From drift to redemption, part 1
"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." – Proverbs 4:23
When people hear our testimony, they often assume our marriage almost ended because of one dramatic event. They imagine there must have been a single moment when everything fell apart. The truth is much different. Our marriage wasn't nearly destroyed by one catastrophic decision. It was slowly eroded over years through small compromises, unspoken hurts, unmet expectations, and conversations we never had. Looking back now, I can clearly see how the enemy works in the quiet places. He doesn't always destroy marriages through affairs or explosive arguments. Sometimes he simply allows two people to drift apart one small step at a time until they wake up wondering how they became strangers.
For years, Amy and I never imagined sharing our story publicly. We had shared parts of it with couples sitting around kitchen tables and over coffee, but never on a podcast where anyone could listen. The more God worked in our lives, though, the more we realized this story wasn't really ours anymore. It belonged to Him. If our journey could encourage another couple to recognize the warning signs before it was too late, then every painful chapter would be worth telling. Our hope isn't that people walk away impressed with us. Our hope is that they walk away amazed by what Jesus can redeem.
Our story really began long before we said our wedding vows. Like every married couple, we each brought our own experiences, assumptions, and wounds into the relationship. Amy grew up in a single-parent home after her parents divorced when she was very young. Watching her mom struggle through difficult relationships shaped how she viewed trust and security. Without even realizing it, she learned that relationships could disappear and that love often came with conditions. I grew up in a very different environment. My parents stayed married, and I was an only child. Looking back honestly, I carried a lot of selfishness into our marriage. Neither of us recognized how deeply our childhood experiences would influence the way we communicated, handled conflict, or loved one another. We simply believed that because we loved each other, everything else would work itself out.
We started dating as teenagers, and not long afterward Amy's family moved several hours away. Overnight, our relationship became long-distance. This was before texting, FaceTime, or social media. We wrote letters, recorded cassette tapes for each other, and spent hours on the phone whenever we could. At the time, we thought distance was strengthening our relationship. In reality, we were learning how to stay connected across miles, but we weren't learning the communication skills that would eventually sustain a marriage.
Everything changed during our senior year of high school when Amy became pregnant with our daughter. We got married during spring break, but even then we continued living apart while we finished school. Looking back, we were trying to figure out how to be parents, spouses, students, and young adults all at the same time. We were committed to each other, but we were completely unprepared for everything marriage would require.
One story from those early days has stayed with both of us. Amy had just finished feeding our daughter late one night and was sterilizing her breast pump on the stove. Exhausted, she fell asleep. The water boiled away, the breast pump melted, and the house filled with smoke. Thankfully everyone was safe, but what happened afterward revealed something much deeper. Her mom told her not to tell me because I might think she was a bad mother and leave her. Looking back, that moment had very little to do with a melted breast pump. It reinforced the fear that mistakes had to be hidden because honesty might cost you the relationship. Those kinds of fears don't disappear simply because you get married. Unless they're surrendered to Christ, they quietly become part of the foundation you build your marriage on.
As the years passed, we eventually established our own home, welcomed our son into the family, and decided we wanted to raise our children in church. We attended regularly, served faithfully, and genuinely believed we were doing what good Christian families were supposed to do. Looking back now, though, I realize there was a huge difference between attending church and having a relationship with Jesus. Church was something we did on Sundays, but it wasn't shaping how we lived the rest of the week. When we eventually stopped going altogether, it became even easier for our priorities to slowly shift away from what mattered most.
For me, providing for my family became my identity. I worked long hours because I believed the greatest way I could love Amy and our children was by making sure they had everything they needed. Amy's focus was different. She poured herself into our children. Sports, school activities, vacations, and every opportunity to make memories became the center of her world. Neither of us was wrong for loving our family, but we were defining that love differently. I believed I was serving my family by working harder. Amy believed serving our family meant spending more time together. We never really stopped to talk about those differences, so they quietly became sources of frustration instead of opportunities for understanding.
As our children grew older, we found ourselves disagreeing more often about parenting, finances, and everyday decisions. We didn't know how to have healthy conflict. Whenever something difficult came up, one of us would usually retreat while the other shut down. We avoided uncomfortable conversations instead of working through them together. Every unresolved disagreement was another layer added to the emotional distance growing between us.
One argument over finances illustrates that perfectly. After Amy had paid all the bills one month, she told me we had no money left over. Frustrated after working long hours, I questioned where all our money had gone. She threw the checkbook at me and told me she would never handle the finances again. At the time, I thought taking over the finances solved the problem. What I didn't realize was that it created another wall between us. From that point forward, Amy felt like she no longer had a voice in one of the most important areas of our family. Looking back, I can admit that I slowly became controlling without ever intending to be. I believed I was making the best decisions for our family, but I wasn't inviting my wife into those decisions. Leadership without partnership eventually becomes control.
One of the deepest examples of that involved our future. Amy always dreamed about moving to Florida to be closer to her dad and siblings. Every time the conversation came up, I dismissed it because I was comfortable in Texas. I never truly listened to her heart because I had already made up my mind. Over time, what seemed like a simple disagreement became a source of deep resentment. I didn't recognize how much pain my unwillingness to communicate was creating because I was too focused on what I thought was best.
The saddest part is that from the outside, our family probably looked healthy. We worked together, raised our kids together, attended every game and school event, and spent almost all of our time together. Yet emotionally, we were miles apart. Amy often felt completely alone, even when we were sitting in the same room. She tried to tell me when her feelings were hurt, but too often I responded by telling her she shouldn't feel that way instead of listening to what she was trying to say. Eventually, she stopped bringing things up because she believed nothing would change.
One conversation still breaks my heart. Amy looked at me one day and asked, "Do you love me?" Without thinking, I answered, "If you don't know by now, you'll never know." At the time, I honestly thought that was a reasonable response. Looking back, I realize she wasn't questioning whether I paid the bills or worked hard. She was asking whether she felt loved. I believed I was showing love through acts of service because that's how I naturally express love. What I didn't understand was that Amy needed words of affirmation and quality time. We weren't intentionally withholding love from each other—we were simply speaking completely different languages without realizing it.
By the time our children were old enough to build lives of their own, we found ourselves facing a painful reality. For years our schedules had revolved around raising our kids. Once they became more independent, we looked at each other and realized we had neglected the relationship that started it all. The drift that began with small compromises, poor communication, and unresolved conflict had finally reached the surface. We weren't angry all the time. We weren't constantly fighting. We were simply disconnected.
The encouraging truth is that drift is never the end of the story. Sometimes God allows us to recognize how far we've wandered so that we'll finally turn back toward Him. Before redemption can happen, we have to acknowledge the drift. That's exactly where our story was headed. We had reached the point where we could no longer ignore what was happening in our marriage, and although we couldn't see it yet, Jesus was about to meet us in the middle of our brokenness.
That's where we'll pick up in Part 2.
