Focus on the Family

Guest (Female): This Mother's Day, if you feel unseen or overwhelmed, remember God sees every sacrifice and act of love. Find encouragement with Focus on the Family's new seasonal Mother's Day podcast, Legacy of Love. Go to amothersdayreflection.com.

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John Fuller: This is John Fuller, and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs on a podcast, app, or website.

Brandy Wilson: I had to recognize that God will never leave me lonely. I might not be surrounded by people, but I was surrounded with His presence if I chose to seek Him.

John Fuller: Well, that's Brandy Wilson, discussing ways that God healed her heart after an unwanted divorce. Welcome to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller.

Jim Daly: John, this is going to be a difficult discussion. There's a couple of ways that people end up without a spouse. One can be death of that spouse. That's common. We've had spouses on the show talk about that loneliness in that context. Today's is different. Today's discussion is going to be about a couple who just didn't make it.

We'll unfold that today and tomorrow, but this is important for us to talk about. What happens when divorce comes unexpectedly for that spouse that isn't anticipating this? They made their commitment to love each other until death do us part, and then something happens. That can be infidelity, it could be abandonment, it could be abuse, whatever it might be, but you end up by yourself, and maybe with your kids. So today's discussion is going to have that emotion. We're going to talk about that percentage of people that end up in divorce court even though they're Christians.

John Fuller: Yeah, and God's goodness and faithfulness can still reign in that circumstance and bring healing. We're going to hear about that from Brandy Wilson today. She's an author, mom, and life coach. Brandy has written a book about her experience. It's called *Better Than Okay: Finding Hope and Healing After Your Marriage Ends*.

Jim Daly: Brandy, welcome to Focus. Good to have you here.

Brandy Wilson: Hi, thanks so much for having me. Honored to be with you guys.

Jim Daly: I appreciate it. This is a difficult subject. I mean, there's no way around that. There are going to be people listening and viewing on YouTube that are coming from all kinds of perspectives. They may be divorced themselves and this will bring up issues, but it's a good thing to talk about because divorce is so common in our culture today.

I come from divorced parents. My mom was a single parent mom and she had five kids. I was about five when she divorced my dad. She remarried at eight. So I'm coming with it from the view of the child. I know you have sons. How many sons do you have?

Brandy Wilson: I have three sons.

Jim Daly: Three sons. What are their ages, roughly?

Brandy Wilson: They are 18, 20, and 23. So I guess they're men now.

Jim Daly: Isn't that always awkward? You say, "The boys," I mean, my young men. They start looking at you funny when you call them boys. "Hey mom, have you noticed I'm a grown man?" Well, let's get going. Describe the life that you had before your divorce. What was happening? What were the good things?

Brandy Wilson: Yeah, I married my college sweetheart and we planted churches. We started churches. The first one we started right outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky. We had attended Western Kentucky University and planted a church there and served for five years before moving to Nashville and starting a church in Nashville called Cross Point Church.

Cross Point boomed. It grew significantly. It was considered one of the fastest-growing churches in the nation seven years running. I loved being part of that ministry. I loved being able to lead the staff. I loved serving the people of middle Tennessee. The church grew to five campuses in middle Tennessee during our 14 years there.

I really felt like that was the place I was going to be serving until we chose to retire. My kids were all born while the church was growing and I loved the life that we had created. Then in 2016, my now ex-husband suddenly resigned and walked away from the church and the ministry.

Jim Daly: Did you have a clue what was happening up until that point? Did you have that sixth sense about maybe something is wrong with my husband?

Brandy Wilson: I had a sixth sense. Often times in situations like that, Jim, there is a lot of manipulation and blame that is put on you. So I really believed I was the weak link in the marriage. I believed that I wasn't loving well, I wasn't managing time well, and I was doing everything I knew to do. But it had been communicated to me.

I think when you're in a situation like I was where your husband's popularity and impact is growing across the nation—he was an author, he was traveling for all of his personal accomplishments as well—everywhere I went, everyone told me how great he was. A message he'd given had saved their marriage or a message he'd given them the courage to start a business. Everywhere I went, the message I was getting was how amazing he was, and yet I knew the person I lived with at home. That did not compute. There was not a congruency between this person on stage and the person that I was living with.

Jim Daly: And I know you're very careful to respect your ex-husband, and that's always good. That's great for the young men in your family. But in that regard, when you look back on that, I mean, the Lord was using that to build, to impact people. I'm sure many hundreds, if not thousands, of people came to Christ, were nurtured in the faith, etc.

Isn't that a jarring realization that this is so good and then this is so bad? In that case, he succumbed to affairs, correct? Just to be blunt so we know what the issues are. It wasn't one or two; it was more serial in its orientation. Unfortunately, it preyed on a weakness obviously that he had.

Describe that reconciliation, if you ever thought in those terms, like, okay, Lord, you accomplished a lot through this, but man, I'm crushed.

Brandy Wilson: Yeah, I think there was a lot that did not make sense to me, and that is one of the pieces of that that I struggled with. I feel like one of the gifts God gave me in the midst of my marriage falling apart is that my two closest friends were married to megachurch pastors. So I also had a visual of what healthy male leadership looked like.

Men who actually led churches larger than ours, who were good, godly Christian men serving their families and their wives. So to be able to have those men in my life to help me see the problem wasn't the church and the problem wasn't God, the problem was actually my ex-husband, really helped me be able to focus on where the unhealth was and lean on God in a way that really brought me a lot of freedom.

Jim Daly: Again, at a 40,000-foot view, and then we're going to get more deeply into your specific story, but when you look at that as a former pastor's wife and you look at the accolades and all those things that are occurring—and then there are a lot of failed pastors and ministry leaders in this country—what do you think is going on there for these men that end up in this situation where they have multiple affairs?

It's amazing right now, I keep saying if you just cross the line without an affair, people pat you on the back and say, way to go, you were such a good leader. It's kind of a low bar, right? But what's your observation of that, coming through what you've come through, just to the general issue of leadership in the church not being able to do some fundamental things well?

Brandy Wilson: Yeah, I think people who don't live transparent with anyone in their life, there's always hiding that happens behind the scenes. There are things they're trying to downplay. There's a lot of manipulation with people who are serving under them so that they're continuing to receive that support.

At the end of the day, we all have some demons and baggage and things that occurred in our childhood or our teen years that we have to be willing to do the hard work of dealing with our own emotional health and mental health. If that isn't done, then we end up succumbing to these sins that destroy not only our lives, but the people who we are connected with.

Jim Daly: And it doesn't excuse it, but that axiom, hurt people hurt people, that's kind of what you're saying. These are patterns that are developed in your childhood typically, wounds that you have, you bring them into marriage, they're not dealt with, and then boom, things begin to fall apart. Let's move more specifically into your story. Your family came from a happily ever after kind of orientation where you didn't have divorce in your family, on your side of the family.

I can't imagine the shame of that, the feeling of shame to be one of the only ones on your side of the family to now go through a divorce. Describe that feeling, like calling your mom and your dad or your extended family to say this isn't working out. How did they respond?

Brandy Wilson: Right. My parents were incredibly supportive and loving and kind through all of it. They were shocked when I called them because we served at a church, I was very protective of what I communicated even to my parents at the time. To be quite honest, I did not know all of the truth of things that were occurring behind the scenes. There were a lot of things I didn't know that were happening, so therefore I couldn't communicate them.

They allowed me the space to be able to grieve and heal. Something is very special about having your mom between you and God because you know that she is on her knees praying for you in ways that no one else can and no one else does. So to be able to bring them in on that and to know that they were storming the heavens on my account and the account of the boys really did bring me a lot of peace and some safety in a season that felt very unsafe.

Jim Daly: It's got to feel very cloudy to understand. It's like you're in a fog. I've got two friends who are going into divorce court now and Jean and I have been praying every morning for them. You start to pray those prayers: Lord, open their hearts up to reconciliation, help them to see the error that they're walking toward, the damage, the destruction. That's just become a daily prayer.

But again, it's so common in our friendships now, our Christian friendships, and you're saying, "Lord, what's happening?" Was that a point in your walk toward divorce? Did you realize at a point that it's okay, it's done? Did you give up hope?

Brandy Wilson: I gave up hope on the marriage and my ex-husband changing, but not on what God was going to do in my life. And I could differentiate between those two things. I felt like when God gave truth, it happened very quickly for me. It was during a joint counseling session, the next to last one we had, and I really feel like it was a gift of God.

My ex-husband came in with a journal and he started at the beginning of our marriage and he went through every infidelity that had occurred. I did not know about all of those. In that moment, I knew that this was not a mistake; this was a pattern of behavior and he was not willing to do what needed to happen to change that pattern of behavior. I can look back and say God healed my heart very quickly in regards to my marriage.

I grieved a lot of the loss of the future of my family and what I thought retirement would look like and the empty nest and grandkids. So there is a lot of grief tied to it, but I really recovered from the loss of my husband quicker than I even did the loss of the church. I grieved the loss of the church for a really long time because I loved what God had given me the opportunity to do and how I had served.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and our guest today is Brandy Wilson. She's captured her story and insights into a book called *Better Than Okay: Finding Hope and Healing After Your Marriage Ends*. We'll encourage you to get a copy of this book from us here at the ministry. You can do so when you stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

And Brandy, you mentioned earlier that your husband's voice in your head was one of "you're not enough." How did you discern God's voice in the midst of this and why is that so important?

Brandy Wilson: Yeah, I think there are lots of lies that we're told that impact us from early in our lives to current. I was actually in a coaching session with an executive coach talking about the coaching business I myself have and doing the business side of things, and just the fear of am I going to be able to take care of myself and my kids and what does this look like financially? What if I can't do it?

He stopped me and he said, "Whose voice is telling you those things?" I had to have some self-reflection of whose voice is that I hear in my head. He challenged me to replace the voice that I was hearing of my ex-husband and all the things that I didn't think I could do or didn't believe in myself for that I was worthy of, and to replace it with the voice of God.

So it just became a mantra—stop, think, and pray—when that happened. I would hear the negativity in my head and I would stop, identify it, think through what the truth of God was, and then pray that it would be replaced. The voice of God would replace the voice of my ex-husband in my head. Because our brain is very smart and it's very capable of running the same message over unless we intentionally decide to change that. We can change those neural pathways in our brain if we're intentional to do it. So, yeah, being able to lean on God and remember who I was and how He had uniquely created me and the abundant life that He was providing brought me a lot of hope when those negative thoughts would creep in.

Jim Daly: How much time? Has it been seven years?

Brandy Wilson: It's been eight years.

Jim Daly: Eight years now. So to give context to the listener, the viewer, I want to go back to something you said because I think it's so critically important. It was easier or faster to let go of the relationship with your husband than it was for the church. In that context and recognizing that, did you build—how would you describe the lessening of the intensity with your relationship with the husband? Like building a wall where you were protecting yourself, I guess might be the way to say it? You could allow yourself to grieve about the loss of being an integral part of the church, but that place of relationship with your ex-husband, is it cutting that off? Is it building a wall? Is it all of it? And is there any aspect of that that's healthy or unhealthy? I mean, it's survival. So just if you can articulate that, I'm just really curious about survival in that moment.

Brandy Wilson: I think for me, now I walk through all this with a trusted Christian therapist, so I had someone who was an expert in doing emotional work, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, all of that kind of stuff. Now, one of the things I think is important is for me I had to recognize that the marriage had not been a healthy marriage for a long time. So for me to be able—hindsight is 20/20, we've all heard that—to be able to look back and see that there was a lot of dysfunction, there was a lot of infidelity, there were a lot of lies, there was a lot of manipulation that happened, there was a lot of deception and hiding.

That allowed me to stop romanticizing what the 20 years had been presented to the public because we were in a leadership role and to actually look at the truth of the relationship. So in being able to look back and realize like I was lonelier in my marriage than I am now as a single person was a huge awakening for me. So I think to be able to recognize what was the truth, what was the reality of the relationship, it wasn't as perfect as it looked like it was. There was a lot of pretending that happened.

Jim Daly: You know, I think there are many marriages that feel lonely. There may not be that open dialogue for whatever reason, past wounds and all the things we've talked about. How do you guide a friend in that direction to say, okay, if there's not that big no-no, then here's some things you can do to improve your marriage so you don't fall into that?

Brandy Wilson: I'm a huge fan of marriage, Jim. I'm a huge fan. Just because my marriage ended does not mean that I don't believe in it. I believe I will be married again and get to experience a healthy, happy marriage. So I would encourage those people who are struggling in their marriage to find a therapist to be able to work through, to deal with some of the communication patterns and the habits that they've gotten into that aren't healthy for their marriage, and to do the work. If you've got somebody who's willing to stay in it with you, to spend the time and the work to figure out why is this not working and what can each of us do to be better partners to one another.

Jim Daly: Which is so good. And that's Hope Restored. I mean, we have this intensive program for four days people can come and it's got a post-two-year 80 percent success rate. And some people have signed divorce papers, so it's really—I think it's one of the best things happening in marriage. And certainly people that need that kind of attention, call us and get in touch with us online or what have you and we can start that process for you.

Let me ask you again continuing in the journey here. So now you have the three young men and they were eight years younger, so they were in their teen years and maybe 11, 12 at the time. Joint custody, that kind of messy thing. That just feels so—I mean, like the hair on my neck stands up thinking about that. And people get through it and I'm not saying it as a shaming thing, I'm saying like, Lord, help me never to have to do that because it just would be so hard. But you describe in the book so well like the boys going into their dad's car. Describe for me the feeling of watching them drive away.

Brandy Wilson: That's probably the most difficult piece and the piece that felt most unfair. No one is holding their baby in the hospital after delivery and says, "I can't wait to spend 50 percent of the time with you and every other Christmas." It's just as parents we want to be in our kids' life 100 percent of the time. I am fortunate that my parenting plan was a 70/30 split so the kids were with me 70 percent of the time. But every other weekend, I watch them crawl in his car and leave, knowing that they were gone for four nights.

And it felt so painful to watch them crawl into that car and to leave and know that I wasn't going to get to interact with them. A couple of them were so young they didn't have cell phones at the time, so how do you talk to them and what does that look like? It was the time that I was the angriest. It was the time that I was the most broken. The chapter in the book about that is called "I Cussed a Lot" because there are times that grief tastes like tears and sounds like swearing. So it was a really tough time for me to be able to have to navigate what is it like to not have my kids in my home for the next four days.

Jim Daly: What was a practical thing you did in that place to help offset the negative emotions? Did you have a friend or what really helped in that specific area?

Brandy Wilson: I always planned something to look forward to. I always had—I had to balance because the way I'm wired, if they were gone for four days, I could plan all four of those days from the time the sun rose until the time the sun went down. I also knew that choosing to be alone was going to be beneficial and healing for me as well. So I balanced a little bit of, "Okay, I need some time to myself." I'm an introvert, so I would work in yoga classes with a girlfriend, coffees, going to the movies. I would really try to be intentional about planning my time so that I had things to look forward to while they weren't there.

Jim Daly: That's really good. Let me ask you about loneliness. I mean, you described those years as being lonely in the marriage because things weren't healthy, they were dysfunctional. But then you go through divorce and I would imagine you have episodic expressions of loneliness. Like it starts very deeply and you're troubled and you're worried about what your future will be and the loneliness is the deep end of the pool. And then over time that may get better. What's been your experience with loneliness?

Brandy Wilson: Loneliness is tough. I was lonely in my marriage. I was also lonely as a single mom. I think one of the things I still struggle with in regards to loneliness is I don't have a co-parenting relationship with my ex-husband where when there's a significant event in our kids' lives, whether it's a graduation or they have a great performance at a football game, we don't get to look each other in the eye and say, "Man, they're a great kid. We are so proud of them." And that brings a lot of loneliness being the single parent in seasons like that. So loneliness is real and loneliness is something that needs to be dealt with. And for me I had to recognize that God will never leave me lonely. I might not be surrounded by people, but I was surrounded with His presence if I chose to seek Him. And that really brought me a lot of peace in those moments where I was feeling the loneliness, where the silence was too much to be able to know that He had never left me and He wasn't going to abandon me.

Jim Daly: Right. And you would you agree that those depths of loneliness today are far more shallow than they used to be?

Brandy Wilson: Yeah, I think there's healing in the lonely in a way that we don't expect, but we have to—my therapist challenged me once, she was like, "I think you just need to sit in it." And I'm like, "That's not very comfortable. I don't want to do that. Who wants to do that?" But I trusted her, so I chose to do that, to sit in that loneliness. And you feel looking back that was healthy.

Jim Daly: Let's end on this note with gratitude, because it's kind of the opposite of what we're talking about, that loneliness, that grief. But you stressed in the book the need for gratitude. There have to be women and men listening or watching right now going, "Whoa, that is a big turn, Jim. You just went from where I was connecting with you—grief—and now you're saying I've got to find this well of gratitude? Is that even possible?"

Brandy Wilson: It's totally possible. I'm such a big believer in the practice of gratitude. I think for me it happened in the midst of the separation where nothing around me felt good. Everything felt terrible. I was hopeless, I was scared, I was fearful, I was terrified. I had all of these emotions that are not easy to feel. Not negative emotions, they're just not easy to feel. So nothing felt good to me.

And I woke up one day and I just remember saying to myself like, I believe God is still good. And if God is still good, how can I look for goodness around me? How can I look for God's goodness in my everyday life? So that day I committed to writing down four to five things in my life that day that had pointed to the goodness of God. And they were not big things. They were not huge, everything falling into place the way I wanted it. Sometimes it was ice cream on the porch with my kids or it was getting to go on a walk with a girlfriend.

One day it was I got a new hairdryer. And it wasn't even though hairdryers are very significant to women, it wasn't the fact that I had gotten a hairdryer that was significant. It was the word "new." There would be new things to come in my life. Gratitude is not something you just wake up feeling; it's something you have to choose. It is an attitude. And there are so many things you cannot control in the course of a divorce and life falling apart, but you can control your attitude. So to be intentional about looking for the goodness of God in your life really helps shift that perspective to where you're able to see God in a way that a lot of other people can't in the midst of your suffering.

Jim Daly: And that's a perfect place to end today because I think leaving people with that hope, that idea of gratitude, this has been terrific. I so appreciate the rawness of it and your ability now eight years later to speak about it, talk about it, because it's very helpful. Because there's—again, there's people—right now I've got two friends that are in it and I can't wait to give them a copy of your book.

If you're in that spot or you're close to that spot or you have friends in that spot and you don't know how to be a friend in that way, get a hold of us. Get a copy of this great resource from Brandy. Her book *Better Than Okay: Finding Hope and Healing After Your Marriage Ends* is a great resource. You know, here at Focus, that's what we're talking about all the time, how to keep your marriage together. I do get some criticism from time to time saying you make an idol out of marriage. We don't want to do that either. We know there's going to be single people and they're going to go through life that way. God bless you. Paul instructed you, if you can do it that way, do it that way.

But for those of us that did get married and are married, we've got to honor the Lord in that in every direction, and sometimes it's tough, it's hard. Even if you know the answers, we are selfish, sinful people. So get a hold of us, get a copy of this book, and if you can make a gift of any amount, monthly or one-time, we'll send it as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. If you can't afford it, we're going to get it to you, so call us and we'll trust others will step up and take care of that.

John Fuller: Yeah, donate generously as you can. And you'll find a way to do that online. And we also have details about Hope Restored, which Jim mentioned earlier, our marriage intensives, and ways you can connect with a counselor. We've got caring Christian counselors here who can refer you to somebody in your area if you're going through something and just don't know who to talk with. Our number is 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. And we've got all the details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

Guest (Female): If your marriage feels like it's falling apart, there's still hope. Hope Restored by Focus on the Family is investing $1,000 toward marriage intensives through the Marriage Investment Initiative. Learn more at hoperestored.com/invest.