This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God through Divorce–Vaneetha Risner

Episode Transcript

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This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God through Divorce

Guest:Vaneetha Risner

From the series:I Don’t Want a Divorce: When Your Spouse Does (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:July 7, 2026

Vaneetha (00:04):

I don’t want anyone listening to think remarriage is the goal because Jesus can fill your life and give you joy. And my joy is not because of Joel, even though Joel and I have so much fun together and he brings me joy. My joy is because of Jesus, and he would say the same thing after his wife died. His joy was in Jesus, and his joy is not in me even though we love being married to each other.

Dave (00:33):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann (00:39):

And I’m Ann Wilson and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Okay. I think that this is something that you’re going to love. This conversation is going to be so impactful because every single one of us know somebody who’s walked through a difficult divorce, or they or you have been through it, a child.

Dave (01:04):

I’m guessing you’ve walked through something—I have—that’s really hard.

Ann:

Yes.

Dave:

Whether it’s divorce or anything—today’s about divorce, but it’s about any kind of hardship. It was never the plan of us to walk through hardship and yet God’s with us and we’re going to discover that today with Vaneetha. Let’s go.

Ann (01:24):

Remember when people used to say, “Oh, is the Bible like your little vitamin?” And people’s like, “Don’t say that. ” I’m like, “No, it’s my CPR.” That verse 1:19, He revives.

Vaneetha:

Yes.

Ann:

I feel like when I’m with God and I’m in the Word, it’s like there’s a CPR to my heart, the shock, the boop on your chest where it’s like it revives you. He revives you. He reminds you. I think we all need that no matter what we’re going through. And it just so happens that you couldn’t do it apart from Him.

Vaneetha (01:55):

No. And I learned lament, which it’s just crying out to God in our grief while trusting that God is good. And so it’s a both-and. And I remember I had this journal where I really, I mean, I just couldn’t have pretty words. I told God exactly how I felt. Like my journal wasn’t “how great Thou art;” but I got to that. I mean, that’s the amazing part is you start with everything that’s hard and “God, why have you forsaken me?”

Ann (02:24):

Just like David.

Vaneetha (02:25):

Yes. And you end with “how great Thou art.” And that’s where lament takes us, real lament. And my sister once looked at my journal and she’s like, “I did not know that you were allowed to say things like that to God.” And she calls it my scream journal still. She’s like, “When I looked at your scream journal, I was like, ‘Whoa, she is not playing.’”

Ann (02:48):

God wasn’t afraid of it.

Vaneetha (02:49):

No. And that’s why the tenderness of God in hearing my lament and let me pour out everything I felt and then meeting me in that, I’ll never forget.

Dave (03:03):

Was that part of the healing?

Vaneetha (03:04):

Yes. Oh, huge. Because I had a lot of big feelings, a lot of fears, a lot of anger, a lot of confusion, shame. I mean, you name it, there was just so much, so many fears about the future. What are my kids—how are they going to turn out? Everybody, the minute you get divorced, people are like, “Statistics are really bad.” I mean, you’re afraid. For me, I thought I’m going to be in a nursing home. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to take care of my kids. So I had fears for my own physical being, for them. How am I going to make it? I remember just, will I ever laugh? And I remember asking God, “Are you going to even let me laugh again? Is there going to be joy?”

Ann (03:49):

I want to have you talk to our listener who’s like in it right now, like suffering. Maybe they’ve heard the same thing, like they’re going to get divorced, they’re going through it. What would you say to them in terms of this part of that tenderness of God?

Vaneetha (04:03):

I would say God is going to walk you through this. So lean into Him, tell Him everything. Don’t hold anything back. I feel like lament reminds me of a good relationship. In marriage, you want to tell your spouse how you feel and if you choose not to and tell other people how you feel about your spouse, that’s going to pull you apart. And often that’s what we do. We don’t go to God. We tell everybody else what we think about what God has done to our lives and that’s grumbling. That’s what the children of Israel did. But lament is going right to God. And so for the person who’s listening, who’s like, “I have nothing and my life is in shreds.” Then take that to God and ask Him to rebuild you and revive you and show you truth and fill you because I had nothing and God used that in my life.

Ann (04:54):

So good. That’s perfect.

Dave (04:55):

I mean, did you ever walk with guilt or questions toward God like, “Did my husband leave me for another woman because of my physical?”

Vaneetha (05:05):

Oh yeah, of course. There was a lot of questions about myself, and I really see those as lies that I chose to believe. One, I’m not enough. So then you look in the mirror and you’re like, “I don’t look as good as I did,” or “Oh, did I gain weight?” And for me it was like—

Ann (05:22):

Said every woman in the universe.

Vaneetha (05:23):

Yeah. I mean, you’re like, “Okay, I got a little extra fat. Now I got—” I mean, we just all look at, I was different. I don’t like my nose. And then there’s the, “Do I talk too much? Did I not give him enough space? Did he like this? Did I not do this?” Just so many ifs. And then there was for me like, “Hey, when we got married, I was this pretty able-bodied person and now it’s not looking good.” And so there’s all of these and for that it was, “God, you knew this, you allowed us to get married, you knew I’d have post-polio. I didn’t know that.” So there is all of these like, what did I do? And then there’s the, why didn’t I not see it? This is my fault because I was blind to this or I should have thought of counseling earlier.

(06:13):

I should have seen the signs. Maybe we were drifting apart and kind of like I can fix it. But of course, only God can do that. And I think sometimes we think we can fix things that only God can do and we need to do our part in terms of being open, being open to criticism. But I think I believed a lot of lies that somehow this was something I could have changed and really bore the weight of that for a long time until I remember one time in the car just rolling over in my mind, “If I do it this way, if I say it this way, if I write this letter, if I do this, then maybe things would change.” And we were like almost divorced, but I still was holding on to this outcome of wanting my marriage back. And part of it was because I wanted to look good.

(07:02):

The marriages that get put back together, they get the front page. They get the glory story of, “We were on the brink of divorce and yet God intervened,” and everybody wants to interview them. Nobody wants to interview the “We were on the brink of divorce and we got divorced.” That’s the back page of we don’t want to talk about that. And I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be the back page. But I’ve since God was like, “This is not about you, and this is not your battle.” And that was really a release because I felt like I needed to figure it out and this was my job and it was like, “You’re trusting in an outcome; you’re not trusting in Me.”

Ann (07:39):

It’s releasing control.

Vaneetha (07:41):

Yes.

Ann (07:42):

And that’s hard to do.

Vaneetha (07:42):

Yeah, because we want our outcomes and God’s like, “Hold on to Me.”

Dave (07:48):

We mentioned it before, how’d you get to joy? Because even when I sat at lunch with you and Joel, your husband now, there’s joy.

Ann (07:58):

You radiate joy.

Dave (07:59):

There’s joy in both of you guys. I’m like, the life you’ve had, the things you’ve gone through, you don’t see a deep weld sense of joy and it’s exuding out of you.

Vaneetha (08:11):

Oh wow.

Dave (08:12):

I don’t think a lot of people get there. How do you get there? You wrote about it.

Vaneetha (08:17):

Well, joy is really found in Jesus. So I would say the more we put our hope in Jesus, the more joy we have recognizing—I’ve learned joy has nothing to do with our circumstances. If joy is about our circumstances, then they’re going to ebb and flow. But joy is something God gives us, kind of on the inside, and it is independent of that. And then like little steps of joy though, like that chapter, a lot of it is about like figuring out what makes me laugh, like what brings me joy? What makes me want to get up in the morning? Like for me, deep conversations, coffee with people, laughing. I love to laugh, but joy comes from leaning into God.

Dave (09:01):

How long was it for you after the divorce to get to joy? Because I mean, I’m reading one chapter here where your daughter’s saying, “I hate you.”

Vaneetha (09:10):

Yeah, yeah.

Dave (09:11):

You’re going through trauma as a family and that’s not joyful.

Vaneetha (09:14):

No, it was not joyful. My joy would start in the morning when I would open up the Word and then by the end of the day, I was like—

Ann:

The tank.

Vaneetha:

—”I need the Bible right now.” I mean, John Piper says, “I get up in the morning, I have to become a Christian again every day.” And I get up in the morning, and I read the Bible and I’m like, “Yes, this is true. I have joy.” But what’s funny because I didn’t think I was showing a lot of joy early on. I was not. I was struggling, but I felt like God was with me. But my younger daughter, she had been like the really easy child growing up. People would be like, “How did you get such a perfect child?” “I’m a perfect parent.” But that went south quickly and she was really hard.

Ann (10:02):

The ten-year-old at the time of the divorce.

Vaneetha (10:03):

Yes. And I mean, she in a little video when I did the Bible study Desperate for Hope, they interviewed her and I was really interested because they didn’t prep me or her. And so they asked her about her faith and she said, “When my parents split up, I was a devil child. I did everything to make my mom’s life miserable.” But she said, “I came to Christ knowing my mom had joy and I didn’t know where she got it from. I was making her life miserable,” and she said “Her life was worse than mine. Why would she even have joy? I didn’t get it and I realized God has to be real for my mom to have joy in the midst of that.”

Ann (10:43):

That is rich.

Vaneetha (10:44):

I mean, I’m crying there for the video.

Ann:

I’m crying.

Vaneetha:

I’m like, “Wow.” And she had not said that to me. So for parents, your kids may not be telling you, “Wow, you’re making a difference.” I mean, she said that like 10 years later, 15 years after all that happened. I was like, “Wow, if I had known that;” but they’re watching and they see that God is sustaining you.

Dave (11:08):

Yeah. I mean, that’s beautiful because I’m looking again at, you go to church and you save all these seats and your whole family won’t sit with you.

Vaneetha (11:16):

Oh yeah.

Dave (11:17):

So I mean, you’re in a valley and we’re talking about joy and she’s seeing joy, but man, there were hard—I mean, I’m saying that because I know there are people listening, they’re in the valley and they’re like, “Hers wasn’t as bad as mine.” Yeah, it was. It really was.

Vaneetha (11:32):

It was.

Dave (11:33):

You held on to Jesus, right?

Vaneetha (11:34):

Yeah, through tears. It’s not like joy doesn’t have tears.

Ann (11:40):

That’s a good point.

Dave (11:41):

That’s a good way to say it.

Ann (11:42):

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Dave (12:13):

So what’s Dating and the R Word?

Vaneetha (12:15):

Oh, the R word. The R word is remarriage. So online dating is not fun. Just if anybody thinks it’s going to be fun, it’s not fun. Before that, I would say before somebody would be considered dating, I would say talk to a counselor. Don’t just say, “Okay, I’m divorced.”

Ann (12:36):

“I’m ready.”

Vaneetha (12:36):

“I’m ready” because you really need to talk through why you want to date. And my counselor really asked me a lot of questions like, “Do you feel like you wouldn’t be complete without being remarried?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” And she said, “Until you can be really happy single, you have no business dating.” And it was really good. We worked through that and I prayed through a lot of it and recognized. She said, “I have so many people in my office that felt like they needed to remarry right away.” It was basically, the first person breathing and interested, and it does not go well.

Ann (13:13):

And they hadn’t healed.

Vaneetha (13:15):

No. And so you bring all of that baggage and all of that, I want to be loved, into a relationship where it may not be the right person and you’re putting too much on them, and second marriages don’t work as well. And I think that’s a big reason why people aren’t healed. So they’re not looking clearly. They’re just looking like, “I want somebody to parent my children, or I don’t want to be alone or I—”

Ann:

—”need help with the finances.”

Vaneetha:

Yes. Or “I want to have a baby” or whatever it is, and they are in a rush. And I would say—I remember being in my dentist’s office and a woman that I had known for years whose husband had left her and she’d remarried very quickly and she just whispered into my ear, “I have one piece of advice for you. Don’t remarry too quickly.” And nobody heard and then she didn’t say anything else and I thought, “Wow.”

Ann (14:08):

That’s good advice.

Vaneetha (14:08):

So that’s what I would say. But if you feel like after you’ve prayed about it, asked friends, really sought the Lord—and the whole idea of remarriage is controversial in the church. Some people feel like you shouldn’t get remarried after divorce and I definitely respect that opinion. I did a lot of work on my own and I do feel like there is biblical grounds for remarriage after divorce and I do talk about that in the book, but it’s something that everybody really needs to bring to the Lord.

Ann (14:36):

Okay. Let me ask you this because you were ready, were your girls ready? How do you know that it’s okay to date when you have kids?

Vaneetha (14:45):

Yeah. So my older daughter’s the one who told me to start dating. This was after the divorce. She’s like, “Mom, you need to get out there.”

Ann (14:53):

Was she like 15?

Vaneetha (14:54):

Yeah, she was 16. She was still at home and she was like, “You need to get out there.” And I was like, “Get out there.” And she’s like, “Yeah, you loved being married.” I mean, the kids knew that I was actually really happy in my marriage. So it wasn’t like I thought we had this horrible marriage, which is maybe the hard part.

Ann (15:13):

And they didn’t see the repercussions of a bad marriage.

Vaneetha (15:16):

No. So they said, “You liked being married.” And so I wanted to meet somebody organically, honestly, but then I realized I went to a few things, and I mean, this is embarrassing, but like you’re looking at everybody’s hand like, “Oh, do you have a wedding ring? Okay. Maybe we don’t need to chat.” And I was like, “Okay, who am I becoming? This is weird.” So I just decided I needed to not just be looking for somebody. And so online dating did work for me for a while, but I mean, I think I talk about it when I was there.

Ann (15:47):

I feel like we interviewed you and Joel.

Vaneetha (15:48):

And Joel, yes. I think we tell the whole story. So people need to listen to that one, but we—

Ann (15:52):

Yes. We’ll put a link in the show notes on that.

Vaneetha (15:54):

Yeah. But it was, met Joel and immediately before I met him, my sister said to me, “You’re going to marry him.” Because she heard me talking on the phone to him and actually, when he had answered a few questions for me on this before we even spoke and I actually screamed out to my friend who was in the room when I was looking online, “I’m going to marry this guy.”

Ann (16:18):

What was there that you thought that and your sister thought it?

Vaneetha (16:20):

Well, the first question, this was on eHarmony at the time is, “What are you passionate about? ” And people would say like, “God, football, and country” not necessarily in that order. I was like, “I don’t think so.” But then Joel said, “I’m passionate about Jesus Christ because there’s nothing else to be passionate about.” And I was like, “Okay, wow.”

Ann (16:42):

He just went to the top of my list.

Vaneetha (16:44):

He did. I mean, it was so different than everybody else. And from the beginning, just our conversations, just our emails were really deep, and I just felt like, “Wow, this is somebody that shares my view of suffering.” So Joel’s late wife died of cancer, and he cared amazingly for her. And just I saw the tenderness in him and his love for the Lord, and it was very different than other people. The guy who said over coffee, “What’s your favorite book?” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” And he’s like, “Mine is Fifty Shades of Gray.” I was like, “I would like to get my latte to go. Thank you.”

Dave (17:21):

That’s the end of that conversation. Wow.

Vaneetha (17:23):

Yeah, it was pretty—and Joel had that; people say that to him—women.

Ann (17:29):

What would you say to the listener that’s been in that dating scene, it hasn’t gone well. Should they keep going? How do you submit that to Jesus?

Vaneetha (17:38):

Yeah. I would say ask the Lord because I was actually getting on eHarmony to deactivate because I felt like, “You know what? I just need to stop doing this for a while.” And I really felt like I did. So Joel was the person I met the day I was trying to deactivate. I have friends who haven’t remarried that have found so much joy in the Lord and deep friendships. I would say listen to that. If you feel like, “Wow, why am I doing this? This isn’t getting anywhere,” then I would say you don’t have to pursue it this way. God can bring people into your life other ways. At the same time, it does take time. Most people don’t log on the first day and like there it is. So it has to be a conversation with the Lord. I don’t think there’s a one size fits all in any way.

(18:32):

It is, “Okay, Jesus, what do I do?”

Ann (18:35):

I think one of the things that I love, too, about your book is your appendix, the end. It’s a practical toolkit of how to show up when a friend’s marriage ends. I’ve never seen anything like this because do we not all know somebody’s marriage who has ended?

Vaneetha (18:54):

Yeah.

Ann (18:55):

Why did you include this?

Vaneetha (18:58):

I included the appendix because one, I’m always being asked like, “How do I help?” Because for every person who’s divorced, there’s like five people that are wondering—maybe 50—like, “What do I do? What do I say?”—depending on how close you are. And so that was really the secondary audience for my book was people who want to walk with a friend who’s going through divorce. And part of what I did in the appendix is I have questions for each chapter, and I wrote those questions thinking, somebody can do them alone. I mean, a lot of them you can journal, but my dream if I was going through divorce and I had that book would be to give it to a friend and have them read it with me and ask me those questions. I wrote it also for the church because I think as the church we can do better.

(19:44):

Often we don’t know what to say so we don’t say anything and church leadership has so much going on and it’s like maybe have an informal group of people who have been through divorce who’d be willing to mentor somebody or even just have coffee because I was dying to know somebody who’d been through divorce who could tell me like, “What is this like? How do I go through this in a godly way?”

Dave (20:08):

Well, let me say this, you can get it.

(20:11):

You can get her book This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God Through the Heartache of Divorce. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the link in the show notes. I said that earlier, but I mean, I would get more than one of these because this is something you could use as a tool for others. And man, thinking that there are questions that will help people walk with somebody. Like my mom went through divorce. I watched it as a seven-year-old. There was nobody walking with us. And again, it was a different era then, but it was lonely.

(20:39):

And then when we walked in church, it felt like, “Oh, there’s a boy with no dad.” There were no divorces in the 60s that I remember in our church. So nobody walked and nobody talked about it. Today there’s resources like this in your story to help, so thanks.

Vaneetha (20:56):

Oh yeah.

Ann (20:56):

I’m curious, like I’m thinking of a friend of ours who it was a friend’s daughter who went through a divorce. She was young. They hadn’t been married— no kids and now she’s remarried. Her husband has gone through a divorce now, so they’re married. They’re blended and Ron Deal’s—all of Ron Deal’s material on blended, and his books on blended have been a great resource, but I could also see this book as being a great resource. Could you ever imagine a couple going through the end of the book or even reading the book together and talking through that, rehashing some of the things? Or could they even lead a small group of people that have gone through a divorce and go through this whole thing?

Vaneetha (21:39):

Yeah. So that is really like kind of a discussion. There’s three, kind of purposes, like for the person to journal and think through. Then there’s one friend to ask and then discussion.

Ann (21:50):

You could do it as a small group.

Vaneetha (21:51):

Yeah. So it is a discussion guide to open up those questions. And I do think I had some people read it and say, “My divorce was a long time ago, but I read it and I had no idea all the things that I hadn’t thought about. It brought up a lot.” So even if you’re going to marry somebody, let’s say who’s been divorced, say, “Can we talk through what does healing look like for you? Where is there bitterness?” Because sometimes we just don’t want to go there, but when somebody’s willing to kind of walk through us with it, it’s easier to go there.

Ann:

I love it.

Dave (22:23):

Yeah. I wonder if we could end with—I’m thinking there’s people listening right now that are walking through that valley and they don’t know where it’s going and maybe they do. Your acrostics show up as PRAY.

Vaneetha (22:34):

Yeah.

Dave (22:35):

Would you be willing to pray for them?

Vaneetha (22:37):

Yeah.

Dave (22:38):

That’d be beautiful.

Vaneetha (22:39):

Yeah, I’d love to.

Oh, Lord Jesus. Thank you that you are good. And Lord, I pray for the brother or sister listening who is in a valley walking through what they never wanted, Lord. And they’re wondering, are you there? Are you with them? And Lord, I just pray for them right now that they would sense your presence, that they would know that you, even though they are walking maybe what feels like through the valley of the shadow of death, they don’t need to fear evil because you are with them. And so Lord, I just pray that you would take away their fear of the future, the what ifs that may be playing in their mind for their children, for their lives, for themselves, for their reputation, for so many things. Lord, I pray that they could trust you with this and know that maybe this wasn’t their plan, but you are writing a good story with their lives, Lord.

(23:37):

And Lord, I pray that they would remember that even though this feels like a fire, as Elizabeth Elliot said, God’s story never ends in ashes. And so Lord, I pray that they would cling to you right now and open their Bible tomorrow morning and ask you to meet them expectantly. Just Lord, revive me according to your Word and that they would stay close to you, Lord, because that’s the only way to make it through this. Lord, we love you but not as much as you love us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Dave (24:10):

Amen. Thank you. That was awesome.

Ann (24:13):

Before we’re done today, I just want to remind our listeners that we know life is full of challenges and families today need biblical truth more than ever. Isn’t that true?

Dave (24:24):

That is true.

Ann (24:25):

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Dave (24:35):

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Ann (24:45):

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