Stronger Than Ever

The pandemic, job loss, grief...that would test any marriage. How this couple found their way back to each other

- KELLY HARREL

“You said you would take me to the airport!” I narrowed my eyes at my husband.

Jeff frantically scrolled the calendar on his phone. “I must have forgotten to enter the flight,” he said. “I can’t take you now. I have an appointment.”

“But you offered just yesterday!” I said. “How could you forget?” I turned away, muttering, “I should have known.”

“Should have known what?” Jeff snapped.

“That you don’t care enough to remember!” I said.

“That’s not fair!” Jeff said. “You know my heart medication makes me forgetful. This isn’t my fault. You’ve been mad at me since the minute you walked in the door.”

“There you go again—telling me how I feel!”

Another day, another argument. For two decades, Jeff and I had been happily married. Now every conversation turned into a battle. Our stress was through the roof.

Ever since Jeff had lost his job a few years earlier, he’d been depressed and listless. I was sick of trying to pull him back up. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had fun. It was as if someone had swapped out the man I’d fallen in love with for this shell of a person. I didn’t know what to do.

“Jeff is the nicest guy you will ever meet,” a friend had said when she set us up on a blind date.

“That’s the man you’ll marry,” a voice said in my mind the night of our first date. Jeff and I had tons in common. We never ran out of things to talk about. Everything was fun with him. We fell in love, married and had two wonderful kids.

Jeff had been new to faith when we started dating. I’d become a Christian as a teenager but then let my faith fade since graduating from college. Jeff and I found a church and committed to building our relationship with God. It paid off. Through the highs and lows of life as busy working parents, our love remained rock-solid. I came to believe that the voice in my mind had been a message from God.