Marriage Pro's - Bill and Anabel Gillham

This is an interview with Bill and Anabel Gillham - founders of Lifetime Guarantee.  My wife and I receive their newsletter and I'm going to publish this interview with permission from Lifetime.org.  The interview was done by Andy Knight, the president of Lifetime Guarantee Ministries.  

To use the word "veterans" to describe Bill and Anabel's marriage adventure is an understatement.  They're both in their golden years yet still work hard at  helping men and women understand what it is to have a Christ centered marriage.  

I hope you find some pearls of wisdom here.

As you are probably aware, Bill and Anabel Gillham have spoken all over the country, written numerous articles, and recorded several audio series on how to have a successful marriage.  More importantly, they've been married longer than most of us have been alive.  Not too long ago, I sat down with these marriage veterans and asked them a few hard questions.

After offering me a Dr. Pepper (which I never refuse), Bill and Anabel snuggled up on their living room love seat.  Like young newlyweds, Bill draped his left arm over Anabel's shoulder, and she rested her right hand on his knee.  They look so comfortable and...together.  I jumped right in with my first question.  

AK:  What would you say is one of the biggest struggles that couples face in marriage?

Bill (B): The single life is very different.  Singles make their own decisions and don't have to explain their feelings.  The most difficult thing in marriage is realizing that you are not operating independently anymore.  You have to learn to work around and with each other.  

What do you know now about marriage that you didn't know before you were married?

B:  About 98% [laughter]

AK:  You both have obviously learned to work around each other.  Couples are getting divorced left and right these days and here you are at 50+ years of marriage.  You obviously know something about having a great marriage.

Anabel (A):  Couples today don't have expectations that their marriage will last a lifetime, but when we were married, we believed marriage was to be a lifelong commitment.  We just didn't know how to make it enjoyable.  

AK:  You mentioned "lifelong commitment".  Is that how your marriage survived?

B:  When we were married, divorce was disgraceful, so we simply endured each other.  Had we married today, it surely would not have lasted.  Part of the reason for failed marriages today is that we think it's our love for one another that will hold the marriage together and the couple will say, "We just don't love each other any longer."  Love does not hold the marriage together.  The marriage holds the love together.  The "feelings" of love can fade over time, but commitment to Christ through us in the marriage will enable a couple to stay the course.  

B&A:  By the grace of God, we later discovered that the answer to having  a successful marriage was allowing Christ to love one another through us.  Before we learned that, it was sheer commitment, not happiness, that kept us together.  

AK:  It sounds like your marriage has passed through different states?

B:  The first stage is where the husband is mentally retarded.

A:  Yes, for us the first stage was a husband who was indulged in childhood and carried that into the marriage.  That stage could be called "survive to please  Bill" and lasted even into Bill's Christian years.  The second stage was learning what we needed to do to solidify our relationship, and that was the "Coming to Know Christ as Life" stage.  In the stage that we're in now, we have accepted that we are going to be together.  We don't want out.  In fact, getting out was never an option.  We have begun to allow Christ to live through us and are coming to understand what marriage is all about.  It is learning to trust Christ to express His life through us to each other.  

AK:  So now that you're in this good stage, are there differences for you both in how you express love to each other?

A:  I often "loved" Bill by doing instead of being.  My pattern for being loved was to work very hard to please people so I tried to show Bill my diligent efforts - the things I did for him - that I loved him.  He doesn't need that.  He needs me to be his wife - not his maid or cook.

B:  Commitment must be spelled with time and effort.  This is how I love Anabel, giving her security in our marriage.  

AK:  If you could do you marriage over again what would you do differently?

G:  It would be fun to have known Christ as my new life before we got married.  But I also believe that an integral part of our pilgrimage were the bad days we went through.  It was the negatives as well as the positives that produced the current stage of our marriage.  yes, it was painful and ugly, but I can see that it took that to put me where I am today.  Believe me, I have not arrived!  I have a long way to go.

AK:  Do you have any other advice that you would like to give couples that are about to be married?

B:  It is very important for a couple to know the power package of what God accomplished for us as new creations in Christ.  Through Jesus Christ we have an immediate change of our identity.  In the Bible, God calls us "saints" 42 times after his death on the cross.  We went from being a sinner to a saint; from being an enemy of God to a friend of God; a rejected loser to an accepted winner; a person fighting for love to a person loved by our Creator beyond our comprehension; and from a clueless marriage partner not especially interested in changing to a partner seeking change to become a successful marriage partner. 

A:  Listening to each other is an indispensable element in a good marriage and listening is very hard to do.  You must be aware that marriage is hard work and be prepared to give of yourself.

B:  It's also important to know each other's needs.  Even though the male is typically a bonehead in this area, he can learn and then look to Christ living through him to make the difference.  

I want to thank Bill and Anabel for answering my questions.  What an amazing example they are off a Godly marriage.  We'd love to hear from you about how knowing Christ as Life and understanding who you are in Christ has helped your marriage.

Andy.

Off On A Rant

 Forgive me.  I'm about to go on a rant ala Dennis Miller.  

Not long ago I found out that another marriage has bought the farm.  Once again, this is a couple that I hold as a good friend.  Tonight I find myself shaking my fist angrily at God and asking "How many more of my friends need to go through this?  This just isn't right!"

In any trial there is a prosecution and a defense.  In divorce proceedings there  is a prosecution and a defense on each side.  All four elements engage in a battle, each side using their prosecution and defense resources to impugn the other into submission or retreat until a judge declares - not a victory - but a cease fire.  

I'm so upset by this that I sat my analytical self down and attempted to make an outline, methodically laying out everything I wanted to say in this blog post.  In the end it all seemed like crap.  So please bear with me as I try to communicate to you what my heart feels.  

Guys, your home is the most important thing you have.  It's not just outlets, toilet valves, and shingles.  It's your home base of operations.  It's your fallout shelter from the blasts of the world.  It's the operations and logistics center for everyone in your home.  It's the war room where you solve problems and settle differences.  It's the oasis where you find peace and rest.  There are two very basic and very important aspects of your home that you have to understand clearly in order to prevent the retaining of legal counsel to impose a cease fire to the dysfunction.  

First, you have to understand that your home has a physical realm and a spiritual realm.  In the physical realm you close and lock all your doors and windows when you leave the house and when you go to sleep at night.  Why?  Obviously, to prevent those who would do you harm and steel your valuables from doing so.  It's common sense.  The same thing is true in the spiritual realm.  You need to take care to secure your home spiritually from those who would do you harm and take your valuables.  If you leave a door or a window unlocked or open it's an invitation for satan to come in and do harm to your relationship with your wife and your kids, rob you of your patience, your understanding, your leadership - leaving you with self doubt, anger, frustration, and all kinds of other bad stuff.  A guy can continually leave a spiritual window open and suddenly wake up in a crappy one bedroom apartment with the realization that everything he had has been taken from him.  You have to secure your home on the spiritual level as-well-as the physical level!

The second, and most important, aspect is that your relationship with God is directly connected with everything in your home - physically and spiritually.  How you humble yourself before God, acknowledge the Holy Spirit inside you, and choose to live under grace - OR NOT - will have a direct and immediate impact on your home and everyone in it.  

Please take some time today to be by yourself, in a quiet place, and make an honest evaluation of where you are with these two very important aspects of your home.  If you search your heart and you decide that you're on a pretty good track, then I'm happy for you - God bless you as you continue.  If you're struggling - if you know things aren't right - and you're not at all sure of how to bale out your boat before it goes under, please let me know.  There is help for you here.

Lessons From the Farm

Most of my family has been involved in farming to one extent or the other.  The time I spent on my uncle's farm along with countless stories from my family about their life experiences, taught me a lot about the rewards and satisfaction of hard work and more than one life lesson.  

If you've never been to a horse pulling competition I would encourage you to find time to get down to the county fair to see it.  It's an amazing display of beauty and raw power as these magnificent animals compete.  Two horses are hitched together and the driver leads them out to the stone boat that can weigh anywhere from 7000 to 10,000 pounds.  The driver takes his seat on the boat and the hands drop the hitch pin into the clevis on the boat.  As soon as the horses hear that pin drop they squat down and start pulling.  It's incredible!  

A wise old horseman once told me some facts from down on the farm that give a very simple illustration of what life could be like for couple if they would only invest some effort into their relationships.   A single draft horse can pull as much as two or three thousand pounds all by itself.  Put another horse with it and two can pull double the weight - maybe a bit more.  But if those two horses are hitched together regularly, get to know one another, and are trained by the horseman, the two - working with what they've learned about each other - can pull upwards of ten thousand pounds.

As I think about it, I'm more than a little frustrated about how little effort American culture is willing to expend on being married and how quick people are to quit the team.  It's true - a single parent can raise a family.  It's also true that a two parent family works better (pulls more weight).  But think of the possibilities of a man and wife who work together, leveraging their strengths and compensating for each other's weaknesses and what an impact they can make on their world!   That's awesome stuff!  

All to often though, we seem to be hitched together - one horse going in one direction and the other in another direction.  As husband and wife we're not even facing the same direction, let alone pulling anything together.  In some cases they're hitched but only one horse is pulling and the team just goes around in circles.  All this wasted potential frustrates me to no end when I hear of yet another couple filing for divorce.  

I want more than anything to see the couples closest to me side-by-side in the hitch, taking lessons from the master horseman, and getting as much distance out of every pull in life that they can.  

If you're married, make time this summer to take your spouse to the fair on horse pulling night.  Buy her some cotton candy and take a lesson from the farm.   You won't regret it.

Interview With Bill Hardiman - Part 1 (His Story)

Bert:    One of the reasons why I chose you for this interview is because you have a number of credentials and accolades that go along with family values and marriages.  You probably have just as many credentials in terms of marriage and family as you do in your political life.  That’s why I look to you to interview today – to get your thoughts on some things and publish that on my blog for other people to see as well.

 You and I, when we both got married, stood up in front of a church full of people and we said “for better or for worse”, “in sickness and in health”, and “for richer or for poorer”.  And at that time we were all about the “better”, the “richer”, and the “in health” but we didn’t give a whole lot of consideration for the “worse”, the “poorer”, or the “in sickness” part of it.  What I’d like to start out with is this – what has happened in your marriage that you wish someone would have prepared you for?

Mr. Hardiman:            Well, I think in my marriage I don’t know that I was very well prepared to be married when I got married.  And – this is my second marriage – my beautiful wife Clova and I just celebrated 35 years of marriage.

Bert:            Congratulations.

Mr. Hardiman:            Thank you.  We have a wonderful, wonderful relationship – something I never knew existed.  I’m in a place I never knew existed.  But it wasn’t easy getting here.  My parents separated when I was fourteen years old because of some things that were going on in the home.  Maybe they shouldn’t have been together in that atmosphere or situation as long as they were.   But they separated.

I hate divorce.  I do – I hate it.  I don’t hate the people that get divorced – I hate divorce because it breaks up something that should be sacred.  So, I didn’t have the kind of role model that I should have to show me how to be a husband and a father.  And when I got married the first time I just didn’t know what I was doing.  I just didn’t know – I’m not making an excuse – but that ended after three and a half years in divorce.   I had a son after that – out of wedlock.  And then Clova and I married. 

There are struggles that come with having a kid who’s not in the home.  I experienced that along with my lack of knowledge of how to be a good husband and father.  I thought that as long as I was making some money, bringing it home, and doing some things around the house, that was enough.  But, I wasn’t paying much attention to my wife and her particular needs.  And so our marriage was in trouble.  I think once that happens there are temptations outside the marriage.  It’s not that I fell into an adulterous situation – it wasn’t physical.  When you don’t feel like you’re getting what you need at home you develop emotional attachments, which many times, eventually end up in physical attachments.   So, not having gone to a physical level, I just realized that I was in a very difficult situation. On time Clova said,  “I just don’t have any more feelings for you.”   But I had been through one divorce and because of my faith background I didn’t believe in that and thought “I don’t want to do this again.”  I remember thinking about this and praying about it.   I used to go to the Big Lake sometimes – Grand Haven.  I remember sitting out there watching a sunset.  Coming back from that experience I remember sensing God’s presence – that He would be with me and would help me restore my marriage. 

Then I pursued my wife.  I pursued our relationship.  For a while I wasn’t receiving a whole lot of help from her because of what she had felt she had been through.  You see, both of us bring different experiences to the marriage.  Sometimes that getting to know each other experience – sometimes that giving up of our own individual wants and really loving the other person for who they are – we know that’s the purpose.  That’s hard to come to because our nature is selfish.  As I pursued her and I thought about the fact that I had heard in a message that your wife is like a garden and the kind of seed you plant indicates the kind of fruit you’ll reap.  I realized that I had not planted the best seed.  The thing about seed is that you plant it and it takes a while for the seed to come up and bear fruit.  It also multiplies.  So, sometimes things would happen that were negative and I wondered, “Why this negative reaction?”  Well, it had taken a while and it was multiplying.  So I decided to start planting good seed.  No matter what I was getting I would plant good seed.  I began to listen to her and ask her how she was feeling about things.  Sometimes when she would try to tell me that this happened and it was some years ago – “…this hurt me” or whatever, I would say, “Look, you have to get past this and look to the future.”  Instead, I changed my ways.  I said “Honey, tell me what you were feeling.” And I would think about it and talk to her about it.  Sometimes I had to say “Look, I hurt you.  I’m so sorry.  Please forgive me.”  That began a healing process. Again, I was planting good seed.   It took time. 

If someone starts this process and figures “Well, in a couple of days it should be okay.”  - or a few weeks, it probably won’t happen.  I was committed to what I felt that the Lord was telling me – to restore my marriage – my former place at my wife’s side.  He sustained me so that I could hang in there.  After a while the good fruit started to come up and multiply.  It is like casting your bread upon the water and after many days it will return.   I was casting my crumbs on the water but I started to see some loaves coming back after many days.  Again, it took a while but my wife and I have reached a place where I don’t think either one of us knew existed.  She grew up in a home where her parents were separated.  Her father was gone at a very early age.  So perhaps she didn’t have a role model of healthy married parents.  We both found something that is so real – so alive.  I remember my daughter, at one time in her life said that she didn’t want to get married.  We didn’t say anything but we knew why.  Now, later on, she saw how God had restored our marriage and she appreciated that.  Now she’s married and has a wonderful marriage.  

I think we have to work hard to turn this thing around.   I think mentoring - men mentoring men and women mentoring women  - is so very important.  It stops cycle of the breakdown of the family and turns it around into something positive so that kids can grow up seeing those kind of role models and they can have the same.  Right now it’s going in the opposite direction and we have to turn it around. 

So that’s what happened in my experience.   Out of that I have a desire to help others and to help build community.  That’s why, 11 years ago, we started what is Healthy Marriages Grand Rapids in an effort to strengthen marriages.  We’ve asked pastors to commit to certain values and principles – some of these being chastity outside of the marriage relationship and pre-marital preparation.  Again, I didn’t know how to have a good marriage but you can get a marriage license pretty easily.  You have to get trained to learn how to drive.  Hopefully, you get that training in the home, but a lot of folks aren’t doing that.  So, premarital preparation – but also post – after the wedding takes place so that there is someone you can rely on and talk with – some counseling you can have to help build a strong marriage.  We started that organization to provide some support to churches if they provide support to couples.   I want to see more and more people find the place where my wife Clova and I have found.

At The End?

I write these blog entries in hopes that it moves men in a positive direction in their relationships with their spouses. However, I had one of those "ah ha" moments yesterday as I was driving and thinking about a friend who struggles with his wife and another friend whose wife simply up and left. I'm sure there are men who read this blog at their computers and then turn away to the reality that it really doesn't matter what "he" does to make things better - she just isn't going to buy into it. The ship has sailed - The horse is out of the barn - and all those other cliches. You've done your best. You've bent over backwards to make things better. You've tried counseling - again.

If this is you - I don't want you to feel like I'm holding you accountable for things falling apart. It says at the top of this blog "In support of men who stood in front of God and everyone and said 'I do'". Please understand that I realize that she made vows and commitments too. No matter how hard you try, things aren't going to work if she doesn't honor hers.

Most of my blog entries revolve around a man who sees the need for change or improvement. Right, wrong, or otherwise, it also assumes that (with practice and consistency) his wife will welcome the change and love him for it. Maybe that's me looking through rose-colored glasses. I guess I prefer to think of it as being my focus on men and knowing that not everyone will fit into this category.

I'd like to believe that with prayer and hard work, saving a marriage is always possible. I've seen couples overcome impossible odds and have great marriages after the recovery. But I know that's not necessarily true for everyone. I've also seen couples who have very good chances for recovery that have fallen apart because one or the other just simply walks away.

It hurts me to write this because two of the marriages that have inspired this blog have ended this way. They were (and are) good people with great chances for reconciliation. Yet, my best friend still told his wife he didn't love her anymore and walked away. Another close friend of ours decided she just didn't want to be married anymore and left two children and one of the greatest husbands.

All you can do is change yourself. You cannot change the heart of someone who refuses to work on a relationship or someone who's already emotionally left the building. If you need encouragement, prayer, and/or the support of a community of men - this is the place.

Thanks for tuning in.

Another One Down

Yesterday I found out that another marriage went down in flames. It's someone I've known for a long time. Word has it that the relationship has been stressed out for a long time. He went away on a business trip and while he was gone she sent him an e-mail saying that she'd be cleared out of the house by the time he got back - and she was.

Statistics show that roughly half of all marriages end in divorce. I haven't done the math on the friends and relationships that are around me, but it feels like it's more that half. In my circle, it seems that 2-3 marriages are failing every year. Frankly, I don't have enough friends for this to go on any longer. Within a year or so I'll be the only one still married! That's a sad fact.

As men, it's easy to be apathetic. Waiting for things to blow over or get better is not difficult. What is difficult is taking action. Confronting weak areas in our marriage is not pleasant, often exposes our own ugly spots, and the rewards for confrontation are rarely immediate. You have to have some stones to address relationship issues. If you're reading this and you're getting that queasy feeling in your stomach because you know things need to be addressed but you'd rather pull your fingernails out with a vise grips - I have a couple of things for you to think about.

I'll always start with accountability. It's not fun. It may even hurt. But, like the heading of this blog, you said for better or for worse in front of God and everybody. At that point it stopped being all about you and started being all about "us". You made a comittement and you're expected to keep it.

If you're an athlete you're very aware of the old cliche "no pain, no gain". Getting into the physical condition you want to be in requires some level of discomfort. The same is true for relationships. In addition, like losing weight, you have to get to that point where you look in the mirror and say "enough!". At that point you're ready to start working on things. You have to go through the bad before you can get to the good. I know that these things read like hollow cliche's. And maybe they are. But there's a fair amount of truth in them.

When you've psyched yourself up or you're reached the point where you're no longer willing to accept the condition of your relationship and you want to make things better, please understand that there is strength in numbers. Meet with your pastor, have a coffee with a seasoned marriage veteran, get the support of your best friend. Get some people in your corner. Don't go it a lone!

If you feel like you need some coaching, drop a comment here. There are some solid guys that read this blog and can give you some great advice and resources. We're here to help.

Don't be the next marriage to go down.