Acceptance key to healthy marriages
Couples that learn to appreciate their differences, accept their mate and pray together will help safeguard their marriage against divorce, according to marriage-enrichment specialists Bob and Yvonne Turnbull.
The Turnbulls together lead 40 marriage and family conferences a year. Recently in Kentucky, they gave participants a physical demonstration of how spouses complement each other. Yvonne Turnbull asked 138 couples to clasp their hands together, with the fingers of one hand filling the gaps in the other.
“Part of (marriage) is completing each other,” she said after outlining the conflicts that plagued the first seven years of her own marriage. “As we resolved conflicts, we saw the whole plan. I needed some of his flexibility and he needed some (of my) organization.”
“The first basic is to accept your mate,” added Bob Turnbull.
“Not the bad behavior, immorality or sin,” he added. “But accept the person God gave to you. Acceptance is one of our primary needs.”
Members of Saddleback Valley Community Church, where Bob Turnbull was a part-time staff member in the 1980s, the Turnbulls had varied careers in the past.
Turnbull was an actor, reporter and football coach, while his wife served as a nutritionist for the “700 Club” after earning a master’s degree in the field.
After their teachings on marriage at church stimulated speaking requests, they organized their ministry, making it a full-time endeavor in 1993. They have written nine books, the most recent titled “TeamMates: Building Your Marriage to Complete, Not Compete.”
Over the past five years, more than 8,200 couples have rededicated their marriages or families to God at their conferences. Nearly 400 couples have postponed or stopped divorce plans, and about 480 people accepted Christ.
Yet, during the past year they have also received several e-mails telling of spouses walking out on their mates just days after attending a marriage retreat.
Watching marriages crumble gets frustrating, Yvonne Turnbull said. “It impacts a lot of people we know. We see what’s going on in their lives. As we travel (we see) people with smiles on their faces, but we find the vast majority are falling apart.”
Bob Turnbull said a key reason that marriages fail is that couples fail to grasp that God intends for marriage to last a lifetime, while Satan wants to drive people apart.
“Most people have no clue,” he said, of the source of conflicts that often lead to separation. “They really don’t understand.”
He offered the opinion that most people are so concerned with economic and recreational matters, they miss the approaching signs of trouble in their marriages.
Another factor in divorce is a “disconnect” between belief and behavior, he said. Many Christians sit in church and sing praises to God. But afterward they follow worldly philosophies in their marriage, finances and child raising, he said.
“Instead of impacting the world, the world’s impacting us,” he commented. “Where we live (Southern California) there are so many unbelievers, people who have never gone to church. They are looking for answers, but if our marriages are falling apart they don’t see answers.”
Throughout the weekend, the couple pointed to some solutions for improving marriage, beginning with their past as an example. Married in 1979, their match quickly turned into a battleground.
Sometimes their biggest fights occurred on the way to Sunday services, Bob Turnbull noted. After wearing masks at church, they donned verbal boxing gloves at home.
“That’s how couples who look so good in church end up filing for divorce,” he said.
“There are some couples here … this is your court of last resort. If this doesn’t work, it’s all over,” he told participants at the Kentucky conference.
Turnbull said his marriage almost reached that point. Then one afternoon, he prayed, “Lord, is there any hope for this marriage?”
Suddenly a paraphrase of Romans 15:13 came to mind, “Now may the God of hope for your marriage fill you with all joy and peace in believing for your marriage, that you may abound in hope for your marriage.”
In his session, Bob reviewed the “three C’s” for wives. They need to be a companion, a cherisher and their mate’s champion, he said.
“If you admire him, men receive this,” he said. “From the husband’s viewpoint, man’s greatest need is for significance.”
In “What Wives Want,” Yvonne used Ephesians 5:25 and 28-29 to emphasize her point that men should love their wives as Christ loved the church.
For his wife to believe he loves her this way, he must give constant and consistent effort, she said, identifyng three gifts women appreciate:
-Time, including conversation, that makes her feel she is a priority.
-Tenderness. This means praising her for many of her admirable qualities and such touches as leaving love notes and doing her chores.
-Touch, meaning affection and non-sexual touching. (ABP)
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