Part 2: Tessa’s Story

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: When we record Revive Our Hearts programs, we can’t predict all the life situations listeners will be facing when those go out. But we do ask the Lord to connect these messages to just the right people at just the right times.

God made one of those amazing connections in 2018. Tessa Maki was talking with her aunt, who recommended the Revive Our Hearts podcast.

Tessa Maki: I don’t know that my aunt knew how much that would mean to me. 

Nancy: The next day Tessa listened to an episode.

Tessa: It was titled “What Does Your Marriage Communicate?” 

Nancy (from "What Does Your Marriage Communicate?"): Remember, a covenant is a lifelong, binding vow.

Tessa: As I listened to that, Nancy read the letter of a woman who expressed that she was in a situation in her marriage where she had been counseled that she had biblical grounds to divorce, but she did not feel that’s what God was calling her to.

Nancy (from "What Does Your Marriage Communicate?"): “Nearly two years ago, my husband told me he had been involved in an adulterous affair with a younger woman for the past six months.”

Tessa: And she was praying for her husband and for their marriage.

Nancy (from "What Does Your Marriage Communicate?"): “I have chosen not to divorce my husband even though he refused to stop the affair for over a year after his initial confession.”

Tessa: As I listened to that letter, I had never heard of somebody doing this before! It was such a unique testimony. As it got to the end, I remember thinking, What if God ever asked me to do that? 

Nancy (from "What Does Your Marriage Communicate?"): “I want to display a true picture of Christ and the church before my husband, our children, family, friends and the world.”

Tessa: And little did I know that within less than ten days, I would be having a conversation with my husband where he said, “I don’t want to be married anymore.” I was devastated and blindsided, but God had planted these seeds . . . and Nancy’s voice on Revive Our Hearts was one of those. 

Nancy (from "What Does Your Marriage Communicate?"): Think of the spiritual adultery and unfaithfulness we continually commit against our Savior, as part of His Church, yet Christ never divorces us! 

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, for Thursday, March 27, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy: We live in a fallen world, and that means that life gets messy. So, there’s a good chance there’s some circumstance pressing in on your mind today, causing stress. We all have them. Sometimes they are little things, but sometimes they are great, big, and overwhelming.

As I’m in the process of recording 260 new podcasts for the Wonder of the Word series, teaching from Genesis through to the maps, that means that every three weeks, every third Thursday afternoon, I have to be ready to record five new teaching programs. It’s a joy, but it has also proved to be the most daunting and challenging undertaking of my life! The closer we get to each of those recording days, the greater is my tendency to feel stretched and stressed.

In every situation like this, even if it is a relational issue or something at work or something in your church or a ministry responsibility, we all need to remember to take our eyes off that circumstance and put them on the Lord. He can use even the most painful situations to shape us into his image. And he can use our response to these situations to point others to Him.

For the last six years, Tessa Maki has been learning to take her eyes off her problems and grow closer to the Lord. She’s about to share some of the insights she’s learned along the way. So I hope you’ll listen and surrender your stressful situation to the Lord.

Let’s go back to that moment when Tessa’s husband, Ryan, said he didn’t want to be married and was leaving home. (And by the way, Tessa has Ryan’s permission to share this story.) 

Tessa: You hear that proverbial “rug being pulled out from under you,” and “your world shifting on its axis,” and all those cliches. They felt true in that moment! Everything had changed! At that point we had been married thirteen-and-a-half years, and I hadn’t thought this would be part of our story.

When the marriage first fell apart, all I wanted was that back. I just wanted it to be okay. I wanted it to be this quick fix. I wanted him to realize that it was a mistake. But as it went on, it was like God was revealing to me how much I had put my husband in the place of Him.

I just remember thinking, How could my husband make these choices? To be choosing other things over me? And one time, God just so gently said, “It’s kind of like you chose him all those years over Me?” And it was true.

As much as I thought I had Jesus at the center, I didn’t. I was going through the motions. I was going to church on Sunday. I had started volunteering at youth group several years before. I thought everything was good. 

I remember one really pivotal moment was when I was just praying for this miracle for our marriage to be restored, and all the sudden having this realization that I would get a miracle either way!

And what that meant at first was either I get the miracle that our marriage is restored, or I get the miracle that I’m okay without Ryan. And to me, that felt like the more impossible miracle because of where I had put him in my life. As time has gone on, I remember God impressed upon my heart that neither of those are the main miracle.

I get a miracle either way, no matter what, because I get to have an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus! I think the beauty of that is, that’s what we’re all offered, no matter what our trial is, no matter what thing we’re going through, we get that. We’re offered that.

We aren’t guaranteed the healing. We aren’t guaranteed the marriage restoration. We aren’t guaranteed whatever it may be. But if we’re willing to receive what He’s extending to us, we get the miracle of having a relationship with the God of the universe!

A few years before this all happened, people would ask, “Do you have a favorite verse?” or “What’s your life verse?” I never had any. But back (I think it was in 2014), the verse John 17:3 had come across my radar three times within about ten days! 

And that is, “This is eternal life, that you may know Him, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent.” For so long, I felt like I understood God, and I felt like I understood the Holy Spirit, but Jesus I didn’t connect with as much, which sounds crazy, because He’s it! 

He’s the way that I can have a relationship with the Father. He’s the way that I have access to the Holy Spirit. But having an actual relationship with Jesus? That was the part that seemed foreign to me. When people would talk about how Jesus was their best friend, I didn’t get it, because He seemed “historical”. . . you know, He didn’t seem “here with me.”

But that verse did two things: it told me that eternal life isn’t what I’d always thought it was. I’d thought, That’s after I die; it’s heaven. But it told me it was offered to me here and now! It came through knowing Jesus, through knowing God. Even that was setting the stage for what He was bringing me to.

So, when our marriage fell apart and everything that I had looked to for security was taken away, He was there! That’s where I got to know Him!

It was during that summer that I realized that the relationship I had with Him was actually pretty shallow. I had “prayed the prayer” when I was five and accepted Jesus into my heart. I didn’t have that “before and after” story, that I was one way and then this happened and “now I am this way.”

The way I can best summarize it is that I thought after we accepted Jesus and received His forgiveness and I understood grace, I thought that then I needed to live so I didn’t need grace anymore.

I tried my best to be the best, but I wasn’t. There was sin there, and there were things that I did that were very much separating me from Him, but I hid it. I didn’t talk to anybody about it.

But all the sudden, I realized that I did not believe that Jesus’ blood covered my sexual sin. I believed that He had covered the sins of everybody, and He had covered all of my sins—except for that. I thought that was mine to hold onto, and I should punish myself for it. Unfortunately, I was punishing my husband in the process. 

I lived in a lot of guilt and shame for that for many years. But in this process where He had brought me to my knees, literally wanting my old life back, He instead brought me to the place where I saw my need and how I had so pridefully held onto this belief that that was too much for Him.

So in September of 2018, I feel like I had my eyes opened. I knelt on my bed weeping and I truly repented. It was really after that, that life was different. There were things that I struggled with that He took away. Where there had been shame, there now wasn’t. It was amazing to experience that, “I was one way, and now I’m another!” 

Nancy: Perhaps you can relate to Tessa, and you’ve been thinking, My sin is too great for God to forgive!

Let me point you to Calvary where Jesus died for your sin. The cross shows us God’s justice and hatred of sin. It also shows us His love. Jesus suffered and was punished in your place so you can be completely forgiven and right with God.

After Ryan first left home, Tessa came to a whole new understanding of forgiveness and knew she was right with God because of what Jesus had done.

Tessa: And within a week, Ryan had come home! And I thought, Wow, that was it! Like, “That’s why God did this! Now I got that miracle and this miracle, and we’re going to live “happily ever after!” And for four-and-a-half months, it was pretty good.

We were going to counseling, and we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family, Christmas with my family. Shortly after that, there was a family tragedy, and it was so difficult. And soon after that, Ryan walked away again. That summer it was pretty much silent. God had more work to do. It was really hard!

It was that summer, late in the year Nancy had written You Can Trust God to Write Your Story. I had gotten the book and had read it. It was when she started doing those podcasts that I remember just really internalizing that what God was doing in this trial was about far more than our marriage! 

Nancy (from "Twists and Turns": You can be confident that your story, no matter how messed up it may be right now, that your story will end well. It will have a happy ending. Some of you are going, “No way! That’s not possible!” I’m telling you that it is true.

Tessa: It was about my heart, and it was about what He was doing in my life, and what He is doing in my husband’s life as well. In October of 2019, Ryan did come home, but I knew it wasn’t to work on our marriage.

He had shared that he had been introduced to drugs, and he just wanted to be somewhere that he felt safe within the four walls. It was our home, so of course he could come home. He was home then for about nine months, then in 2020 the pandemic hit.

Little by little, it started to fall apart again. We had been working on “us” for a few months, and then in June of 2020, he decided to move out. He got an apartment to move into.

Nancy: Tessa spent so many years of ups and downs. Ryan was in and out of the house, treating Tessa like she didn’t matter. But she sensed God calling her to fight for the marriage, even when it didn’t make sense. She wanted to show the world a picture of true, unconditional love.

One night Tessa was particularly discouraged. She still knew God was calling her to stay in the marriage, but she was really struggling. 

Tessa: I laid in bed thinking, Why am I doing this? Really!? Is this what You want me to do, because this feels pretty crazy! I had no idea how crazy it was going to get! But at that point, I just really was ready to kind of be done.

I got into bed that night. I pulled my phone out and pulled up the Revive Our Hearts app. I turned it on and let it play as I was falling asleep. Just as I was in that state right between sleeping and awake I heard Nancy say:

“Then her son came to her and said, “Mom, I didn’t want to be married because I saw how dad treated you. But then, because I’ve seen how you’ve treated him and have loved him, I want to be married someday.” 

I’m like in this half-sleep, and I’m like, “Wait a minute! What?!” So I rewound, and I listened to it again.

Nancy (from "What Does Your Marriage Communicate?"):  “A few months ago, our son who was eleven came to me and said that when he saw what his dad was doing to me and to him and to his sister, he initially decided he never wanted to get married.”

Tessa: It was a portion of the same letter that she had read that had been the first episode of Revive Our Hearts that I had heard!

Nancy (from "What Does Your Marriage Communicate?"): “However, he went on to say that as he had watched me forgive his dad and show love and mercy over and over, he decided he wants to get married so he can show that kind of commitment to his wife and children someday!”

Tessa: And now it was in the context. The whole episode was about how other people are watching us when we’re suffering. So that was given as an example of how her son was watching her, and how her standing for their marriage and praying for their marriage had impacted him.

So on the very day that I was like, “Lord! I kind of want to be done with this!” it was one of those things where I thought, That was no accident! He would just do things like that over and over! I could tell you so many stories where I was ready to give up, and He would just do something to encourage me to keep going. 

Nancy: Through this process Tessa also learned a lot about God’s love for her. And that changed the way she loved other people.

Tessa: The only way I can describe it is that He gave me so much of a taste of His love for me. Then that idea of, “We love because He first loved us . . .” Somehow, this love that He had given me for my husband, I never loved him like this before! I never would have imagined loving him like this.

But to be able to experience that love for my husband and knowing that that’s such a small glimpse of how God loves me, that to me is one of the greatest gifts of this whole journey. I understand God’s love for me in a way that I never could have otherwise. It’s a gift! 

In May of 2023, Ryan ended up going down to Georgia into a rehab center near Atlanta. Even just the way God orchestrated that was amazing! So, for three months he was down in Georgia getting the help he needed. By the grace of God, he did decide to invite me to come down to the Family Weekend. 

It was called Reclaiming Families. Even though we knew the intent was not to reclaim our family, he did invite me to come down so I could be part of the weekend and part of the counseling there. It was a gift to be with his family there. 

As I was preparing to go, I had read a book that a friend of mine’s husband had written. They had been Bible smugglers into Eastern Europe before Communism ended there. As I read it, she told of all these miracles that happened.

When I got done reading it, I remember just sitting there and thinking, I want to see miracles like that. I want to see these things that just make no sense, other than that God did it! In my memory, what’s next was the same day, but maybe it wasn’t.

I got done reading the book, and then I was thinking about this trip down to Georgia. I knew I wanted to drive because I didn’t want to be constrained by flight times. Driving is kind of my sacred space of praying and thinking. So I had this idea. 

I’m part of the Revive Partners Facebook group. 

Nancy: Tessa’s a Revive Partner. This is a group of committed Revive Our Hearts listeners who pray for the ministry, share it with others, and give each month. 

Tessa: I became a Revive Partner because the ministry had just impacted me so much! I benefited so much from hearing it. Anytime they would talk about sowing into the ministry in order to help other women, it just made sense that it was something I wanted to be part of. 

Nancy: As a Revive Partner, Tessa receives a copy of my book, You Can Trust God to Write Your Story. She also receives a copy of a monthly devotional called Daily Reflections. She gets a complimentary registration to select Revive Our Hearts events.

But Tessa isn’t a partner because of the resources she receives.

Tessa: Just to know that God is going to use your small gift in a way that is multiplied when it’s put together, to just be part of something that blesses and increases the kingdom.

Nancy: If you’d like to find out how to become a Revive Partner, visit ReviveOurHearts.com. There’s another benefit Tessa received from the program. She enjoyed finding community as a member of the Revive Partner Facebook page.

Tessa: So as I was thinking about this trip to Georgia, knowing I wanted to drive but I didn’t really have the money for hotels, I had the idea that, “I’m part of this Facebook group for Revive Partners. What if I ask if I can stay with someone?”

So I made a map of the two routes that I could take from where I lived in Wisconsin down to Georgia. I posted it, and I said, “Does anyone have a spare couch or bed?”

Nancy: Linda Carullo is another Revive Partner, living in Indiana, and she responded to Tessa’s post.

Tessa: And when she posted, she had said, “I think my husband and I could minister to you.”

Linda Carullo: There were a lot of parallels with her story that she shared and the story of my husband and myself.” 

Nancy: If you heard yesterday’s episode of Revive Our Hearts, you know that Linda and Dave Carullo were uniquely prepared to minister to Tessa.

Yesterday we heard about some of their marriage struggles in marriage

Dave Carullo: I had been involved in a lot of partying, drinking, and drugs.

Linda: He said, “Linda, I don’t want to be married to you anymore.”

Dave: She burst into tears, and she just looked at me and she said, “Why don’t you love us?” And I had to consider, “Why is it?”

Linda: And I said, “I do want to be married. God hates divorce. And who are you to fight against God? I will do everything I can to stay married!”

Tessa: So Linda calls. As we start talking, I quickly realized that this was God’s doing and His appointment for us to connect. Very quickly I realized she’s sharing things I need to be writing down, so I grabbed up my journal and I’m scribbling away. 

The thing that struck me most is that she said she’d been in a group with other women early in her marriage, and that the teacher had come in and said:

Linda: “Ladies, we are not here to save our marriage. We are here to become the woman God wants you to be. If your marriage is saved, that’s a bonus!”

Tessa: And that just summarized so much of what I knew God had planted in me from the very beginning. And then, I had the time down in Georgia, which was good!

Linda: She came and stayed the night at our house, and Dave was able to be such an encouragement to her and share from a man’s perspective.

Tessa: But what was even more important was just how they listened to me and how they loved me. Linda kept pointing me back to truth, reminding me to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus, and to trust Him in all of this!

Linda: She ended up staying an extra night, and we’ve gotten together several times since!

Tessa: Since I left that time, we’ve started connecting by Zoom. We’ll talk; sometimes we’re sitting there three hours like we’re across from each other having coffee. She has just really poured into me and Dave, too. He’ll sit and listen and pray. They’ve just been such an encouragement!

Ryan did let me know that he would be moving forward with filing for divorce. After six years of praying that it wouldn’t come to that, it was very difficult! The process for that has been slow, it’s actually not final yet.

And in some ways, I think that’s even beautiful, because I like that I’m telling the story when I have no idea how it’s going to end. Part of my heart of what I hope people get from my story is that you don’t have to know how it ends for it to be good. And you don’t have to know how it ends to know that you already got a miracle.

So even though things are not where I prayed they would be with our marriage, that I’d be a miracle either way has been cemented over and over and over—first and foremost, like I’ve said, with my relationship with Jesus.

That idea that I didn’t really relate to Him . . . It’s hard to even remember what that feels like now, because He’s so “here.” He is so with me; He is so close! And the way that He has taught me the most about Him is through the people that He’s brought into my life.

It’s through them and their love and their support, their mentorship. The way that Linda and Dave have just loved me and walked through this journey with me, that’s how I’ve really gotten to know Jesus! 

As hard as it’s been, I wouldn’t trade that for the miracle that I thought I wanted. Just as God has been working in my life through this journey, I know that He’s been working in Ryan’s life, too!

And even though I may not get a front row seat to all that God has for him and all that He does, I will forever be waiting with bated breath to see what God does in his life. Because just like He’s been writing my story, He’s been writing a story for Ryan, and I know that’s good, too!

Nancy: God is writing your story as well. Whatever you are facing, would you respond to what we’ve heard today? Would you surrender your circumstances to the Lord and pray for His will in your life and His glory through your life?

Lord, I want to pray for that listener who maybe feels like they're in an excruciating situation. Would You use that circumstance to draw that person closer to Your heart? To help them to experience Your love in a whole new way? Help them to lean on You for whatever they need in this season. Would you help them to give You glory in the middle of those circumstances. Amen.

If you’d like more resources to help you lean on the Lord in every situation, visit ReviveOurHearts.com. There you’ll find articles and podcasts, including the series, You Can Trust God to Write Your Story. Discover all the resources at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Dannah: Today we’ve heard how God has sustained Tessa during storms in her marriage. Tomorrow, we’ll hear about another kind of storm. Kerry Tittle went through a literal storm that took the life of her husband and two daughters.

Kerry Tittle: There was a sense of abandonment from God. I felt that He had abandoned me! 

Dannah: Hear how God met Kerry in her pain, next time on Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.