Choosing to Stay in a Difficult Marriage

Dannah Gresh: Her husband was addicted to alcohol, and Joy and her kids had to move out to be safe. But she didn’t leave the marriage.

Joy McClain: I stayed with my husband for the simple fact that I had taken a vow, and I’d come to the place to understand that marriage is a living, breathing example of Christ and His Bride, and He never leaves His Bride.

Dannah Gresh: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Choosing Forgiveness: Moving from Hurt to Hope, for May 29, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

How are you doing in your reading through the Bible this year? My mom and I were talking, and she's a little discouraged because she is so far behind. I said, "Hey Mom, pick up where we are today. You can come back to those passages you've missed another time."

So I encourage you, if you are behind, just start where we are today. If you’re noton the plan just yet, it's not too late to just jump in with us. Sign up for daily emails related to reading through the Bible at ReviveOurHearts.com/Bible2026. That's also where you can go to where we are reading just now. Today we are starting the book of Job. 

Job faced severe trials in his life. As a listener you may feel like Job. And maybe, also like Job, some of your difficulties come from an unwise spouse.

Today I want you to be encouraged as we hear the stories of three women who’ve navigated some choppy waters in their marriages. All this month our emphasis has been on the freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness we find in Christ. 

There’s a special kind of fruitfulness that comes when we persevere, when we endure something hard. The women we’re hearing from today can attest to that. Nancy?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Now you may have a son or a daughter or a grandchild or a close friend who’s in a really difficult marriage, and I think you’ll find this Revive Our Hearts particularly encouraging today.

Just yesterday I spoke with two women who with tears who expressed that they felt like they were in a hopeless marriage. Perhaps you are feeling that way. If so, I hope you’ll listen carefully, asking the Lord not just to change your husband’s heart, but also saying, “Lord, would You use this difficulty to draw me closer to You?”

Dannah: That’s a great prayer. It’s not where Vicki started. She was a member of high society in New York City, and she was engaged to Bill Rose. Nancy, she told you she knew something was off.

Vicki Rose: I got stir crazy. He likes to sit a lot. He loves to watch sports on TV. I like to go ice skating, not watch ice skating on TV.

Nancy: So you were realizing there were some differences.

Vicki: There were some major differences, but I really had this driving force that I needed to be married. I really believed, Nancy, that getting married was the answer to my life.

So I pushed through those feelings, yet I told my best friend at that time, “I don’t think this is going to work, but I just want to get married. I need to get married, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll just get divorced; no big deal.”

Nancy: Of course, at this point you weren’t considering what the Lord had to think about all of this. He really wasn’t in your plans.

Vicki: God was nowhere in my plans, nowhere in the equation.

Dannah: Vicki felt an emptiness. An emptiness she hoped being married would fill. Another woman, Joy McClain, could identify with that feeling.

Joy: My expectations of marriage and my husband really became like an idol because I thought my husband should meet my needs and make me happy. He should fill my wants and my desires. And no man is ever meant to do that. That is not God’s plan.

I didn’t understand that at the time. I saw my husband as the man I loved. I had poured everything I could into him. I wanted the same back to me in our relationship from him, and he was not able to meet those needs, and I certainly made marriage—a godly marriage—my idol.

Dannah: And today we’re also hearing from Jimmie Ruth, who’s married to Lorne Matthews, a well-known Southern Gospel pianist.

Jimmie Ruth: We're so much alike but yet so, so different. Lorne is—what is the personality that is always, they want to party? Everything they do, they party? They have fun with everything they do. I'm a very structured, boring, predictable person. I thought, When is he going to settle down and grow up?

Dannah: Now, every marriage is the union of two unique individuals. And I might add, two unique and sinful individuals. And without Jesus at the center, well . . . things can disintegrate—fast! Here’s Vicki.

Vicki: It went from bad to worse. We separated actually, briefly, for three months one summer. During that time, I started going to see a psychiatrist, and Billy started doing cocaine. He keep saying it wasn't a problem, that he could do it when he wanted and could stop when he didn't. 

I didn't know anything about addiction, so I kept wanting to believe him, wanting to believe that this wasn't a problem. There were so many things that we planned to do that he didn't because he was sick from doing too much cocaine. 

We couldn’t go to my parents’ for dinner one night because Billy was not feeling well from doing too much. I called and said, “Oh, Billy’s got the flu, and we can’t come.” I started that slippery slope of covering up the behavior, just thinking that something may be wrong with me, that I wasn’t good enough or wife enough, that he would do this instead of be part of us.

By this point we had children, ages 1 1/2 and 4. His cocaine habit escalated to the point that we separated. Our lives were just running parallel lines and then splitting apart. We were just going away from each other more and more and more.

Nancy: So you really had no life together.

Vicki: We had absolutely no life together once the restaurant got going. I was completely with the children, and Billy was completely with the restaurant. He would come home at 2, 3 or 4:00 in the morning, not necessarily because the restaurant required it but because he’d been doing drugs to stay awake all night, or whatever.

Dannah: For Joy’s husband, Mark, his drug of choice wasn’t cocaine. It was alcohol.

Joy: I had always known Mark to drink, not on a level that was worrisome to me—more of a social-type thing. When our first son was born, I realized I didn’t want my son to grow up in an environment where alcohol was being consumed in the home.

I started to kind of question him. I started to ask, “Maybe this isn’t a good idea?” He became pretty resentful about that.

Mark McClain: Why are you asking me these questions? Why are you challenging what I’m doing? I have a right to do it.”

Joy: In his eyes, I was being controlling. In his eyes, I was telling him what to do.

Dannah: Jimmie Ruth’s husband, Lorne, was attracted to another woman, a hair stylist who operated a salon from her home.

Lorne Matthews: I remember one time she was cutting my hair, and we were alone. She reached out, and she touched me very gently on my shoulders. I looked at her, and I said, “What is that?”

She said, “Haven't you figured it out by now? I'm in love with you,” and so I believe at that point, I just went over the edge. I just said, “I want to see you tomorrow.” The next thing you know, we were talking about we'd divorce our mates, and we'd get married. We were in—quote—"love."

So I came to my wife after eighteen years of marriage, and I got the big head. I said, “I don't feel any emotions for you anymore, and I want a divorce.”

Dannah: Addiction. Adultery. They’re symptoms of deeper heart problems. Many of Jimmie Ruth’s friends had a casual attitude about marriage. They encouraged her to get out.

Jimmie Ruth: It was almost like, “Yippee! Your husband is committing adultery. Now you can get a divorce.”

Dannah: Vicki’s doubts and fears grew to the point that they were impossible to ignore.

Vicki: By year four, or three-and-a-half, I'm thinking, Maybe I should get a divorce. This isn't going anywhere. So I went and talked to two different pastors and this Christian counselor. All of them said I definitely had biblical permission to divorce and that it was okay. They said that given the timing, things weren't going to change, and I should go ahead and divorce.

I just didn't have a peace about that, because I had really started to read God's Word. I started reading the Bible from cover to cover. I didn't feel the freedom; I didn't feel like it was going to honor God; I didn't feel like it was a faith choice—it was a Vicki choice.

Nancy: Now, the marriage covenant is sacred. When we stay faithful to our mate and our vows, we reflect the covenant keeping heart of God, and Jesus' relationship with the Church.  

But even if you’re committed to your mate and to your marriage vows, you may still have to make some difficult choices along the way. There are times when a physical separation may be necessary. Maybe you or your children are in danger. I want to encourage you not to try and process these things alone.

No matter what the condition of your marriage, be sure you get into God's Word and stay in God’s Word. That’s going to be your light, your moorings, your anchor when you do face difficult situations. And then it's so important to get and stay connected to the Body of Christ. Find an older, godly, wise woman who can help you navigate these difficult waters, and talk with the spiritual leadership of your church—your pastor, the elders—and ask them for biblical wisdom in your specific situation. Again, if there is abuse at home, get help getting yourself and your kids to safety. If there are laws that have been broken, it is absolutely the right thing to do to get civil authorities involved.

In Joy McClain's case, she wisely consulted with the leaders in her church, and she sought out additional godly counsel. 

Joy: Mark had been confronted more than one time, out of love and out of respect, by the elders in my church and by the pastor. They had so many times reached out to him. Sometimes he would talk to them, but never would he be willing to get help, to get some treatment, to do some type of intensive counseling. He shut down on them.

I did not want a divorce. Divorce was not an option. It never even entered conversation. But I did have to set up some type of environment for my children to be safe.

Vicki: Right after I came to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I started to read a little book of Bible stories to the children at breakfast, to try to calm down the morning crazies. It was a little book called Leading Little Ones to God. And one morning Douglas said, "Mommy, we should pray for Daddy to come to know Jesus."

In my head I thought, Pray for him? I'd rather kill him. But I didn't say that, thankfully. I said, "Douglas, you're right. So every morning at breakfast, we would pray and ask the Lord for Daddy to come to know Jesus. And every evening, when I would tuck them into bed, we'd pray the same prayer. And then I started asking my friends—everyone at Bible study—to pray for Bill Rose to come to know Jesus.

I did not want to get back together. I had a lot of fear around going back to Billy and to what our marriage had been like. In the process of praying with the children for Billy to come to know the Lord, God started to change my heart toward Billy, and I started to love him again.

Love doesn't just go away, but the feelings of love came back. I started to desire what God's best would be, and that would be for our family to be together . . . and ultimately, that was my desire. I did not want to be divorced; I did not want to be a single parent.

Single parenting is one of the most difficult jobs. I wanted us all to be together. I longed for that. I longed for intimacy with him.

Nancy: You’re wanting a divorce during this time?

Lorne: Yes. I asked her. I said, “I’m committing adultery, and so you have the right to divorce me. So go ahead and divorce me.”

Nancy: You wanted her to divorce you.

Lorne: Please divorce me. Here’s the papers. You can own the home, the car. So she took the papers and signed everything so that she would own it, but then she wouldn’t sign the divorce papers.

Jimmie Ruth: I was concerned that maybe he might sell our home and things like that. So when he signed the papers over to me, I just thanked the Lord for protecting.

The woman called me one day. She told me, “God has shown me that Lorne and I are going to be married.”

I said, “Well, there’s one problem. It goes contrary to what the Word of God says, and it won’t work.” 

She said, “Well, we’ll see who wins in the end.”

It was like warfare was declared.

Dannah: Anytime we tell the stories of others on Revive Our Hearts, there’s a danger to avoid. It’s the danger of superimposing your own circumstances onto someone else’s testimony. It’s easy to think, “If God worked in this way in Vicki’s marriage or Joy’s or Jimmie Ruth’s, then I just need to do exactly what they did, and everything is guaranteed to turn out great for me.” 

Watch out for that kind of thinking, because your situation is unique. But we share testimonies because the underlying principles—like the value of trusting the Lord, of waiting on His timing—those things are timeless. They don’t change. And you and I can learn from them.

Here’s Joy’s son, Jordon.

Jordon McClain: So many people would have just left him immediately, and if not immediately, a couple years into it, five years, ten years into it, but she stayed with him.

Joy: I stayed with my husband for the simple fact that I had taken a vow, and I’d come to the place to understand marriage is a living, breathing example of Christ and His Bride, and He never leaves His Bride. And I knew that my role in this was to pray for my husband.

You’re one with this man, and this relationship has been severed. And what an amazing thing that is to understand, when you understand Christ and His Bride, the Church, and how important and how intimately we are to walk with Him, no one would cry out for my husband like me and his children.

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I had so often talked to my children about prayer. It was just constant, no matter if they’d spent time with their dad and they came home discouraged; no matter if they were feeling bitterness or just feeling very depressed. My answer to every one of these things was just simply, “Pray. Let’s pray for your dad right now. Let’s stop and pray.” I needed that. I needed that constant communication with my Father and just that constant plea.

I didn’t realize just how seriously Jena especially took this until one day I was putting something away in our little rental home in her closet. I noticed that the entire closet, the walls of her closet were full of prayers written on paper. I had literally just stepped into a place . . . I felt like I was stepping onto holy ground where she had spent hours and hours going before the Throne just lamenting and pleading with God to save her dad and her parents’ marriage.

We started, collectively, a prayer journal. The main idea was that they are daughters of the King of kings, and though their father, their earthly father, though he had walked away, their heavenly Father would not ever do that. It was an important tool and really a treasure that I still have of those dark times where we were searching through truth in God’s Word and helping each other do that through this little journal.

Over and over again God kept taking me back to the place of trusting Him.

• Do you trust Me that your daughter just OD’ed?
• Do you trust Me that your daughter is cutting herself?
• Do you trust Me that your husband no longer eats but drinks his meals?
• Do you trust Me that your son is a heap on the floor, crying?
• Do you trust Me that you don’t know where your rent’s coming from?

Over and over again that message—so simple—“Do you trust Me?”

Lorne: My wife is hanging on; she won’t give up, and this woman is controlling me so much with all this spooky . . . I knew something was wrong, but I had developed a very dependent, weak, Ahab spirit. I was not a strong man of the Word of God.

Nancy: You were blinded.

Lorne: I was blinded by my lust, blinded by anger, blinded by “poor me, my wife can’t give me what I need,” and blaming everybody else—the blame game. Finally I just said, “What shall I do?”

I said, “I’m going to get away from both of them.” So I said, “Goodbye,” to the other woman and went with some friends of mine in Gospel music. I started playing Gospel music and traveling away from both of them. It was during that time that I really discovered how rotten and filthy my flesh was. During that time I was traveling and trying to minister, I sat down in church one day in Houston, and I saw another woman, and I was drawn to this other woman who had been divorced. So I quickly began another relationship with her.

After about four or five days of that, I went to the pastor, and I said, “John, please help me. My problem is not my wife or this other woman, or even this woman. My problem is me. I need help.”

So he helped. He talked to this other person and told her to get away from me, but I was so weak and so dependent. I thought I had to have a woman for my identity. It was at that time in my life that God began to turn me around.

Dannah: The Bible term for turning around is “repentance.” It’s a moment in time, but it’s also a process.

Jimmie Ruth: God designed marriage until death parts you, so I just prayed for God to kill him. So you have a murderer and an adulterer here expounding on your program today. I had to come to the place of repenting of what was in my heart. I even had a plan for God. I said, "God, if you just get him on a slick highway and push him over a steep embankment. Then I can look good and You can look good too.

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I just had to deal with me. I couldn't settle Lorne's problems. I saw how desperately wicked my own heart was. I was trying to get him to change. One day the Lord showed me in Galatians 5 where the fruit of the Spirit is listed. The last fruit is temperance, which means self-control—not husband control.

I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, I really don't like that woman. I started asking God to show me the things that were in my heart that He wanted to change. I started to focus on me.

That's what I encourage other women when I talk to them. I say, "You're likely not going to change your husband, so get off his case and start asking God what He wants to change in you."

Nancy: That’s pretty amazing because anybody listening to this story . . . and a lot of our listeners have been right where you were. If you hear this story, you think, Well, the sinner in this case is the unfaithful husband (or it could be the other way around). But you’re thinking it’s Lorne who needs to repent, which was clear. But for you to say, “I’m the one who needs to change, and I need to repent.” Some people would say, “What did you need to repent of? You weren’t the one who was unfaithful.”

Jimmie Ruth: It was what was in my heart.

Nancy: What did God show you?

Jimmie Ruth: That my heart was desperately wicked. I think the starting place was coming to the point where I could thank God for the way He made me. When I sang, I wanted to sing like other people. When I would be in church and I would see other people worship, I would think, I wish I could worship like that. One day the Lord spoke to me and said, “You don’t have to worship like anybody else; you don’t have to sing like anyone else. I created you because I long for the kind of praise that only you can give Me.” I started becoming comfortable with me. When I started focusing on me and dealing with me, I think that was one of the points when Lorne felt drawn back to me.

Nancy: So he came home and you all lived happily ever after?

Vicki: Not exactly. It was a year before Billy came home after he prayed to receive Christ. We went through some really difficult things in our counseling—very helpful things, but it was hard!

Nancy: It was actually several months of turmoil—is that a good word for it?

Billy Rose: It was a slow process that year.

Dannah: This is Vicki's husband, Bill Rose.

Bill: I was still supporting the club. I wasn't ready to make a full commitment.

Nancy: To the Lord? to Vicki? to both?

Bill: Really to Vicki, to get out of one lifestyle and go to the other. I knew once I moved back in, that was a huge step. I knew things I thought were fun I would have to put aside and put away.

Vicki: So you prayed to receive Christ in December, and you went into rehab in February. You started counseling. Billy was living someplace else. We would go to counseling once or twice a week. We would go to church together on Sundays.

Bill: One of the guys we were counseling with said to me, "It's time to make a decision." It put it in a little more harsh terms. "Either you are with her or you are not with her."

Vicki: It's a daily process. Even before coming here to do this with you, the last two or three weeks have been a challenge again. We go through seasons in our life and our marriage.

Nancy: I assume even back at that time there were things to work through. You had been apart for five-and-a-half years.

Vicki: We've been back together a little more than fourteen years. Back at that time, everything was a challenge. I had gotten on all sorts of committees. Billy was in the restaurant business, so he would be out late at night and home in the mornings. I cancelled all my morning activities. That would be the only time that we had together alone. I just knew I was supposed to do that.

God led us both to do things like that to start building our marriage—and we really started from scratch. We started to read the Bible. I was in a serious Bible, and that's what kept us going. It says, "Don't let the sun go down on your anger." So we would try not to go to sleep angry.

Dannah: Three wives, each in a difficult marriage situation, each encouraged by others to leave. But each decided to wait on God to work on her husband’s heart. And each realized that the Lord was working on her heart, at the same time.

Joy: My heart was evil. My heart was cold. My motives weren't pure. God showed to me and revealed to me the evil in my heart, the selfishness in my heart. He desired to do a work in me, just as much as He desired to do a work in my husband.

I really understood how much it is up to God and how it really is for His glory. Whatever that looks like and however He chooses to do that isn't for me to say, so that He will get the glory.

That too was part of pealing away more of self, more of my heart, more of pride. What I want, my desires, my dreams, my hopes, they had to fall away.

Jimmie Ruth: I'm not superwoman by any means. I started focusing on the Word. When I read the Word, I started looking for things that I as a woman was to be as a wife and a woman of God. I saw this was all God's design for us as a husband and wife.

Nancy: Whether you're in a crisis or you're in a season of smooth sailing, we all need to be asking, who or what is at the center of my world? Is your life built on a relationship with Christ? Or is someone or something crowding Him out?

I hope you'll take a moment today to just take stock. Let the Lord search your heart and say, "Is there anything or anyone taking Christ's place in my life?" And to say afresh, "Lord, I want my life to be all about You, about bringing glory to You."

Dannah: We’ve been listening to pieces of the stories of Vicki Rose, Joy McClain, and Jimmie Ruth Matthews. Their marriages are still a work in progress, as we all are. But these women have tasted the sweet fruit of persevering through a horrendous trial. They’ve grown more dependent on the Lord in the process, and they’ve seen Him work in amazing ways. 

We’re placing links to the full testimonies of Vicki, Joy, and Jimmie Ruth in the transcript of this program. You’ll find them when you go to ReviveOurHearts.com and click on today’s episode. 

James chapter 1 says, “yYou know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.”

Everything we do at Revive Our Hearts is meant to call you to a greater degree of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. If the Lord has used Revive Our Hearts to do that, would you consider making a donation while it’s still May? We’re getting ready to close the books on one ministry year and kick off another on June 1. Your support today will help set us up for a better summer, when donations are typically lower. 

We need to hear from you before Sunday. Oh, and as a thank-you for your gift, we’ll send you the booklet that’s all about freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. It’s titled Called to Thrive. Ask for it when you contact us with your donation. Listeners outside the U.S. and Canada can request a digital download of the booklet. 

To make a donation and request Called to Thrive, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call 1-800-569-5959. Hope to hear from you before the month is over! Again, it’s 1-800-569-5959, or donate online at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

Speaking of June 1, on Monday we’re kicking off our “summer in the Psalms,” and Nancy will help us look at what King David called his “one thing.” I hope you have a great weekend. We’ll see you next week for 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.

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