The care and tending of a happy marriage

Two years after Ron Anderson got married, he discovered he was losing

his wife to another man.

“That guy was stealing my wife [by] doing what I should have been

doing,” he told 65 couples gathered for a recent Saturday evening

picnic in Huntington Beach Central Park.

Calvary Chapel Beachside invited Ron and his wife Nancy -- now

married for 26 years -- to speak at the event, dubbed Picnic in the

Park, because the church’s leaders know that a marriage in trouble is

anything but a picnic.

And in the 21st century United States, a lot of marriages are in

trouble, even marriages in which both the husband and wife are

Christians.

A study by the Barna Group reported the divorce rate among

married, born-again Christians -- a term defined by the group as

people who said they had made “a personal commitment to Jesus Christ

that is still important in their life today” -- to be 35%, identical

to the divorce rate among married non-Christians.

The study confirmed findings from a Barna study completed a decade

ago, as well as the results of tracking studies conducted each year

since.

All conclude that born-again Christians are as likely to divorce

as non-Christians.

And the Barna Group doesn’t see any reason to expect that to

change anytime soon.

But don’t tell that to Ron and Nancy C. Anderson. The couple has

taken the story of their own near-divorce on the road, hoping to show

other couples how to cultivate and protect their marriages.

The couple has appeared on radio and television, including “The

Montel Williams Show.” They speak at churches and church events.

Nancy has written a slender 124-page paperback called “Avoiding

the Greener Grass Syndrome: How to Grow Affair-Proof Hedges Around

Your Marriage.”

It contains wisdom gleaned from the school of hard knocks.

The Andersons’ own marriage has survived an affair Nancy had with

a co-worker.

The book starts with an introduction titled “Can a Marriage

Survive an Affair? Yes, Mine Did!”

On stage, Nancy and Ron took turns telling their story with heart

and humor, almost like a comedy team -- though neither is singled out

to play the straight man or the fall guy.

They each confessed their own foibles without picking at the

other’s.

In the park, as couples sprawled on blankets or lounged in beach

chairs side by side, they told a story I’ve heard from other couples

many times before.

When they married, each thought it was the other one’s job to make

them happy. They fought about money, chores, interests and friends.

For a year, Nancy nagged and complained and criticized. Ron

defended himself by claiming he was a bad husband because Nancy was

such a bad wife. Then Nancy met Jake at work.

“I wasn’t being nice or loving to her,” Ron told the couples at

Central Park. “This guy was bringing her picnic baskets, taking her

to the park, bringing her flowers. I mean, you know, I would have

dated him.”

Nancy said Jake brought her gifts. He told her she was pretty and

smart and funny.

She found that “compliments are like magnets.” Attracted to Jake,

she started meeting him for lunch, then for dinner and eventually,

she says, “for dessert.”

“I don’t blame her,” Ron said. “I was pushing her right into his

arms.”

Which is not to say Nancy doesn’t own up to her part in nearly

destroying her marriage. She credited the guidance of her devout and

loving Christian parents for helping her with admitting her role.

“They did not at all support me in leaving [Ron],” she said. “I

tried to convince them, you know, I was a victim and he was a bad

man. But they didn’t buy it.”

They prayed for her and she began to pray herself. Through prayer,

she realized what she had to do -- regardless of her feelings for

Jake.

“I had to break all ties with him and somehow ask my husband for

forgiveness and see if we could put our lives back together,” Nancy

said.

She and Ron want to tell you that, by the word and the grace and

the love of God, they did.

“Since our reconciliation in 1980, we’ve completely rebuilt our

marriage,” Nancy wrote in her book. “We had to destroy the old

foundation -- the selfishness -- and rebuild on the rock -- Jesus. We

used a perfect blueprint -- the Bible -- and now our home stands

firm.”

She and Ron designed their blueprint around the scripture verse

(Mark 12:1) in which Jesus says, “A man planted a vineyard and set a

hedge around it.”

Nancy likens a marriage to a vineyard, planted “the day you said,

‘I do.’” And like a vineyard, a marriage needs a hedge “to keep the

good things in -- and the bad thing out.”

The book’s lessons are structured around the acronym HEDGES, which

stands for hearing -- listening and speaking with patience and

understanding; encouraging -- helping each other; dating -- keeping

it fresh and fun; guarding -- agreeing on your boundaries and

enforcing them; educating -- becoming an expert on your mate; and

satisfying -- meeting each other’s needs.

The grass might at times look greener on the other side of our

hedge, but, the Andersons contend, the grass is really greenest where

it’s best watered and tended.

If you’d like to know more about the Andersons’ plan for avoiding

the greener grass syndrome by planting hedges around your marriage

and keeping them strong and high, visit o7www.ronandnancy

anderson.comf7 or o7www.joyfulmarriage.blog spot.comf7.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].

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