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by Heidi DahlPeter and I were high-school sweethearts.
I was a cheerleader and Peter was a basketball player on the opposing team. As I watched him play, I couldn't help asking my friend, Lois, "Who is that guy?" I soon found out. The day after my high-school graduation I married him. We were very young; I like to say that we grew up together; however, the "growing pains" of our relationship nearly tore us apart.
The first five years of our marriage were just perfect. I remember thinking that I couldn't have been happier. Our first child, Jeffrey, was born two years after we were married. Three years later, he was followed by identical twin brothers. Peter had a good position and we owned a farm. We were busy and we worked hard – Peter had always told me that he wanted to be able to retire at thirty-five and enjoy life. It didn't take long, though, before I began to realize that my hard-working husband was a workaholic.
I realized things had changed
More and more often, I felt that I was raising my children alone. Peter was away regularly and even when he was home, he was on the golf course. We began to grow apart, and I felt abandoned. Things were not supposed to happen this way – it wasn't fair. Eventually, we had little in common. We were living separate lives, so we agreed to an in-house separation which would last two years. We shared the building, but it was no longer our home. After six years, we decided that our marriage was over.
No one plans to have their marraige crumble. It's not what we dream about while picking out that beautiful white dress. I was miserable and the unhappiness was wearing me down. A neighbour dropped by to ask if she could give me a break on the weekend. She offered to take my three sons to Sunday School.
It had been a long time since I'd thought about God. I had gone to Sunday School as a child, but the loss of my best friend to polio when I was nine had hardened me. I can still remember looking at her little coffin as they lowered it into the ground and thinking: "there is no God."
Yet, I could not find any objection to my sons going to the church at the end of the street with our neighbour. It seemed harmless enough, at the time. I thought Peter would hate the idea, but he loved it – the house would be nice and quiet for watching sports on Sunday morning.
Friends became advesaries
Peter and I remained relatively amicable until we began to divide our property, accumulated belongings and family. The money was easy enough to split, but the children were another matter. How do you divide three children equally between two parents? You don't.
We went from a peaceful parting of the ways to a high-pitched battle. The war was on. Peter and I fought over the details of custody. I wasn't sleeping properly and never felt rested. I could buy sleep at the pharmacy, but I couldn't buy peace.
Something had to give
It was about that time that the boys asked me to take them to Sunday School, instead of the neighbour. I sat that first Sunday and listened to stories that sounded somewhat familiar. I knew I must have heard them as a child, but it was different somehow. I decided to keep going with the boys. I got a Bible and started to read it. I don't remember much about what I read then, except that I began to feel less alone.
One night, about a year into this situation, Peter was out and the children were in bed. As I prepared to go to bed, I decided to give God a try. I knelt down on the Persian rug near my bed and I prayed: "I don't think you're real, but if you are, I'm giving you permission to come into my life and change it the way you think it should be changed." I climbed into bed... and fell asleep. I slept soundly through the night and when I woke up the next morning, I knew that something had changed. My lonely, empty feeling was gone.
I decided to tell him
Three months later, I decided I needed to tell Peter. I wasn't sure how he would take it. He had grown up in a strict home – a strict, religious home, as he saw it. He couldn't understand the rules, and he "didn't buy it." But I was a bit of a gutsy girl, so I told him. And he was livid. "All I need," he fumed, "in my already complicated life, is a religious wife." He left me with a threat – I could keep my faith in God and live however I wanted, but if I did, he was taking the boys and everything else.
I was terrified. Not only would I lose my boys, but my home and my security as well. I had to decide if this was really worth it, if this was really what I wanted to do. Even then, I knew I couldn't give up what I had found in Jesus.
Some time after this, Peter and I had a big argument. I told Peter that I was standing by my decision to follow Jesus, and that I was going to get baptised. He would have to decide what he wanted to do. When he left the house, the door slammed so hard that I thought the windows would break.
The impossible happened
He came back that evening. It was a Sunday night, and we were sitting in the living room as we usually did. Peter was reading the newspaper, as usual, and I was listening to some music I had bought. The lyrics were particularly meaningful to my workaholic husband: "When you spend your last dollar, what then?" When the song had finished, Peter dropped the paper. He was weeping. He wanted the peace that I had found, and he asked me to kneel with him as he prayed to invite Jesus into his life.
We sat for hours on the couch that night, just hugging and kissing and looking into each other's eyes. It was as though we hadn't really seen each other for years. With a lot of hard work, patience and prayer, we began to reintegrate our now independent lifestyles. We had to learn to rebuild trust in each other. With Jesus in our lives, the love came back into our relationship and our dead marriage was brought back to life. We have been married 36 years.
Take a look at your life. How would you describe it? Contented? Rushed? Exciting? Stressful? Moving forward? Holding back? For many of us it’s all of the above at times. There are things we dream of doing one day, there are things we wish we could forget. In the Bible, it says that Jesus came to make all things new. What would your life look like if you could start over with a clean slate?
Living with hope
If you are looking for peace, there is a way to balance your life. No one can be perfect, or have a perfect life. But every one of us has the opportunity to experience perfect grace through a personal relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ.
You can receive Christ right now by faith through prayer. Praying is simply talking to God. God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. Here's a suggested prayer:
Lord Jesus, I want to know you personally. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life to you and ask you to come in as my Savior and Lord. Take control of my life. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be.
Does this prayer express the desire of your heart? You can pray it right now, and Jesus Christ will come into your life, just as He promised.
Is this the life for you?
If you invited Christ into your life, thank God often that He is in your life, that He will never leave you and that you have eternal life. As you learn more about your relationship with God, and how much He loves you, you'll experience life to the fullest.
~ Heidi Dahl is a mother of five, a former foster parent and an accomplished conference speaker. She and her husband Peter share how God changed their lives and their marriage with couples of all ages. Heidi also shares how God has sustained her in her struggles with chronic pain–the result of two serious car accidents.