Giving Your Marriage a Second Chance

Are you worried that your spouse isn’t your soul mate?

If so, let me encourage you with this: soul mates aren’t found, they’re formed.

Understanding that difference often separates couples who have a healthy, intimate relationship from those who divorce.

Juana Mikels and her husband, Terry, are proof of that. College sweethearts, they walked down the aisle believing the planets must have aligned for them to find each other. Not long into their marriage, however, it was as if the planets had fallen out of their orbits. Juana was convinced that she had married the wrong person.

“If he is my soul mate,” she reasoned, “wouldn’t we think the same and have the same interests? Terry doesn’t understand me at all. He must be the wrong man for me.”

And so, Juana wrote a note wishing Terry well and walked away from her marriage.

Fortunately, Juana’s story is one of redemption. As time passed, she discovered what all newlyweds eventually do – that getting to know someone takes years. The Hollywood-fueled notion of the “soul mate” – the idea that there’s one person out there just for you – is a myth. None of us stands at a wedding altar with the “right” one. We all marry a stranger. We genuinely love what little we know about our spouses, but we don’t know them. Not really.

Marriage is a journey between a man and woman who both continually grow and change across their years together. As one author said, “When people get married, they tend to believe they’ve found a finished statue, when in reality, they’ve merely found the block of marble from which their spouse will emerge.”

Soul mates aren’t found, they’re formed over time through sacrifice and enduring love.

If your marriage is struggling, you’ll feel freshly encouraged to press forward when you join us for our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Giving Your Marriage a Second Chance” and hear Juana Mikel’s story about brokenness and reconciliation. She’ll help you develop the commitment to love your spouse through the good and the ugly and to create intimacy with depth and grit.

Tune in on your local radio station, online, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or on our free phone app. In the meantime, if you feel you need someone to talk to about your marriage, we have caring Christian counselors on staff who would be happy to have an initial consultation with you. Give us a call at 1-800-A-FAMILY (232-6459). If all of our counselors are on other calls, leave your name and number, and they’ll get back with you just as soon as possible.

I’d also like to extend an invitation for you to become a special partner with us through our monthly “Friends of Focus on the Family” program. When you do, I’ll send you a copy of Juana Mikel’s book Choosing Him All Over Again: A Story of Romance and Redemption as a way of saying thank you for touching others with the love of Christ. To make your pledge, or for more information, visit our website.

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