Holding on to Heaven While Your Marriage Goes Through Hell

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You vowed "for better or for worse" and when your marriage encounters the worse you and your spouse will need God's help to make it through. Help is here. This book brings you the combined experience, wisdom, comfort, and guidance that took twelve married couples through hell and back to joy. Real people; real problems, real hope. So, whatever you are going through in your marriage, take hope. Your life and marriage can get much better. Your problems can be solved. Your hopes can be fulfilled... no matter how impossible that seems to you now.

This book is intensely spiritual, personal, and practical. Every one of the stories I tell here are true. They are not fictionalized, nor are they compilations of bits and pieces of several stories. In some cases, those who shared their stories asked that I keep their identities a secret. In these cases, I changed minor details so that they are not recognizable.

I chose to use real stories because I have seen how God has used the sharing of my personal story to encourage others. Knowing you are listening to someone who has been there gives greater credence to what is said. This is as it should be. God tells us to comfort others with the comfort we have received from Him. In these pages, I share the real comfort God has given real husbands and wives, along with practical solutions, wisdom, and advice. I hope and pray that you are encouraged and helped so you will become one of us; who has come through a difficult season of marriage victoriously and will go on to comfort others with assurance of God's love and redeeming power.

I first crafted this book in 1998 . At that time the publisher required me to address it only to wives. Now that I am publishing directly, I have expanded the reading audience to include husbands and wives. I decided not to make the reading tedious by saying "him or her" repeatedly throughout. The message of this book applies to husbands and wives, so despite the gender of the pronouns, please freely apply the message to your needs. The only distinctions would be where Scripture specifically assigns differing roles and responsibilities to husbands and wives. I trust that if you are a man whose wife's problems are causing your marriage to go through hell, you will be able to apply the contents of this book to your situation. Whether you are a husband or wife reading this, I pray you will find help here to get through this difficult time in your marriage and go on to enjoy the good years ahead of you.

We celebrated our 32 wedding anniversary in the summer of 2011 and look forward to many more. Our years of marital "hell" are more than two decades behind us. We will never forget what we went through together but the pain is gone and the joy remains. We also never want to forget those things we learned that might help you and your spouse make it through to the happy years ahead. Our prayers go with you on this journey.