Tim Bush: But I want you to consider something. Would you consider reading the Bible? I said, “Bob, I went and bought one. I’m reading 70 pages a night, whiskey in one hand, Bible in the other, I’m not getting a thing from this thing.” I, it’s, I, I, it’s just, I’m not getting anything.
John Fuller: That’s Tim Bush, and he and his wife, Kathy, are with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, sharing their incredible marriage story. I’m John Fuller.
Jim Daly: John, occasionally, we hear some marriage stories that are amazing. I’d say miraculous.
John: Hmm.
Jim: And today, we’re gonna hear that, uh, from this couple that will share a lot of the trench warfare spiritually that they were in, the generational curses that plague them. And I am, my jaw’s open. I’m just kinda shocked they made it.
John: Mm.
Jim: And so this is the kind of show you wanna kick back, get that cup of coffee or a hot cup of tea and just listen to this story. I think you’re gonna be amazed that, uh, God actually was able to work through their hearts and create a miracle in their relationship.
John: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And Tim and Kathy have been married for over 40 years. They have three grown children and eight grandchildren, and, uh, they’re speakers and serve with the Family Life team. They’ve got a powerful book. As you said, Jim, it’s a, a, an incredible story. Uh. The book is called Sex on the First Date: A Story Of A Broken Beginning To A Radically Transformed Marriage. And, uh, we’ve got details about our guests and this, uh, terrific resource, this book, online at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast.
Jim: Tim and Kathy, welcome to Focus on the Family. Nothing like being headlined with, “This is a crazy marriage story that God reached down and, and found a way in his sovereignty to save.” Kathy, let’s start with you. Going back, I mean, uh, you do have this powerful story, what were some of the unhealthy habits that were going on early in your marriage?
Kathy Bush: Well, yes, it was a crazy marriage. (laughs) So going back, the unhealthy … Well, starting at the very beginning, you know, Tim and I got married because I was pregnant.
Jim: Okay.
Kathy: And, uh-
Jim: Thus, the title of the book?
Kathy: Uh-
Jim: Sex on the first date?
Kathy: Didn’t get pregnant on the first date.
Jim: Okay.
Kathy: (Laughs) Got pregnant shortly after that.
Jim: Right.
Kathy: And Tim and I had actually talked about getting married, um, but once I got pregnant, my parents were like, “It looks like we’re gonna move the date up.” And we’re, you know, I was actually a senior in high school, but I really felt like, for me, I was, I was looking for a husband at this point. I wasn’t my, my future was going to be, I was gonna get married. So when I got pregnant and I could drop out of school, it, it gave me a good excuse because I did not like school at all.
Jim: Uh-huh.
Kathy: So we moved into the marriage really fast and we didn’t know each other. We didn’t do any kind of pre-marriage. Um. The marriage was pretty much based off of how I thought Tim was gonna make me feel. I, I was marrying him because I knew he could provide for me and I felt like he was gonna take care of me. So I basically just went from being in my home with my parents to moving to being with Tim, into another situation of a, of a man taking care of me.
Jim: Tim, let me turn your direction. Uh. One of the major turning points in your marriage was when you came to a breaking point. Describe the breaking point, what was happening and, and what year of marriage did this breaking point occur?
Tim: Well, the breaking point in our marriage was, uh, I’m gonna, there’s a between, between 25 and 27 years. It was a long breaking point. Uh. But in, in 2005 my pop passed away and there were, and I never really grieved over it. I was a tough guy and he told me to be tough. You know, “Don’t grieve. People need to depend on you, and you need to be a rock for everybody.”
Jim: And your pop was your grandfather.
Tim: Grandpa, yeah.
Jim: Yeah. He’s the one who raised you.
Tim: He’s the one that gave me his last name. They adopted me and raised me as their own from the time I was 12, and really even before that, uh, but mostly in the, in those, in those teen years, taught me how to work and taught me that’s what women were attracted to, success. And, uh, so I worked towards that. But I can tell you the breaking point for me, uh, when Pop died and then a couple years later, uh, my brother got brain cancer, stage four glioblastinoma in 2008 was when he was diagnosed. And then that fall, uh, our nephew, uh, passed away, and it was really hard in our family, he was only 22. And also, that fall, business was getting bad because the economy changed. And I was building at that point what I would call my own kingdom here on earth and building … And my goal was 100 buildings in 10 years, and I was going to do this no matter what and carry it all on my shoulders without even talking to God about it. I didn’t know God.
And, uh, things started to crash down that fall. So I was, uh, I was depressed. I was, uh, filled with anxiety, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think right. And, uh, ultimately then my brother passed away in February of 2009 at 43 years old, and I, everything I could do to try to save him, but I couldn’t do it. And, and, uh, I tried though. But I started to fall apart, and even talked about suicide.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Tim: I was to the point where I was at the end of myself and, and didn’t know what to do. And at this point, um, I’m drinking a fifth of alcohol a day-
Jim: Hmm. Just to cope.
Tim: Just to cope with it.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Tim: And taking Xanax and other drugs too. Uh. Just, just everything, just to get through the day. I couldn’t work. At this point, I’m not working at all.
Jim: Hmm.
Tim: And we have lots of employees, lots of things going on and, uh, uh, I literally thought that I was going to die. And so that was, uh, but the breaking point didn’t quite happen just then, but it was pretty close. And, uh, and I was going to a counselor then too. Uh. Jake was really trying to help me through all this and he thought it was from abuse from, uh, my brother’s dad, that he abused me when I was younger and beat me, put me in the hospital a couple times.
Jim: Hmm.
Tim: And, uh, and he thought it was that. So I, he told me that I should get, go to Costco and get one of those big boxes for toilet paper that they used to make, not the plastic, and tape it all up with duct tape, and then write his name on it, get a baseball bat, and beat that box until I felt better. And I did. I did that.
Jim: Hmm.
John: Huh.
Tim: And it, and it did make me feel better about, about-
Jim: Interesting.
Tim: … about my brother’s dad.
Jim: Yeah.
Tim: And ultimately, I did end up forgiving him on my, the day my brother died, right in front of my brother.
Jim: Wow.
Tim: But I wasn’t a Christian yet.
Jim: Yeah, I was gonna ask where is the Lord in all that.
Tim: I just felt like I needed to do it while my brother was still alive and he died about an hour later, my brother did.
John: Oh, wow.
Tim: And his dad was on the other side of me when this happened. Um. But I can tell you, um, my counselor said, “You’re not telling me everything.”
Jim: Hmm.
Tim: And I said, “Well, what do you mean?” He says, “Well, if you’re still having anxiety, all these things are going on, there’s things that you’re not telling me.” And, and then I told him about my serial infidelity over the years and the things I’d not told Kath. And, uh, he said, “Well, you’re gonna need to tell her.” And I said, “Well, if I tell her, I’m gonna lose her.” He goes, “Well, if you don’t tell her, you’re gonna lose yourself.”
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Tim: So that’s where you’re at right now. God’s having His way with you.
Jim: Yeah.
Tim: He’s brought you to your knees. And he told me a scripture and he basically said, “If you don’t let this out, you’re gonna die.”
Jim: Yeah.
Tim: And-
Jim: And you’re in that spot. I mean, this is painting a really amazing picture. Kathy, I wanna come back to you. You described the desire to find yourself in the midst of all this and you, you’ve got all this difficulty going on with your marriage. I guess it’s a two-part question. First, what kept you in at, at this point? I mean, maybe then you can describe when Tim shared that infidelity with you and your response to that, but what kept you, your head in the game? I mean, you’re not committed to the Lord in a deeper way. It sounded like kind of a superficial understanding of scripture and stuff.
Kathy: Right.
Jim: So what-
Kathy: Yeah, I, I definitely didn’t really have any understanding of scripture. I was not in God’s word and only heard it from what I heard in church. But really what kept me in, it was kind of an on and off thing and we tell people, when they ask us that question, “Why did you not get a divorce?” And, and my answer to that is there wasn’t one day in those 27 years that we both wanted a divorce.
John: Mm.
Jim: Yeah, you said that very carefully.
Kathy: Yeah.
Jim: So people need to understand, it wasn’t that you never said…
Kathy: Right.
Jim: … what about divorce.
Kathy: Yeah.
Jim: You just never said it on the same day.
Kathy: We never said it on the same day.
Jim: Hmm.
Kathy: And so there was always one of us that was willing to fight for the marriage.
Jim: Huh.
Kathy: And I, I look back at that and I hear people say, “Well, if you’re not both gonna commit, you’re not gonna both fight, it’s not gonna work.” And I don’t believe that. I believe if there’s one of you, I believe eventually, yes, it, you can’t make it work if you’re never both gonna commit, and God did that for us. But I believe that Tim wanted marriage so bad because he had experienced divorce so many times.
Tim: My mom married nine times, my dad, five, so-
Kathy: Yeah.
Jim: That is, that was an incredible thing to read.
Tim: Well, then my grandparents too, at age 18, they got a divorce after 37 years of marriage. So I didn’t really see any, what I would call stable marriages.
Jim: Yeah.
Kathy: So he continually said to me, “I’m not gonna do that to our kids. I’m not gonna drag them through a divorce. I don’t, I,” you know, he knew what that felt like.” I had no idea; my parents were long time married. My thought was this isn’t a good situation for our kids to be seeing. That’s, I was kind of looking at it at that way and I didn’t know what divorce was. So I was, I was the one that was throwing divorce out there a lot more and I was told from people, “You need to find yourself.” And what, what does that even mean? Because we’re really supposed to lose ourself and find Christ. It’s not about-
Tim: Well, we so searched. We searched.
Jim: (laughs).
Kathy: The search was on-
Jim: Well, and that’s real.
Kathy: Yeah.
Jim: I mean, and I appreciate that.
Kathy: Yeah.
Jim: And there’s people listening that don’t have a deep commitment with the Lord and they’re trying to find themselves-
Kathy: Yep.
Jim: … because friends of theirs have said, “Try to find yourself.”
Kathy: Find yourself. Yeah.
Jim: So this is part of your testimony.
Kathy: Yes.
Jim: And how long did that journey of finding yourself last?
Kathy: That was-
Jim: And in the end you went to a cul-de-sac called Jesus Christ Lane.
Kathy: Right. (laughs).
Jim: And there was no way out.
Kathy: Right.
Jim: So what happened there?
Kathy: Well, it, that lasted the 27 years before we found Christ. And it wasn’t only, you know, we filled that hole with drugs, and alcohol, and infidelity, but also, I was filling it. I would go to college and take college classes. I would go to self-help seminars. You know, it was just that constant search.
John: Hmm.
Kathy: And then after Christ took us to our knees, which He basically did, Tim, which brought me, um, it was, it’s like the search was over. We found our purpose.
Jim: Yeah, that’s good. And I’m gonna come out of the break and we’ll get more about that, uh, finding of Christ.
John: Yeah, this is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and our guests are Tim and Kathy Bush sharing a little bit of their story, which is captured in, uh, more detail in the book, Sex on the First Date: A Story Of A Broken Beginning To A Radically Transformed Marriage. Uh. Incredible read, get a copy from us here at the ministry when you’re at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast.
Jim: You know, the, the thing that’s fascinating is the way the Lord’s working in both of your hearts prior to your commitment to Him. There’s obviously a stirring going on. The Lord is like reeling you in, which is what He does, you know?
Kathy: Mm-hmm.
Jim: The best thing you can do if you don’t have a relationship with Christ is say, “Lord, just show me yourself.” And God will do that. It sounds like you guys are in that spot. Just to kind of give it some framework again, I mean, you’re drinking heavily, your business is crumbling, you’re concerned about the kids and the marriage, which is super broken, but you’re willing to stick with it and find answers. Where does God show up more prominently for both of you and how did that happen and when did it happen?
Tim: Well, that was a process. Um. When we were, uh, in Mexico, I served on a board and there’s a bunch of people on that board and, and a friend of mine who I was trying to get more drugs because my, my doctor wasn’t gonna get, gonna give me any more Xanax. I said, “I need Xanax.” And he even talks about this. There’s videos in our book and he even talks about this when I came to him, and he said, “You know, Tim,” he said, um, “I’ll get you the drugs, no problem, but I want you to consider something. Would you consider reading the Bible?” I said, “Bob, I went and bought one. I’m reading 70 pages a night, whiskey in one hand, Bible in the other. I’m not getting a thing from this thing.”
Kathy: Mm-hmm.
Tim: I, it’s, I, I, it’s just, I’m not getting anything.
Jim: Well, he was your drug dealer, so-
Tim: (laughs).
Jim: This is all kind of odd.
Tim: Well, and, well, he was doing that as a friend because he could get it in Mexico over the, you could literally get it over the counter in Mexico.
Jim: Okay.
Tim: So, so he said, uh, he said, “You know, when I got really down and out, I started reading the Proverbs, and I, and there, and I tried, I read one every day. And I didn’t know if the Proverbs was in the Bible, what he was even talking about.
John: Mm.
Tim: And he said, uh, “Just you know, there’s 31 of them, and I would consider reading, doing that, and, uh, and seeing if that would work.” And so, you know what, I’ll think about it, because no one’s gonna tell me what to do.
Jim: (Laughs).
Tim: And so, uh, we’d leave Mexico, which I was a mess … at this, in Mexico.
Jim: And what year is this now?
Tim: This was be- … Early 2009.
Jim: Okay.
Tim: Right after my brother died because I thought things would be better once he died and they, they didn’t. I mean, the pressure was so-
Jim: Kept spiraling down.
Tim: Oh, yeah. It was just bad. We got on the airplane, for example, and I wanna kind of seize this moment. We had a first-class seat, and as soon as they closed the door, I started sweating, shaking, completely freaking out to where I was so claustrophobic where even my socks on my feet made me feel claustrophobic.
Jim: Wow.
Tim: Think about that. I couldn’t tie shoes. I couldn’t have my shoes tied because I would itch or whatever. It just really messed me up. And so I’d start drinking right away and they would, they, the flight attendants would give it to me because I was a mess.
John: Yeah.
Tim: But we got off that plane and then I went, when we went to Bob and our kids were with us too. And, um, I mean, I was so OCD, or whatever you want to call it, where I needed some lip stuff for my lips. We went to five stores to find lip stuff.
Jim: Lip balm?
Tim: Yeah, lip balm, just because my lips were chopped. And I, and I wasn’t gonna stop until I found the kind I wanted. And so I just kept, that’s how bad I was.
John: Kind of manic.
Tim: And so when we left, when … Yeah, exactly. So when we left Mexico, got home and I said to Kath, I said, “You know, uh, Bob mentioned that, you know, maybe I should read the Bible and read a Proverb every day. Would you read it with me?”
Jim: Huh.
Tim: And it was a moment that Kath … I, I don’t wanna take this away from Kath because-
Kathy: Then don’t.
Tim: Yeah.
Kathy: Let me say it.
Tim: Okay, you said that.
Kathy: (Laughs).
John: This is good.
Kathy: Because I remember this moment when he asked me to read the Bible with him and I, there was just something in the, in me that was like, I, I, when I, when I think back to it, that was like the sexiest thing Tim had ever done.
John: Huh.
Kathy: Like I felt like, for the first time in our marriage, he was doing something that was right, leading me in the right way.
John: Huh.
Kathy: And I think I was just craving that because, you know, I think because of my upbringing, there would be times when I would, I would get a Bible and I would say, “I’m gonna start reading the Bible.” And I would start, I, I’d usually do this in January. I’d start reading the Bible in Genesis and got about halfway through and never went any further. And I even have a Bible that my mom gave me, and I opened it years later, and she wrote in there, ‘To my spiritual daughter,” and she saw something in me. But when he asked me, it was just, I was craving that. I was craving for my husband to, to do something Godly with me, and I didn’t even know that. So it was a, it was an amazing time for us. And we started that day. We started with chapter one of Proverbs and-
Tim: And we found out that, we found out who wrote them and all that stuff because, you know-
Kathy: We, we were blown away.
Tim: Yeah.
Kathy: By Proverbs.
Tim: Right.
Kathy: And it made so much sense. We would look at each other like, “Wow, that like-”
Tim: That’s in the Bible.
Kathy: That ma- that makes sense, like we’ve never read this before and-
Tim: And, And when I was a kid growing up, I remember my Gram, she had this family Bible, it was a big one. It’s 1936, we still have it now. It was called the Family Bible.
Jim: (Laughs).
Tim: And I would, I went to grab it one time, she goes, “Oh no, we don’t touch that.”
Kathy: (Laughs).
Tim: I only use, I only opened it up to write marriages and deaths and stuff like that. So I never… Bibles were just something you didn’t touch, is what I thought. And so we’re actually reading God’s word and, uh, I went through a thing where I was, I was trying to lose weight and, and the thing I was doing was called Advocare and we, uh, it was a 30-day cleanse, so no drinking during those 30 days. So all of a sudden I’m not drinking at all for 30 days, we’re reading the Bible, and I’m starting to get better. And then, then things started to spin a little different. I had a, a good friend, which I think that’s where we’re gonna go anyway. I think, uh, I remember his name was Bill Voris. He was a pastor that walked my brother through his death in hospice.
John: Hmm.
Tim: He was there every day. And so I really liked this guy. And he reminded me of my Pop, same, he was 140 pounds, five-foot-seven, they looked alike, there were a lot of similarities there, only this guy had a relationship with the Lord and my Pop didn’t. And so Bill asked me, he said, “Hey, Tim, I want you to go to grief counseling. You need to do this.” And I said, “Well, tell me about that.” And he says, “Well, I have a group starting.” You lost me at group. I’m not gonna do any group thing. And he said, “Well, what if we did it one-on-one?” So I said, “Sure, I’ll do that.”
And so we started, and after a few times, Bill said to me, “I’m gonna close the door this time. Your, your claustrophobia and anxiety seems better. I need you to really hear me.” And so he closes the door and he said, “Tim, I could lose my job. I’ve been a pastor for 40 years. I’ve never had this conversation with another man and it’s really important and I want you to hear it.” He said, “Tim, the Lord’s got a calling on your life and it’s a big calling, and it’s not here. You need to go find yourself a Jesus loving Bible teaching church and figure out what that calling is.”
Jim: Wow. And he was working at the church you guys were going to.
Tim: He was the associate pastor on an interim-
Jim: And he was saying you gotta get to a different church.
Tim: Yeah.
John: Oh.
Kathy: He was at this Lutheran church.
Tim: Yeah.
John: Wow.
Tim: He was a, he was an interim pastor at this church and, and then I … now I didn’t, I had too much pride to say I knew what a c- didn’t know what a calling was.
Kathy: Mm-hmm.
Tim: So I went home to the girl that was raised in the church. I went home to Kath, I said, “Hey, Bill said this, and what do you think? What do you … What’s a calling by the way?” She goes, “Well, I don’t know either.”
Kathy: (Laughs).
Tim: “We’ll find out.”
John: (Laughs) Right. No, I mean, I love the-
Kathy: I said, “It sounds good.”
Jim: The freshness of it, like you-
Kathy: And I, and I even said, “I thought every church was a Jesus-loving Bible-teaching church.” I just thought that.
John: Right.
Kathy: I assumed when we went to church and we sat down in that church, everybody was gonna be in heaven with us, that when we all died, we were all going to heaven. I didn’t, we just didn’t understand. Yeah. We didn’t understand. So, but it was exciting. It was like, “Let’s go find a calling.”
Tim: (Laughs).
Kathy: Let’s go find our calling. ‘.
Tim: Yeah.
Jim: Well, we need to tie that in a bow. I’m assuming you found a good church then.
Tim: Well, we, we started searching and, uh, and then ultimately we did find a church, uh, but … and it was kind of funny how we found it. Uh. Uh. Our niece had been going there and she said, “Why don’t you go?” So we decided to go there, and it was actually in a casino.
John: (Laughs).
Tim: Well, it used to be a casino.
Kathy: (Laughs).
Tim: And, but that’s where the church was. So it didn’t matter that it wasn’t in a big building.
John: Right.
Tim: We go in this deal and, and, uh, so we’re going and they start talking about this Christmas concert they’re gonna have. And you guys, this is just phenomenal how God works in this because I look back at that, the Christmas concert, they wanted people to set up and tear down, and serve and I said, “Well, I’m not gonna do that, but we’ll pay extra money for the tickets.”
John: (Laughs).
Tim: We’ll help that way.
John: We’ll pay for the service.
Tim: And, and we’ll go. Yeah. And so we go, so on December 21st of 2009, we go through this whole concert. And I’m listening to the music and they’re playing, and it’s just a really cool concert. Well, then all of a sudden, uh, at the very end they play this song called The Lighthouse that I’ve never heard before. And I literally feel something happen inside me, like something came inside me, and I know now it was the Holy Spirit. And I reached down to Kath with tears in my eyes, I said, “Babe, our lives are gonna change forever and we’re gonna go to this church and we’re gonna serve here, and this, and things are gonna change. I want you to know that.”
Jim: Wow. Wow.
Tim: This is on December 21st of 2009. Still makes me emotional to talk about it.
Jim: Yeah. No, I can see that and the power of that.
Tim: Yeah.
Jim: That, that is a changed life.
Tim: Yeah.
Jim: You know, so many people wonder, “Am I a Christian? I made a commitment, I got baptized.” And somebody once, uh, gave me great insight. It was a pastor in San Diego. I used to go to their church before I was married. And he said, “Evidence of the Holy Spirit is a changed life.”
Tim: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Is a changed heart.
John: Yeah.
Jim: If you’re wondering, “Am I a believer,” are you moving in a positive direction toward the Lord and his character?
John: Hmm.
Jim: That’s a changed heart, um, where you’re not lost in the fog-
Kathy: Right.
Jim: … and you’re making, uh, you know, um, steps toward Him. And that, that’s a beautiful expression of that.
Tim: Well, a cool backstory to that, and this is probably pretty cool because we didn’t know this when we were writing the book, but when we did the videos for the book, Mel is in one of the videos, one of the QR code videos, and Mel was doing the video and he said, “Tim, I want you to know that song was not even one of the charts we were gonna do that night.”
Jim: (Laughs) Oh, man. That’s crazy.
Tim: And, and he said, “In fact, um, we had people chanting, Lighthouse, Lighthouse, Lighthouse.” And he went back to the music director, Mark Levan, and said, “Hey, can you do this song, The Lighthouse?” He goes, “Sure.” ‘Cause it, it was not planned. So that’s the last song they did.
Jim: Yeah.
Tim: And, and that’s, and I’ve, I’d never heard it before. So it’s kind of interesting how God can work that way too.
Jim: Absolutely. He, He does. He’s creating a tapestry in everybody’s life. We don’t know how that works and how he manages all that, but this is what He does. And a person who may not be perfect, nobody’s perfect.
Kathy: Right.
Jim: We’re all sinners saved by grace, but somehow He steers us, uh, toward Him and it’s a beautiful thing.
Tim: Well, I was never even attracted to worship music at all of any kind.
Kathy: (Laughs).
Tim: I mean, my kind of music was definitely not worship music.
John: Right.
Kathy: Earth, Wind & Fire.
Tim: Earth, Wind & Fire.
Kathy: Tower of Power.
Tim: Tower of Power. You know, big band music. And right, so I actually thought worship music was kind of weak. I love it now, but that’s, that’s why that song, how could that song even be something that would grab me like it did? But the Lord just reached right into me.
Jim: Used it.
Tim: Yeah.
Jim: You talk about, uh, stakes in the ground in your marriage. Describe stakes in the ground. What does it mean? Uh-
Tim: Well, we did that later in the book after we had, uh, come to the Lord and started to do things different. We realized we needed to do some radically transformed things in our marriage, not just for us, but for next generation and people to see that there was a change. And so we had to make some what I would call non-negotiables in our marriage, and we had to agree on it too. And so we made eight stakes in the ground, there’s a ninth one now that’s not in the book, uh, regarding the Sabbath, but, uh, we, we did these things realizing that, um, we have to frame it up to where it’s easy. And people can make their own stakes or they can use ours, but no stakes in the ground for your marriage and your life, I don’t know who you’re modeling to, but that’s not good. You gotta have some kind of something going on.
Jim: Kathy, let me ask you, because one of those stakes, uh, I think was about the boundaries you need to put in your life. We talked a bit about Tim’s, uh, infidelity, but it, you were also in that same space, and that became one of the stakes for you, correct?
Kathy: Right, right. Boundaries are so important. And I think even if you haven’t dealt with infidelity in your marriage, boundaries are important. God puts boundaries for us. We, we, you have to have healthy boun- boundaries in your marriage. And for Tim and I, um, we don’t meet with the opposite sex. We don’t, we don’t do coffee or lunches with the opposite sex, alone. Um. You know, we, our computers, our phones are completely open. We, we have, you know, the things that we did to each other, it’s amazing to think about the power of God, because the things that we went through and that we did to each other, when I think about the person I trust the most is Tim, is my husband. And that’s only because-
Tim: And I agree with that. Me too.
Kathy: Yeah. It’s that, and that’s only because of what Christ did in our marriage.
Jim: Well, and there’s more to the story. I mean, we haven’t delved in. We’re kind of giving it in pieces and I wanna continue next time. But that, that right there, I, I wanna punch that a little bit because what we’ve seen with Hope Restored, which is a four day intensive that we do, probably the number one issue that, uh, couples come into Hope Restored with is infidelity. It’s certainly at, near the top. And in that context, if a couple can actually survive that and get to the root sources of all of that, they seem to have a, a beautifully transparent marriage and trust that is built. It, it, it’s almost as if it goes either way. It’s either ruined by that or it’s incredibly deeper because you know one another kind of to the core.
Kathy: Right.
Jim: And you still trust and love each other. Um. That’s what’s so good. Uh. For our listeners who feel stuck and alone in your marriage, um, please let us be there for you. Don’t be embarrassed. It happens, and it happens often, so it’s not gonna be a surprise to us. Our Hope Restored program is built to help people in that circumstance, just like you may be in right now. Couples who participate in that intensive, that marriage intensive have an 80% success rate of remaining married two years later when we go back and assess everybody and how they’re doing. Uh. We had one couple tell us this, “We’re forever changed and tremendously grateful for the tools given to us to change our stormy relationship into a peaceful calm. What a gift God gave us here in a safe environment with counselors and staff that are totally walking in a close relationship with Christ. Miracles happen.” And, uh, what a testimony. If you have a desire to see your marriage transformed, I wanna encourage you to check out our Hope Restored Marriage Intensive.
John: You’ll find all about Hope Restored when you call us at 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY. That’s 800-232-6459 or look for details at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast.
Jim: And if you were inspired by the conversation today, you can read more about Tim and Kathy’s radical marriage journey in their book, Sex on the First Date. Uh. When you make a gift of any amount to the ministry of Focus on the Family, we’ll send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for supporting us. We are a nonprofit ministry, so your donations are what fund our programs like Hope Restored and so much more. So if you want to help more couples find healing and have a generational impact, just like, uh, Tim and Kathy, become a ministry partner today. Every dollar you give will go right back into saving marriages, protecting preborn children, helping parents navigate raising, uh, Christlike children in the chaos of this culture.
John: Hmm. Yeah. Donate today and get your copy of Tim and Kathy’s book, Sex on the First Date: A Story Of A Broken Beginning To A Radically Transformed Marriage when you call 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY, again, 800-232-6459, or online at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast. Thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation with Tim and Kathy Bush, and once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ.
