Equip your Marriage | Tag Archives: marriage renewal

We did something new in the bedroom and it saved our marriage

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Marriage Booster, Our Story .

Our conversations dragged. Tension filled the room. Affection had become hit or miss. After three years together, our marriage had degraded into a cold and distant shell of what it once had been. The stress and pressure of blending a family, building a house, and traveling for work had robbed us of joy and crippled our intimacy.

Then, at the start of 2013 we tried something new in the bedroom and it radically changed our relationship, saving our marriage.

Our Recipe for Marital Intimacy

My wife and I put together a simple, four-step recipe for heating up our relationship:

Tuck the kids into bed
Close the door to our bedroom
Spend quality time together cuddling, watching TV, etc.
Then the magic starts….we pray together

At first our prayers were out of desperation, as we worked to repair the rubble of our marriage. In time, our prayers transformed to become more focused on our family, our future, and eventually on our mission as a couple.

The Power of Prayer

Through prayer, we have transformed the dynamic of our marriage:

Prayer for healing of past hurts
Gratitude for God’s redemption of our mess
We have sought wisdom and a clear vision for our future as a couple and a family
Prayer for peace during hard times
Strength to overcome the weight of guilt from past mistakes
Prayer has revealed new levels of intimacy
Fear is crushed and worry is obliterated through the power of prayer
Prayer draws us closer to each other by drawing us closer to God

Prayer has dramatically changed the fabric of our marriage. It has created a daily opportunity for us to stop, take stock of our lives, and connect in the most authentic and genuine way possible. It connects us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, knitting our hearts and minds together in a shared vision of our home.

The Power of Prayer

Sixteen months later, we still pray daily and the difference is dramatic. We cherish our conversations. We are relaxed and at peace around each other. Our affection is warm and natural. It’s taken a lot of work to rebuild our relationship; but nothing has been a bigger contribution to that healing process than our commitment to pray together every night.

The content in this post is adapted from our upcoming book (available on Amazon September 2014):

The Phoenix Marriage– Your most important earthly relationship can be restored, renewed, and reborn.

God creates beauty out of ashes.

To be among the first to know when the book is released, join our Marriage Booster newsletter.

Love your spouse like broccoli

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Marriage Booster, Our Story .

My wife is an incredible woman that has taught me so much about faith and unconditional love. She has a huge heart, and an infectious personality. I used to love her like creme brulee, but now my aim every day is to love her like broccoli, the super-food.

Romantic Love is Like Creme Brulee

For most of my life, I have had a skewed view of love and marriage. Love is about romance, poetry, showering my bride with tokens of love, walking hand-in-hand, and making-out so passionately that it drives our kids crazy.

Romantic love is exhilarating and its fun. It’s also not sustainable.

Romantic love is a lot like dessert. It’s delicious and its enjoyable, but too much of it can make you sick to your stomach (ok, at some point every analogy breaks down). But the point is that you simply can’t eat dessert constantly. It gives you a quick burst of energy, but it won’t provide the fuel you need to support sustained activity. Eventually, the high will wear off, and you’ll crash…hard.

Unconditional Love is Like Broccoli

Love in your marriage shouldn’t come and go. The love you have for your mate shouldn’t vary based on how you feel that day or how strong your communication has been lately. Love should be based on who your spouse is, the commitment you have made, and the awareness you have that God’s love for you never wavers (Romans 5:8 and I Corinthians 13:7).

What a marriage needs to be grounded in is a steady diet of unconditional love.

Unconditional love is a lot like vegetables. It’s not as thrilling, but it also won’t rot your teeth. It’s packed with life-sustaining nutrition that gives you lasting energy. When you love your mate this way, it gives them the spiritual and emotional energy they need to deal with life. Loving your spouse with no conditions is to love him or her like Jesus does. It means that their actions and your feelings aren’t a relevant part of the equation. It’s a love of commitment, not convenience. It’s a covenant love.

My Wife Deserves Better

For the first few years of our marriage, I loved my wife with a cheap and unpredictable version of “love”. Romantic love is exciting, but it’s not reliable. It creates a lot of heat and enthusiasm, but it fizzles out just as readily. Romantic love is GREAT, but she deserves so much more than a shallow, emotional love. She deserves a mature, unwavering love. She deserves a husband that honors her and serves her regardless of how he feels on any particular day.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. – I Corinthians 13:7

I’m not giving up on my romantic notions of marriage and my desire to spoil my wife with emotional creme brulee. I’m just committed to nourishing her mind and soul every day with an unconditional broccoli kind of love.

I finally realized – marriage isn’t for me

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Marriage Booster .

Ideal couple dancing on the beach Academic knowledge has never been an issue for me. I have loads of useless information in my brain and a keen ability to memorize new data. Common sense, on the other hand, has typically alluded me. All too frequently I am the last person to recognize something obvious or come to grips with a fundamental truth. Recently, I have woken up to a critical, life-altering reality – marriage isn’t for me.

I grew up with an idyllic view of marriage. I would meet the woman of my dreams. We would experience a romantic, storybook courtship and fall madly in love with each other. The perfect complement to one another, we would fulfill each other’s every need. Our leisure-time? Exhilarating. Our conversation? Captivating. Our love-making? Epic.

As it turns out, marriage doesn’t really pan out quite like that after all. It’s imperfect, messy, and raw. Consequently, I was left with an immense sense of disappointment. Bewildered, I began to question my wants, needs, and motivations. This led to my recent epiphany. Marriage just isn’t for me! I thought it was, but I was wrong.

Why marriage isn’t for me:

It isn’t about what I want.
It isn’t about what I think I need.
It isn’t about completing me.
It isn’t about how I feel.
It isn’t about me at all.

On the contrary, I’ve come to understand that marriage is about being a servant. Serve your spouse daily

What marriage is really about:

It’s about serving God.
It’s about serving my wife.
It’s about our shared mission of serving and blessing others through our partnership.

I should have realized it sooner. It was right there, under my nose, in scripture this whole time:

Jesus was the epitome of embodied love and he spent his entire life on earth in service to his father, to others around him, and ultimately all humanity through the cross.
Ephesians 5:21 says that married couples are to “submit to one another.”
I Corinthians 13:5, among the litany of qualities that characterize love, we find that love is “not self-seeking”.

It’s taken me years to finally understand the purpose of marriage – to love my spouse daily with a servant-heart. But now that I know it, I’m wasting no time in putting my new found knowledge into action.

Sticks and Stones

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Our Story .

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

What a load of crap. Words do hurt and their impact lasts far longer than the memory of physical pain could ever last. Fortunately, words also have the power to heal. The power of the tongue has been recognized by philosophers and biblical writers for centuries:

“Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.” – Buddha

“Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.” – Napolean

“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.” – James 3:9-10

In fact, the entire first half of James chapter 3 discusses the importance of controlling your tongue. In verses 3-6, the tiny tongue’s impact on the whole body is compared to a bit that directs horses, a rudder that directs ships, and a spark that sets an entire forest on fire.

Words Create and Destroy

Through our words, we have the power to create our reality. With positive words we can build things out of thin air. We can forge employment relationships, friendships, contractual agreements, and motivational speeches. With negative words we have the ability to destroy a bond, shatter a relationship, and unravel someone’s confidence. Creation and destruction, hope and dismay, such is the power of language.

Early in your relationship, while courting your spouse, love was created through the exchange of words. The two of you shared hopes and dreams. Compliments were expressed and rapport was built through story-telling and humor. One of you eventually forged a marriage proposal entirely through words.

But your words haven’t been all positive, have they? Unmet needs, emotional distance, and selfishness creep into the most well-intentioned of hearts. As the frustration and resentment wear on one or both of you, your patience gives way to careless words. Words that cut. Words that tear down. Words that erode the warmth and safety of your bond.

Words Hurt and Heal

Whether from anger, frustration, or just a dark season in our journey, Tammy and I have each exchanged words that hurt. Regrettably, some of the painful words that I have shared with Tammy I was foolish enough to write down. Thus, allowing her to relive the pain of those words and recall them with clarity.

Thankfully, words also have the power to heal and restore. You can literally breathe life into the mind and heart of your mate because your tongue has the power to “speak life” (Proverbs 18:21) .

As a part of our renewal process, I have made it my mission to battle for Tammy’s mind and recapture her heart through loving words. Affirming text messages, sappy greeting cards, encouraging scripture written on note cards, heart-felt song lyrics, love letters, and even poetry have all played a part in the verbal tapestry that I have woven around Tammy’s heart.

Verbal Choices

We constantly talk with our children about the importance of making good choices. Each day, they have the power to effect their life through the decisions that they make. The same holds true in your marriage. No matter what pain has been caused in your relationship, you have the ability to repair it through your words. So choose to build up, choose to love, and choose to speak life into the heart of your spouse.

Wounds Heal Crooked

Posted on April 12, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Our Story .

When I was eight, I got hit by a car while crossing a busy road (back in those days, kids could roam around on their own without supervision). I busted my lip, chipped my tooth, and fractured my ankle. Over a period of six weeks, my body healed itself, but it didn’t heal itself in nice clean lines. My lip has an uneven line of scar tissue where it healed. My chipped tooth remained jagged for most of my childhood. I haven’t gotten a good look at my ankle, but I’m certain that there is residual evidence of the trauma.

When I was fifteen, I got a weight bench for my birthday and set it up in my room. Anyone care to guess what the first thing is that a 15-year-old boy does with a weight bench? That’s right – “Hmm…I wonder how much I can max press?” Combine this curiosity with a general lack of wisdom, and I proceeded to push myself to my absolute limit without a spotter. Next thing I know, 120 pounds landed briefly on my face before adrenaline kicked in and pushed the entire thing up and off to the side. To this day, I still have a jagged scar just under the bridge of my nose.

Wounds heal, but they heal crooked.

In the fall of 2012, my marriage was crumbling. As it fell apart, I treated Tammy with little to no compassion. I was cold and distant. Worse yet, I said and even wrote things that cut to her core and broke her heart. Those words and my actions cannot be undone. But Tammy is gracious and loving and she was willing to give me the opportunity to make it up to her and for us to work as a team to rebuild our relationship. So that’s what we did in earnest throughout all of 2013 and that’s what we continue to do today.

The process of healing deep wounds of the heart is messy. There is no script and no timeline. As the wounds heal, you pass through cycles of hope and doubt, cycles of peace and conflict. There are cycles of anger, cycles of joy, and cycles of heartache. With each happy cycle, we have the opportunity to enjoy each other’s presence and create our new normal. And with each painful cycle, I have the opportunity to delicately cradle her heart in my arms, and mend one of the many cracks or tears that I created with my selfish words and actions.

I don’t know how long the healing process is going to be for us and that doesn’t bother me. I am thrilled that God has blessed me with an amazing wife and that I have a second chance to love her the way she deserves to be loved.

Whatever pain may exist in your marriage, take courage. While nothing that has been done can ever be undone, broken hearts and broken lives can be mended. The process isn’t clean, it isn’t easy, and it isn’t quick. Healing is messy and crooked. It’s takes time, energy, and mountains of patience. But keep pressing on because your marriage can overcome heartache. Your heart can heal. Your soulmate’s heart can heal. Your marriage can heal. Best of all, when you go on that journey of healing together, your bond grows stronger than it ever was before. Scar tissue isn’t pretty, but it is tough. Embrace the crooked journey and love each other like crazy.

God can save ANY marriage

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Kyle Gabhart Posted in Our Story, Testimony .

My wife and I have an incredibly loving and happy relationship. We are truly each other’s soulmates. But our relationship hasn’t always been so cheerful and the future hasn’t always looked so bright.

Our Video Testimonial

from the Thrive Class we took at Northwood Church in 2013:

The Microwave Version

On December 16th, 2012, we sat down at a Starbucks in Keller, TX to divide assets and discuss how to accomplish an amicable divorce. What started out as a 45-minute business meeting, concluded after 3 hours of crying, praying, and hugging. The next day I got down on one knee, gave her a single rose, and asked her if I could have the honor of winning her back over the course of 2013 and perhaps the rest of our lives. The relationship we have now is rich and full of life, but we didn’t get there overnight. The transformation of our marriage required a lot of crying, praying, talking, reading, praying, laughing, journaling, studying, praying, counseling, and even more praying. God is in the business of fresh starts, second chances, and renewals.

Tammy and I had a broken and battered relationship that had crashed and burned to the ground. But like the mythological phoenix, our new marriage emerged from the ashes. God makes beauty out of ashes. He makes marriages out of messes. And He wants to work a miracle in yours.

The Whole Enchilada

Eager to know more about this awesome couple? You can read our full story for more details.