Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, August 7th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife Dennis Rainey and I’m Bob Lepine. When Cheryl Scruggs came to the point where she began to wonder have I made a mistake in divorcing my husband she still had one problem, would Jeff ever come to the same point? We’ll find out today. Stay tuned.
Welcome back to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. Most of the time when a judge pounds the gavel and says, “Decree granted” we’re talking about a divorce that’s it. The marriage is over.
Dennis: For a lot of couples and this isn’t talked about a lot in the days and weeks and even years after that divorce decree there is the gnawing thought, did I make a mistake?
Bob: You have to wonder how many folks listening are right there. Wondering did I make a mistake?
Dennis: Yes, even the ones that have options. They were already involved with another person and are still wondering if the friendship and the family that was created together if that was really right to leave that. I think that’s why Jesus warned what God has joined together let no man separate.
Bob: Well, and I’m always interested when I’m out speaking at one of our Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences. Inevitably there will be a couple that is there and I’ll ask them how long they’ve been married and they’ll respond by saying, well, we were married for 10 years we haven’t been for two and we’re wondering if there is a possibility of reconciling. That is why we are here this weekend.
Dennis: Yes, I was in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area at the Gaylord Texan and was walking on Sunday morning to our conference and there was a couple who were walking alongside me. They had four daughters under the age of 10 and I said, “How has the weekend been for you?”
It was a casual conversation with a couple and they said that it had been good. They had come here divorced and I asked them what they thought. The young lady answered, “I think it may work.”
I looked at the guy and she hadn’t told him yet. He was like our guests here on the program today. He wanted to make it work but she didn’t but it took the conference to turn her attitude around.
Bob: It is important for us to say here that most of the couples who attend a Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference are not in that situation. I think most of the couples attending have a good marriage and they are doing preventive maintenance. They are making sure that their marriage continues to be strong and solid for the years ahead. They head off the kinds of problems that our guests today experienced in their marriage.
Let me quickly remind our regular listeners that this week and next week you have an opportunity to register for an upcoming Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference. If you register at the regular price you can bring a second couple with you absolutely free. It’s a buy one-get one registration offer that we are making. You sign up to attend one of the upcoming Fall Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences at the regular rate and we’ll send you a certificate for a second couple to attend absolutely free.
You can pass that certificate along to your son and his wife or your daughter and her husband or to a relative or someone at your church or work place. Whoever you want to pass it along to and they don’t have to attend the same conference you’re attending. They can live all the way across the country and they can go to the conference in their area.
This offer is available to FamilyLife Today listeners this week and next week. In fact it ends next weekend. So call today or go online to our web site FamilyLife Today.com. Or you call our toll free number at 1-800-358-6329. That’s 1-800-FLTODAY. We can get you registered over the phone.
You and your spouse can have a great weekend together at a Weekend to Remember and another couple can come along absolutely free. The kind of preventive maintenance that you’re going to do at the Weekend to Remember will help keep you and your spouse from winding up in the place that Jeff and Cheryl Scruggs wound up in their marriage.
Dennis: We’ve had a chance this week to hear a great story that Jeff and Cheryl Scruggs have shared. I want to thank you both. Jeff and Cheryl for being so open, honest, and transparent about your story you shared in your book, I Do Again.
What you’ve already shared this week is your marriage started out like a lot of marriages do. There was no spiritual life. You dated her when she was working as a waitress in a bar. You got married and moved to Southern California and had twins. Eight years into the marriage it was interrupted by a declaration that it was over. There was another man involved with you, Cheryl, and Jeff you had no idea.
I can’t imagine what it was like when you found out there was another guy involved. At that point if finally explained why you were fighting such a current.
Jeff: Right.
Dennis: Why she would lie to you?
Bob: You did find out about six months after the divorce?
Jeff: It was about six months after the divorce. I went over to Cheryl’s house one day to pick up the girls and I saw him there. I knew who he was. So my instant thought was one of relief because now I knew what that missing piece to the puzzle was and things made sense to me. Cheryl wasn’t mentally crazy. Then maybe 10 minutes later I started to get really angry. The anger started to boil up inside of me.
Bob: Did you realize this had been going on longer than the six months since the divorce?
Jeff: I did.
Dennis: How did you know that?
Jeff: Well, I didn’t know if for sure but it made sense to me. I started putting two and two together and realizing when this started happening. When I picked up the girls I tried to pour my energy into the girls. So after I put them in bed that night I was just laying in bed and thinking about everything that had happened over the years and realized that this had been going on for a while.
Bob: Cheryl, were you thinking at this point we are going back and forth between Northern California and Dallas and we’re going to get married?
Cheryl: I did.
Bob: Had he left his wife at that point?
Cheryl: Yes. He had divorced his wife.
Bob: How come you weren’t husband and wife six months later?
Cheryl: Well, the logistics were a saving grace to begin with. Then he called me one day and said he’d found the perfect house for me and the girls. I sat there just stunned and thought what is he talking about? He said I was out looking at real estate today and I found the perfect home. And I said I’m never going to leave Dallas. I couldn’t legally anyway because Jeff and I had in the decree that I couldn’t go more than 50 miles or something outside the Dallas area. But I would have never taken my kids away from their dad. So I said to this guy I’m never moving to California. What transpired from there was us talking about him moving to Dallas. He actually moved to Dallas and we started looking at homes and rings and my heart was dying.
Because in the mean time I started going to a different church. It was a small little church down the street and I would sit there every week hearing the gospel and praise music. I had not heard that in my life and I kept thinking what is all this? My heart was just so open and I wanted to read the Bible and I had all these people that were loving on me and I couldn’t figure out why they loved me so much. My life was a wreck.
What I realized later was that was the love of Christ coming out. They were loving on me and teaching me and guiding me. I was learning how to pray and read the Bible. Christ was pursuing me.
Three months after our divorce I came to know the Lord as my Savior and when that happened I was 33 years old and my eyes were completely opened. It was like a Damascus road experience for me literally. I looked behind me and I saw what I had left in my wake and that was a fractured family. A dead marriage. And I was in the middle of this relationship that began in sin. As I was running after Jesus…
Bob: You saw it for what it was.
Cheryl: Yes. I saw it for what it was. From there I got involved in a Bible study that Tommy Nelson taught on the Song of Solomon. It was perfect timing for me so I sat there and he was doing it live in Dallas. I got to experience that and as I sat there very week I thought Jeff and I didn’t do any of these things.
We need a second chance. That was the Lord laying it on my heart to pursue reconciliation of the marriage. At the beginning that is not what I wanted. I thought I was in love with someone else and I was pursuing that. As time went on I realized how awful this other relationship was and I started praying against it. That the Lord would take the feelings away for this guy and that He would help me to restore and pursue reconciliation.
Bob: Meanwhile Jeff is off in bitterness and anger and his heart is getting hard. You are starting to open up to the Lord and maybe pursuing reconciliation.
Cheryl: Right.
Bob: If she had come to you at that point and said I’d like to try again what would you have said?
Jeff: Well, actually she did about six months after the divorce. She wrote me a 17 page letter and she came over to the house and she wanted to read the 17 page letter to me. I’m like, no. She kept pleading with me. She asked me if she could sit down beside me and read it to me and I said you can read it to me but do it from across the room.
Dennis: You refused to look into her eyes or talk about anything other than the children?
Jeff: That is exactly right.
Cheryl: I begged him for 10 minutes and he finally said, “yes.”
Dennis: He was cold hearted but it finally thawed.
Cheryl: His first reaction was if it’s not about the kids then I don’t want to talk to you. I asked him to give me 10 minutes and he said, “I guess so.” So I went to his house and read the letter to him.
Bob: You couldn’t read 17 pages in 10 minutes.
Jeff: No way. (laughter)
Cheryl: It was probably an hour. I don’t know.
Dennis: Is the letter in your book?
Cheryl: It is. It was about all the things I had done wrong. My first part was Jeff first I want to start out with apologies. Some of these things burden me every day and I need to tell you why I’m truly sorry. I’m sorry for the deep hurt that I have caused you. I never intentionally meant to hurt you. At the very end of the letter I said I had become a Christian.
He just kind of got a smirk on his face and I said I really felt like God wanted us to try again because we messed up so many times. I was telling him about the Song of Solomon and everything and he laughed in my face. He said, “I will never ever reconcile with you. Don’t ever bring it up. We’ll do fine with the kids but don’t ever talk to me about that.”
Jeff: That’s true.
Denis: Jeff, you were stone cold at that point?
Jeff: Right. I was like, how convenient—I’ve been fighting for this marriage for years and three months after the divorce she accepts the Lord. I didn’t even believe that that was real.
Dennis: So you were mocking the letter?
Jeff: I was.
Bob: Your heart was hard.
Jeff: My heart was hard.
Bob: Not a smidge of softness as she is confessing to you.
Cheryl: He had tears.
Jeff: There was a smidgen but I think my pride got the best of me.
Dennis: You were still angry.
Jeff: I was very angry.
Bob: And vulnerable. I mean, here she wants to reconcile, what. So she can do all of this again?
Jeff: Exactly.
Bob: Can I just say we have a messy situation at this point, right?
Jeff: Yes.
Bob: Here’s the guy who fought for his marriage for two years but when the divorce decree is final he says okay, I’m out of here. Here’s the woman who had been for two years romantically attracted to another man and had been involved in a physical affair. He’s now looking at moving to Dallas and you’re looking at rings and houses with him and praying against the relationship, right.
Cheryl: Right.
Bob: You’ve come to faith in Christ. You don’t believe she’s come to faith in Christ and you’re angry. I’m amazed you’re sitting here today.
(laughter)
Dennis: It was a 10 year marriage and the three months of divorce turned into…
Cheryl: Seven years.
Dennis: Seven years it took his stone cold heart to thaw and what was the key event in your heart thawing, Jeff?
Jeff: If I have to narrow it down to one key event it was truly seeing Cheryl’s heart change. Also realizing it wasn’t so much the things I had done in our marriage but the things I hadn’t done. God started showing me this through many different ways.
One was a men’s Bible study that I got involved with and from that I developed friendships with these three guys that became my accountability partners. I had them praying that God would put a godly woman in my life to be my wife. I had them praying this for a couple of years and two years after this one of the guys said to me, “did it ever occur to you that this godly woman that we are all praying for is your ex wife, Cheryl?”
When he said that I wanted to reach across the table and grab him by the throat but the reality was it had occurred to me. It was my pride. What am I going to tell my mom and dad? What am I going to tell my brothers and friends that went through all the divorce with me? That I’m going to consider remarrying the same woman that broke my family apart?
Bob: But it wasn’t the same woman.
Jeff: It wasn’t. That’s what God gave me. He gave me the verse 2 Corinthians 5:17. In Christ you are a new creation, the old has gone. The new has come. As I realized that Cheryl’s heart had changed that’s when things started happening positively between the two of us.
Bob: When you heard that this guy was no longer in the picture that had to cause you to think well maybe something really is going on here.
Jeff: Yes, it did. It made me feel like maybe she really did accept the Lord. Maybe she did become a Christian. I did start noticing things like when I would go over there her Bible would be out and there would be a bunch of Christian books around the house. You could see where she had been journaling prayers in her note book. There was some evidence of a changed heart.
Bob: But you still wanted nothing to do with her?
Cheryl: A big part of that I think Jeff would say is he was fearful. That’s what eventually it came down to. We dated as a family to begin with. Basically what that looked like was when I had the girls he’d come to my house and when he had the girls I’d go to his house and we did that for about a year.
Finally Jeff had enough courage to ask me out on a real date. We did start going out on our own the two of us. We did that for about a year. Finally I had to ask him—we’ve been divorced for six years and dating for about a year. What else do you need to know? He looked at me and he asked me how do I know you’re not going to do the same thing?
Bob: Yes.
Cheryl: I didn’t know what to say because I thought I’m a human being and I never dreamed I’d be in this situation I was in of divorcing my husband and breaking up my family or any of that. I sat there and the Lord gave me the words. I said, “Jeff, this isn’t about you. And it’s not even about our marriage. This is about God and I never want to disappoint my God again.”
Dennis: So here we are. You were married 10 years. You were divorced seven and your twentieth anniversary is coming up. You’re new 10th in October of 2009.
Jeff: Right.
Cheryl: Yes.
(laughter)
Dennis: So how is it going for you, Jeff?
Jeff: It’s going great. We don’t have a perfect marriage but you know what? Now Christ is at the center of our marriage. The reality is we now know our marriage is worth fighting for whereas we didn’t fight in the first marriage we now know it’s worth fighting for. We’ve devoted our marriage now to trying to help other couples that are in crisis situations seeing that there is hope. With God all things are possible.
Cheryl: He can do immeasurably more than you could ask or imagine.
Dennis: I’m amazed. It’s a great story. You know Easter is all about the resurrection and this is an Easter story. This is about the empty tomb. Christ is risen from the dead and here’s proof that He is alive. He raises marriages and families from the dead. I appreciate you both being vulnerable and sharing your stories and writing about it in your book I Do Again. There really is an opportunity because of the gospel of Jesus Christ for a second chance. In fact it really is the story of the gospel having a second chance at life.
Jeff: Yes.
Cheryl: That’s exactly right.
Dennis: Marriage and family may be a part of that.
Bob: I have to ask you one question before we tell folks how they can get a copy of your book. At that remarriage when those two twin girls were standing up there with you I presume.
Jeff: Yes.
Cheryl: It was just the four of us.
Bob: What was going on in their little hearts?
Cheryl: They were four when we divorced and 11 when we remarried. They had been away at camp and we had decided during that week we were going to tell them we were going to get remarried.
So we brought them home and stood them in the kitchen and put our arms around them and just said we’ve decided to get remarried and one of ours just hung on to the counter. She buckled at the knees and almost fainted and the other one was looking at us like are you kidding me? She started running around in excitement.
They had been praying about it for many years as well. They were just overwhelmed. What they saw on that wedding day was a miracle from God. God could actually do this and put a family back together after all the devastation that had happened. They really saw what God could do. I almost felt like I was in some other world or something and the Lord was shining right down on us. You’re going to get another chance at this. It was unbelievable to see that He had actually answered all those prayers that He told me to stand for.
Bob: You guys have got a powerful story to share. I appreciate your transparency and your willingness to share it with our listeners. I want to encourage folks to go to our web site FamilyLife Today.com and get a copy of the book that you’ve written which is called I Do Again.
Again you’ll find it online at FamilyLifeToday.com. It may be a book that you want to get to pass along to a couple you know who are struggling in their marriage. Or maybe a couple that has separated to get them to think about the possibility of reconciliation. Again it’s a book that we have in our FamilyLife Resource Center. Go online for more information or call at 1-800-FL-TODAY.
Here is one other idea for you. If you know a couple who are struggling in their marriage or a couple who has separated and might be open to reconciliation why don’t you talk to them about going with you and the four of you attending a Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference this Fall. If you call them and say you ought to go they are much less likely to do that than if you call them and say why don’t you go with us?
This week and next week we are trying to incentivize that opportunity. When you register for an upcoming conference if you and your spouse register at the regular registration rate we’ll send you a certificate for a second couple to attend at no cost. Basically it’s a buy one-get one free. One couple pays the regular price and the other couple can attend at no cost. If you want to get together and split the cost that’s fine you work that out how ever you want.
All of the details are available online at FamilyLife Today.com. There is a list of cities and dates and locations or if it’s easier just call 1-800-FL-TODAY. We can answer any questions you have and let you know when the conference is coming to a city near where you live. Again, it’s 1-800-“F” as in Family, “L” as in Life and then the word TODAY.
When you call and register make sure you identify yourself as a FamilyLife Today listener. Just mention my name. Say “Bob” told me to call. We’ll take care of everything to make sure you get the buy one-get one free offer.
Or if you are registering online at FamilyLife Today.com just write my name “Bob” in the promo code box on the registration form and you’ll be all signed up and ready to go. Bring another couple with you to an upcoming FamilyLife Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference. The conferences start in September and this offer is good only through the end of next week. So call today 1-800-FLTODAY or register online at FamilyLife Today.com.
With that we need to wrap things up for today. I hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together this weekend. I hope you can join us back on Monday when we are going to meet a couple who got married with stars in their eyes. They moved to New York City. Both of them had a desire to be involved in the performing arts and before long their marriage was in serious trouble. We’ll introduce you to them on Monday.
I want to thank our engineer today Keith Lynch and our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our host Dennis Rainey I’m Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.
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