m not trying to knock contemporary hymns, but something about those old hymns just hit that spiritual nail.
[Mike]
They weren’t repetitive. There was a lot of theology in the hymn, you know.
[Jay]
Yeah. What about you, Patricia? What’s your favorite hymn of the faith?
[Patricia]
I like so many hymns, but I would say in Christ alone. There’s one phrase in there. It says, no fear of man. I forget how it goes.
[Mike]
Fear in death, no.
[Patricia]
Fear of death, no, can keep me from God’s love, no. and stuff. So in Christ alone, I mean, there’s some hymns that when we sing, I can’t hardly sing because it chokes me up thinking about the words, but yeah, they’d probably have to be in Christ alone.
[Jay]
Okay. Do you have a favorite giant of the faith in the scriptures?
[Patricia]
Favorite giant? There’s many of them, you know. Of course, I’m trying to think of the women.
[Jay]
Of course.
[MCG]
It sounds like it would be Job’s wife then.
[Patricia]
Yeah, Job’s wife. And because our pastor just preached on about Rahab, faith that she had.
[MCG]
Right.
[Patricia]
And I believe she went on, I think I’ve studied before, she married one of those spies. Like the great grandmother of King David, great grandmother, a great great grandmother.
[MCG]
Right.
[Patricia]
So the faith that she had, I mean, she didn’t know how they would respond to her, you know, but she in faith and said, your God, we have heard of you, know, and heard of your God. And spoke out and was able to save not herself, but her family.
[MCG]
Amen.
[Patricia]
And suffered to another country and all.
[Mike]
I would probably say David, because it’s interesting to me how he dealt with evil, how he overlooked his enemies oftentimes, and how he used to write the book of Proverbs. But, you know, our Savior, Jesus Christ, sometimes after I’ve exhausted the lives of these other fellows, I’ll say to myself, kind of the old thing, what would Jesus do? What did Jesus do? How did he react? Did he have these kind of trials and troubles? And of course he did.
[MCG]
Well, why don’t we go into home stretch? And so the Bible says in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 22 to 24, Wives, submit yourself unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he’s the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, So let the wives speak to their own husbands and everything. So Patricia, this question is for you. What are some practical ways you show respect and submission to your husband over the last 21 years or so you guys have been back together.
[Patricia]
Just thinking about praying more specifically for him, giving him love notes in his lunch every day. He eats lunch away. You know, we’re not together as he’s on the job site. actually pack a breakfast for him in there too, and snacks. Oh, wow. And tea and a thermos. It’s really good. You know, as I’m writing the note, I’m thinking about, you know, how can I bless him? How can I compliment him, a godly character that I’ve seen in him recently? You know, and having told him this, usually I’m praying and asking God to show me what I can encourage him in, you know, or thank him. Thank you for working so hard to provide for us. Thank you for taking me to church last night, holding my hand as we left the building. And to putting him first, now that God has helped me to have another chance at that, putting him first over our kids. It was really difficult as a 16 and 18-year-old when we first got back together, but I had to be just very focused, and I knew that the order the biblical order is him first and then the kids. Well, God first and then Mike and then the kids. And so I knew that was the most important thing for our kids to see, and to refer to him as their dad and to always speak of him in a positive manner. Nothing negative. You know, they heard enough negative when we were divorced. So I worked very hard to be always positive and to always, don’t ever call him by his first name to them, but call him your dad, your dad this, your dad, and just constantly, I probably got sick of it after a while, and stuff, but I felt like that was the biblical thing to do and just follow him for what he wants to work at and express my appreciation.
[Jay]
Yeah. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 25 through 29 says, Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. So Mike, what are some of the practical things that you’re doing to love your wife as Christ loves the church?
[Mike]
Well, I’ll probably think of some better answers, but I’ve been listening to this guy, I think his name might be Gary Chapman. He’s talking about know your wife’s love languages. And one of Patricia’s love languages, she likes gifts. They don’t have to be big gifts. It’d be a, You know, a $15 bouquet of roses from Aldi’s or a $10 piece of jewelry on sale at a department store, just any little gift, just that I’m thinking of her. She really appreciates that. And also to talk with her about things, you know, share ideas and learn her opinions. And, you know, Bible talks about dwell with your wife according to knowledge, you know, and understanding. So whether it be different than ours or not, you know, we’re supposed to, learn what that is. And I don’t know that I’m covers at all, but there’s just a couple of things that came to my mind today.
[MCG]
Yeah, definitely. All right. So why don’t we wrap it up with this question? So continue Ephesians 5, verse 31 to 32. The Bible says, for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. You You guys are unique for me because I’ve not known a Christian who have divorced and remarried and we’ve been living together for 20 plus years now. What do you want the world to know about Christ and the church as it’s demonstrated through your marriage now?
[Mike]
Do you want to say something for us, Patricia?
[Patricia]
I want them to know how loving Christ is to the church and how it’s a hands-on thing that he’s working continually in our sanctification and he doesn’t give up on us doesn’t discard us doesn’t say they’ll never change you know he’s continually I mean he brings trials in our life do even more fine-tuning you know so the fact that God brought us back together in spite of you know divorce is common for unfortunately even among Christians you know but the fact that God brought us back together and that he’s working in us. We’re committed to one another. There’s never going to be a divorce again. We don’t believe in divorce, but to get a person thinking, would Christ absolutely give up on anybody that’s his own? And should we be giving up on our marriages, even if there’s a divorce? That’s a whole nother concept that I think Christians need to be thinking about, especially when it talks about the God of reconciliation. Reconciliation implies that there was once a relationship that’s broken and that needs to be reconciled. As Christians, we should be known more. working at relationships than just giving up, particularly in marriage. So showing that Christ does that with his own, you know.
[Mike]
Yeah, well, I agree with that. And I don’t know if I could add much more to that. The likes, they like what Christians have. They usually don’t like white Christians, but they like what we have. Maybe they don’t want to work at it. They don’t want to submit to the God of the Jews and of the Bible. Yeah, I would echo what Patricia says. We’ve got a son-in-law now and daughter that are married. They’ve been married for some time now. What I want them to know is love never faileth, you know, like 1 Corinthians 13. But the wife is very, very special. And they asked for a show of hands at work recently. How many of you guys have been working for X number of years and this number of years and stuff? And I was able to raise my hand for X number of years. But they thought it was kind of ridiculous that I would still be working, but I’m doing it because I have to. I have to, it would be irresponsible, not to be working.
[MCG]
Right.
[Mike]
I’m not saying that it would be wrong for an older fella, a much older fella to not be working, but I think sacrifice, you know, you guys have sacrificed a lot for your time and your sleep, for your boys, you know, and finances. So the sacrifices, it was a big thing to our savior, wasn’t it?
[MCG]
Amen.
[Jay]
Absolutely.
[MCG]
All right. Well Mike, Patricia, this was indeed a pleasure. Thank you for joining us on the Removing Barriers podcast.
[Patricia]
Thank you so much.
[Mike]
Thank you for having us. Yeah.
[Patricia]
For listening.
[Mike]
Yes.
[Patricia]
It’s a pleasure.
[MCG]
Amen.
[Jay]
This is the Removing Barriers podcast. If the podcast or the blog were a blessing to you, leave us a rating and a review on your favorite podcast platform. And don’t forget to share the podcast with your friends. Removing Barriers, A Clear View of the Cross.
[MCG]
Thank you for listening. To get a hold of us, to support this podcast, or to learn more about Removing Barriers, go to removingbarriers.net. This has been the Removing Barriers podcast. We attempted to remove barriers so that we all can have a clear view of the cross.
