FamilyLife Today®

Cheryl Shumake: One of the first and most important things that you can do is work on forgiveness. If you don't, you're going to hamper your healing. So work on forgiving the person. That doesn't necessarily mean reconciliation, but it does mean that you release them from a legitimate debt that they owe you.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: So we have a fellow Michigander in the studio. Cheryl Shumake is with us. Cheryl, this doesn't happen a lot. I don't know how many times we've had somebody from Michigan on our show.

Cheryl Shumake: That's a shame. We're such good people.

Dave Wilson: Yes, we are good people. But I don't know if you know our background. We're from another place a little south of there.

Ann Wilson: So you're adopted Michiganders. We welcome you. Tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about yourself. What do you do in Michigan?

Cheryl Shumake: That is such a broad question. What do I do in Michigan? I am a born and reared Detroiter. I went to Eastern Michigan University and met my former husband there. We were married for about 17 years and had one daughter.

I got married while I was in college. I got married my junior year of college. I got saved and began following hard after Jesus and really believed that this was God's will that we go ahead and get married. We were married for 17 years. About six years into that marriage, we had my daughter. She's 33 now.

Unfortunately, that marriage ended in divorce. It was a very hard time, but I say now that I would do it again for how I learned God. I learned him as Father, as friend, as provider, as husband in a way that I didn't know before.

Ann Wilson: Do you think it was the pain and just the unknown? What led you to go deeper with Jesus at that time?

Cheryl Shumake: It was the uncertainty and the pain for sure. I got my solace at the feet of the Master, and I learned peace in no way out of circumstances. I learned how to trust God in ways that I had never had to depend upon him before. It was a pivotal moment in my walk with God. Like I said, I would not change it except for the pain that my daughter went through, but I know that God has a plan for that as well because he doesn't waste a thing.

Ann Wilson: How old was she?

Cheryl Shumake: When it started, she was ten or eleven years old. When the divorce was final, she was twelve years old.

Unfortunately, her father passed away two years later. Their relationship kind of disintegrated and they never got the opportunity to reconcile, but the last words they spoke to each other were "I love you." So I'm very grateful to the Lord that that happened.

Ann Wilson: We could spend the whole time talking about that because there are so many people that have gone through divorce. They didn't want it, and they didn't expect it.

Cheryl Shumake: No one stands at the altar saying, "17, 20, 25, or 5 years from now, I'm going to be in a courthouse dissolving this marriage." No one does that. We all enter that space with a great deal of hope and plans. I learned how to grieve, but I learned how to grieve with the Lord.

Ann Wilson: Now your daughter, you said, was ten?

Dave Wilson: Because I went through it when I was seven, and my question to you is, did you talk with your daughter? My mom and I never talked. Again, that was our family. It was never a conversation with me until later when I was 19 or 20. I asked, "Mom, can we talk about the divorce?" But did you? Because I think that's something that has to happen. Did you feel like you and your daughter needed to?

Cheryl Shumake: Absolutely, we did. I didn't give her the details. I never spoke badly about her father to her. There was another person involved. She knew that actually before I did because she had met the person.

But what I did do was give her space to talk, to have a conversation, to express herself, and to say she's angry. I was always redirecting her to respect her father, and I also got her into counseling as well.

That was huge for me for her to have a space other than me to maybe talk about something that's a little bit more sensitive that she thought might hurt me if she said it, or maybe some things that she saw that maybe I had done. I wanted her to have a safe space for that as well. So therapy was key and definitely having conversations with her, allowing her to lead that. I didn't want to force conversations on her. I just wanted to watch and let her lead conversations and give the space for it.

Ann Wilson: I'm just going to say, I think a lot of parents don't know what to do in those circumstances. You totally coached them up.

Dave Wilson: And I also sit there and think there are so many listeners that are walking through that right now. For the fact that you're sharing that with us, is there anything you wish you would have done looking back? Anything different? Because the things that you shared are pretty pivotal.

Cheryl Shumake: It was such a long time ago, it's hard for me to pinpoint something. I'm sure if I were closer to that time, I could snap something up immediately. One thing that I can think of is, at some point, I had to stop speaking with my former spouse because it was so combative that I had to go, not no contact, but contact through email and text messaging. Texting was fairly new then. I wish I had done that sooner.

Ann Wilson: Because of the emotions.

Cheryl Shumake: Absolutely. I'm defending myself. I'm reacting to the anger that's coming at me. At some point, I had to stop and say, "Okay, God, this is not helping. This is not honoring to you. It's not honoring to him." He is still a follower of yours. He's still your son, and it's not helping my daughter. One of us has got to grow up, and if I'm noticing it, then that's me. I'm the one that has to grow up.

Dave Wilson: Walk us from there to when you got remarried. Was that years or?

Cheryl Shumake: It was. I was a single mom. I was not looking to get remarried at all. This was the first time in my adult life that I had the opportunity to be me, and I was loving it. There was peace in my home. I was traveling and I had gone back to school. There were so many things that I was experiencing, and it was wonderful.

I was driving down the street and I just heard a question impressed upon my heart: "If I were to bless you with a husband, what do you want?" I started going down a list and I said, "Well, Lord, that's you. I'm praying. Lord, that's you. So I don't need anybody. You, me, and Kayla, we are cool. Do not introduce anybody into this space, please and thank you."

What I heard next was, "I may bless you with a husband, but nobody will ever love you the way I love you." So I just kind of sank into the love of God. It was a sweet, sweet time. I was not dating. My daughter was 13 at the time. I didn't want to introduce a man into our lives. I had made the decision that if I were ever to date, it probably wouldn't happen until she were in college and out of the home.

I had all of these plans, and God had something different in mind. Here comes a friend. Jonathan actually was my friend in high school and in college. He attended my first wedding as a guest. He calls me out of the blue. The last time we had spoken, I was pregnant with Kayla and he had just gotten married. He calls me out of the blue like, "Hey, here's a blast from the past. You want to get together?" We never dated or anything like that. We were more like a brother-sister relationship than anything else. A year and a half later, we got married.

We have been married now for 18 years, and I have never known love the way I know it today. Jonathan is a real husband. He's a cultivator. He cultivates the ground of our home and I get to flourish. What I mean is that he creates a space in our home where we talk and communicate. We are friends. There's room for me to grow and there's room for him to grow as well.

There's acceptance in that growth, that we shift with one another. We may not understand what the other person is growing through, but we've made a commitment to be there. That brings a level of safety that allows you to flourish. Knowing that my person is here for me, I can flourish. I feel safe enough to try different things and to explore my personality in ways maybe I didn't before. I cried in my husband's arms for the first time after I was married to Jonathan. I never had that opportunity before. I always had to be the strong one. I was allowed to be soft with him.

Ann Wilson: That feels good.

Cheryl Shumake: Yes, that feels very good to be able to do that.

Dave Wilson: I mean, I'm sitting here talking to two women, two wives. What makes a wife feel like she can flourish from her man? You said a lot of it. Is there anything you would add?

Ann Wilson: Everything that Cheryl said. The first time I heard that word "flourish" in marriage was with Tony Evans. I remember him talking about the people around your table, your family, should flourish under your care.

That struck me. I want that for our family. I feel like you do do that, Dave. I think you give space for people to be who they are. You're safe, you're dependable, and trustworthy. All of that creates security. As a woman especially, you aren't afraid of my strength, my bigness, or my feistiness, but you also applaud it. You're happy that I'm strong.

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Dave Wilson: Okay, now I've got two wives in the room. How do you help your husbands flourish?

Cheryl Shumake: We might be the wrong persons to ask. It might be you who needs to answer that question. But what comes to your mind first? Man, I want him to flourish, so I want to what?

One of the things that comes to my mind that I hope that I do for Jonathan is I show him a great deal of admiration and respect. I appreciate what he does, and I let him know. I really appreciate who you are, and I appreciate what you do. We have a culture of politeness in our family just by virtue of who we are. So even something as simple as "please" and "thank you" or "excuse me," just honoring who he is as an individual, I think is very helpful to him flourishing.

Admiring him is very helpful to him flourishing. Applauding him, much like he applauds me, is very helpful. I am not a bowler. I don't want to. My eyes glaze over when I see bowlers and bowling and all the things. Jonathan is an avid bowler. He loves it. So I applaud that. "Oh honey, your average is going up. That's wonderful." I don't know what it took to do that, but I'm grateful for it. Just the little things. The same thing you would do for a friend. We treat our friends so well. Why don't we treat our spouses as well or better than we treat our friends?

Ann Wilson: I had a friend once say to me, "I don't want to have to figure out how I should say this to my husband. I just want to say it." And I said, "Well, you don't do that with a friend or a coworker. You're thinking through and praying through how I should present this."

So this is your lifetime partner whom you love and care for more than anybody, so why wouldn't you take even more time to care about how you communicate to them? And I would agree. The word "flourish," I love that word. Sometimes I think of it as a vine. There's a Psalm that talks about how we flourish like a vine. But I think for men, I think of support. Like I think for me, Dave, all the things that Cheryl just said, that "thank you," that admiration, the respect, and being careful with how I communicate. I'm going to speak the truth, but I need to do it in a way that's still respectful.

Dave Wilson: When a man feels believed in and admired, that's big. But on the other side, I know there are wives listening thinking, "Yeah, but my man's not respectable or admirable, and I honestly don't admire some things." So how do you coach them to say there's truth that needs to be said as well? What's that look like? I know we're going to take this conversation somewhere else, but I'm thinking there are some wives listening. How would you help them with that guy?

Cheryl Shumake: One of the things that I would say is admire the things that are admirable and speak to the things that are not. You speak to those things with love and humility, just like the Word tells us that we are to bear the infirmities of the weak, but we're to do these things in humility because we're going to be taken over as well.

I always try to remember that Jonathan and I are on the same team. So one of the things that I pray is, "God, what's the win-win here? What's the most helpful thing?" I remember one time Jonathan had done something and I had felt especially disrespected. I had about ten seconds to either blow up or make a decision to approach this as inviting him to the table for the conversation versus blowing up and building resistance in him.

So I took a moment, went in and prayed, and then I waited. I waited until we were in bed together, and I approached it from communicating my intention first. Because we judge ourselves based upon our intentions, but other people judge us based upon our impact on them. So I had to communicate my intention first so that the impact would be lessened so that he would receive it well.

What I said to him was, "Listen, I know your heart towards me. I know that you love me. I know these things to be true. But this thing happened and I felt disrespected by that. Can you help me understand what happened? Can you help me unpack this?" And he apologized immediately. He said, "I didn't realize that this was the impact on you. I'm so sorry."

Now I'm hearing his intent because I've invited him to the table so that we can reach the win-win together. I'm hearing his intent, and he said, "This will never happen again," and it has never happened again. That was probably pretty early on in our marriage, within the first three years or so. So I would say communicate your intention first. Remember that you're on the same team. You're looking for the win-win and that God is fighting for you. He's fighting for both of you as well. You want to fight with the Holy Spirit, not against the Holy Spirit, and approach him in humility.

Ann Wilson: Your wisdom in how you approach him is masterful and it's Holy Spirit driven. "Help me understand" is a great way to phrase it. Because what happens when we don't approach it that way, let's say that you just didn't communicate anything, the devil can get a foothold. Then you start wearing this cloak of resentment. And that's where it gets really tricky where the enemy can kind of just whisper, "He must not love you." And if you have any wounds from the past or triggers, it's just like poking it.

I think it's so important to go to God to ask him, "How do I do this? How do I approach it? How can I communicate?" That was so wise. And as I'm listening to you, Cheryl, it seems like you both learned a lot from your first marriages.

Cheryl Shumake: We did. We learned a lot from the failures previously. Absolutely. I think that's hopeful because we have so many listeners that have gone through divorce. You're not just saying it, you're doing it. You both learned some things of, "Hmm, if we had to do it over again, let's put in some new applications of what we can do."

Absolutely. Let's put in some new applications. Let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. I think both of us, prior to getting remarried, had done a lot of individual healing ourselves. That was absolutely important. I've watched my former spouse. He was married a month after our divorce, and you could see some of the lack of healing in how his relationship with our daughter ended, how it was impacted and how it imploded.

My husband and I individually, of course, without knowing that we would eventually be reconnected and be married, we just did the work. We did some hard work. And after we got married, we continued to do hard work. Today, we still do the hard work. I am not responsible for Jonathan's emotions. I can't manage him. I can only manage my own emotions. I can only manage my own impact beyond the tip of this nose. This is where control ends, at the tip of my nose. I can't control anything outside of that. So that's where I have to put in the work. That's where most of my prayer needs to be focused.

Ann Wilson: For all of us as women, our job is us. When I'm unhappy, I'm going to control the situation and I'm going to make you do or say or be what I think you should be. That is when things get really ugly.

Dave Wilson: If there's a listener, a woman or a man, that's gone through a divorce, and you say, "Do the work," what is the work? What do they need to do before they get remarried, for sure, the next year, five years, ten years? What is the work?

Cheryl Shumake: One of the first and most important things that I think you can do is work on forgiveness. For real. Because if you don't, you're going to hamper your healing. You're going to hold on to offense. A root of bitterness can well up in your life. That is going to impact everything. Offense does not stay with you. It rolls over into every other area of your life. So work on forgiving the person. That doesn't necessarily mean reconciliation, but it does mean that you release them from a legitimate debt that they owe you.

Dave Wilson: What did that look like for you? Because I heard what you said, there was another woman. Betrayal's hard.

Cheryl Shumake: Betrayal is hard, but man, I had an amazing community around me that helped me process through that. I wasn't spiritually bypassing it. I was going to God. I was doing a lot of David prayers, a lot of lamenting like Jeremiah. "Okay, God, this hurts. This stinks. This is wrong. What are we going to do about this? I am angry about this. I don't like this. Will you help me?"

One of the things that I found when I went to the Lord and just poured out my heart, almost like a beggar, I'm just pouring out my heart, "I need you, Father," is that he supplied himself and he blanketed me in so much peace. There is peace to be had when we pour out our hurt and pain. He can handle the weight of our hurt and our pain and our tears, our tragedies, and the failings as much as he handles the weight of our worship. He can do both. So we can give both to him. That is so important to do that.

I would also say talk to a therapist as well because we want to do the work so that when offense comes in the future, if we're remarried or just in relationship with people, we're not retriggered or retraumatized and we're not acting out of unhealed wounds. So go and talk to someone. Work through those things.

And two other things that I would say that probably are surprising: the third is rest. Get some rest. You just went through a whole upheaval of your life. That is huge. Give yourself the grace of pacing yourself. You don't have to rush to be okay. Just rest.

Ann Wilson: How do you do that? I have three kids and now I'm a single mom. How do I do that?

Cheryl Shumake: You can be functional and still rest in God. I can function and still find moments where I'm saying, "God, I'm giving you my day. I'm just relying upon you. I'm giving you the fact that I have three kids. Would you carve out some moments for me to just have peace, where I am not on, where I'm not Mom, where I'm not having to do something in the moment? Would you carve out that space for me?"

One of the best things I think that we can do is invite the power, the presence, and the intention of God into our daily lives. Just ask him. He will supply. It's his delight to give us the kingdom, his rule and reign in every area of our life. And that includes the heart spaces as well. The fourth thing that I would say is have fun. Get together with some friends who make you laugh. Have lots of fun. Cultivate joy in your life. Take up a hobby you've always wanted to and squeeze out a moment. I know you're busy, you're tired sometimes, but squeeze out a moment to squeeze out some joy in your life. That will help you heal as well.

Ann Wilson: One of the things I was thinking as you talk about that rest piece is, I mean when your kids are young, it's hard to find rest. I wouldn't be afraid to put a movie in and have your kids watch the movie. But here's the thing that you need to do because we're all so tempted. Our kids are watching a movie, I have a moment. So what do we do? We either do all of these chores or these things around the house, or we sit and we scroll on our phones.

I would say if you put your kids in front of the TV, which we all do that, get some time with Jesus. Pull out your Bible and tell him. I love that you keep saying, "Pour your heart out to God." Tell him all the things that you're hearing because he hears those prayers, and he will fill you up more than any scrolling will ever do. I know it feels good to get some dishes done or whatever, but that time with Jesus is critical.

Cheryl Shumake: If your mom is living, invite your mom over. She will likely do the dishes and watch the kids. She might even play with them or whatever, but spend some time with Jesus.

Dave Wilson: And I would add, because I was the son, talk to your kids. Talk to your kids about what's happening. Help them verbalize what they're feeling. What a great day with Cheryl. By the way, her book is called Waiting to be Wanted: A Stepmom's Guide to Loving Before Being Loved, and you can get it at familylifetoday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes and guess what? We've got her back tomorrow.

We want to hear from you. You can leave us a voicemail with your questions, concerns, praise reports, or whatever. All you have to do is go to speakpipe.com/familylifetoday. Again, that's speakpipe.com/familylifetoday or get the link in the show notes. FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru Ministry, 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.