In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart: Hope for the Hurting

1. IN MY PEW SAT A BROKEN HEART

Seeing God in the Ruins

I wound my way up my parents' steep, mountain driveway in western North Carolina, unsure if I would be welcomed or rejected. I was broken by the choices I had made. Stubborn and willful, I had followed my own path, and now I would have to face the consequences. I had caused pain for my children and loved ones. I feared I had embarrassed my parents. It seemed I had wrecked my world. The shame was almost unbearable.

I had driven sixteen hours from South Florida, stopping to pick up my youngest daughter at boarding school, and now I was tired and anxious. The familiarity of my childhood environs did little to subdue my fears. The February mountain air was crisp and clean. The bare trees—maple, poplar, and oak—lining the drive up to my parents' house afforded a view this time of year, but I was too absorbed to notice.

What would my life be like now? I had gone against everyone's advice. My family had warned me. They had tried to stop me. But I had not listened. I needed to do what was best for me, I had told them. And now my life was a shambles. I was a failure in my own eyes and certainly would be in the eyes of others when they learned what Billy Graham's daughter had done. I feared I had humiliated those I held dearest. How would I be able to face them?

Driving up the mountain, my fears multiplied. Adrenaline kept my foot on the gas. I felt my hands grip the steering wheel. My mind was spinning. I tried to remember my mother's insistent tone from our phone conversation a few days earlier: Come home, she had urged. I was desperate when I called her. I told her of my mistake and was trying to piece together a plan when she interjected with the voice of a loving, protective parent. But how would she and my father respond when they saw me? What would they say to me? Would they say, You've made your bed; now lie in it? Would they condemn me? Would they reject me? Despise me? They had every right.

As I rounded the last bend in the driveway, Daddy came into view. He was standing in the paved area where visitors usually park. Rolling the car to a stop, I took a deep breath and prepared to greet my father. I turned off the ignition, opened the car door, and stepped onto the driveway. Then I looked up—Daddy was already at my side. Before I could say a word, he took me into his arms and said, Welcome home.

Is There a Broken Heart in Your Pew?

I know what it's like to sit in the pew with a broken heart. For years I sat in church with my fears, doubts, and disappointments, thinking I was alone in my condition. Those around me seemed to have it all together. They looked so spiritual Did they not struggle as I did? Was I the only one whose dreams had fallen to pieces? Was I the only one who had blown it? Was I the only one depressed and feeling beyond hope? To protect myself and to fit in, I masked my shortcomings and dared not whisper my failures. I worked hard to create the impression that my life was neat and orderly. I knew the posture and language well—and I carried it off. Few knew or guessed the truth. But I was miserable.

Perhaps you too have walked this tightrope. You are hurting. Something in your life is causing you great distress and unspeakable pain. But you cover it over with a smile. Perhaps you are depressed or feel inadequate, unable to cope with life. Perhaps you have been rejected by someone close to you. Maybe your spouse has walked out. Maybe your child has run away from home. Maybe you are lonely or struggling with an addiction. Overwhelmed, you want to scream. You need to scream. But it is a silent scream. Because you are afraid to let anyone know the depth of your pain.

Have you experienced this kind of pressure? Are you experiencing it now? Are you broken and worried you have nowhere safe to open your heart? Do you fear you may never recover from the blows life has dealt you? Is it hard for you to imagine being normal again? Are you saddled with shame and guilt, or resentment and anger? Have you lost hope?

Let us walk together through these pages and find healing and comfort in the arms of a God who will never reject us. God will not abandon you. He is not like the people who have failed you. He never throws up his hands and walks away. He never quits loving. I would not compare my father with God, but on that February day in our driveway, my dad offered me exactly what God offers us. God stands with his arms wide open, waiting to renew us in his embrace. When we come to him broken, with our fears multiplied and more questions than answers, God wraps his arms around us and says, Welcome home.

Do you know someone who is broken? Do you want to help? Perhaps you recognize that living among you right now are people hiding deep wounds. You may be sitting unaware in church week after week with suffering people, even as friends and acquaintances sat beside me while I smiled and behaved as though I didn't have a care in the world. If your desire is to help, then let us explore ways to create safe places in which our wounded neighbors, friends, and loved ones can express themselves. Like my father, you might become the welcoming arms of God to the broken person in your pew. Let us hope so—let us pray it may be so. For this is what we were made to be: God's arms of love, both as individuals and as the church. Scripture says, Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2).

Failure Is Never Final

I am not qualified to write this book because I am Billy Graham's daughter. I am not qualified by position or vastness of expertise. I am qualified to write this book because I am flawed. Because I am a sinner saved by God's grace. Because I am headstrong and slow to learn. Because I have made mistakes. Many mistakes. And have failed often.

My own story is not tidy. Nor is it simple. My story is messy and complicated and still being written. I have known betrayal, divorce, depression, and the consequences of bad judgment. I have struggled to parent my children through crisis pregnancy, drug use, and an eating disorder. I have known heartbreak, desperation, fear, shame, and a profound sense of inadequacy. This is not the life I envisioned. Far from it.

Revisiting the dark chapters of our lives can be a painful experience. Some things we would rather not remember—costly mistakes, severed relationships, words misspoken, actions taken or not taken. Even glancing in the direction of some of our memories can open up a world of hurt. We prefer to trudge ahead, as the Bible says, forgetting what lies behind (Philippians 3:13).

Yet there are times in life when God gently draws us back to our places of pain and invites us to take another look. He does not call us back to aggravate our wounds or cause us emotional harm. When God calls, he calls with good purpose; and when he urges us back to a hard place, he does so in order to heal us. Only then can we truly move on.

We learn in Scripture that Abraham's wife, Sarah, treated her maid, Hagar, severely. Sarah, who was barren, had encouraged Abraham to become intimate with Hagar so he could produce children. Now Hagar was pregnant, and Sarah felt disrespected by her maid. In response, Sarah mistreated Hagar enough to drive the woman to flee to the wilderness. There the angel of God spoke to Hagar:

Now the angel of the LORD found her by … the spring on the way to Shur.

And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from and where are you going? And she said, I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.

Then the angel of the LORD said to her, Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority.

GENESIS 16:7–9

No destination would have been more dreadful to Hagar at this point than Sarah's home. Yet God called the maid to go back. Return to your mistress. Go back to where you have suffered. While Hagar must have listened in bewilderment, God did not leave her with a confusing command. He drew her with a promise: I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they shall be too many to count (Genesis 16:10).

When the Lord prompts us, like Hagar, to return to our places or memories of suffering, we too carry a promise of restoration and hope for the future. The prophet Isaiah expressed the promise this way:

The LORD will surely comfort Zion

and will look with compassion on all her ruins;

he will make her deserts like Eden,

her wastelands like the garden of the LORD.

Joy and gladness will be found in her,

thanksgiving and the sound of singing.

ISAIAH 51:3 NIV

Failure is never final. God specializes in restoration—it is his best work. He loves to create out of chaos. Consider where he started in Genesis, bringing order to an earth that was formless and void (Genesis 1:2). God likewise steps into our ruins, picks up the pieces, and reassembles our mistakes, hurts, faults, and failed plans in ways that are wonderful and surprising. He never wastes anything. He will make her deserts like Eden.

Isaiah tells us that God looks on our ruins with compassion. Imagine God's look of compassion. Imagine his love, his tenderness. God does not condemn us for our mistakes. He sees hope where others see failure. He sees a future where others see wreckage. His desire is to bring us out of our devastation, healed and strengthened, with a song in our hearts. That is his promise. Joy and gladness will be found in her.

A View from the Ruins

It is difficult to perceive God's hand when we are living in the ruins, isn't it? We cannot understand what God is doing, what emotional patterns he is dismantling, whether God is even there, or where we will end up. But with distance and divine help, we can learn to see the past with new eyes. As I reexamined my own ruins in preparation for this book, I realized aspects of God's persistent involvement with me that I previously had missed. I recognized God moving in my life at times when I feared he had abandoned me. I saw the way he used my circumstances over a stretch of years to help me overcome hidden weaknesses. I became aware that certain events I had forgotten were, in fact, key turning points in my life.

Though I often felt dejected and alone while living through my difficult seasons, I now understand that God was at work in my life all along. In my pain, in my suffering, in my mistakes—even in the dark—God was always present, working out his good purpose. Jesus is called Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23 KJV). In taking another look at my life, I came to recognize as never before the reality of God's faithfulness. He is with us. Nothing can make him give us up. The depth of this realization is part of his restorative work in me.

Eventually, I discovered I was not the only one in church whose life had taken unwelcome turns. I was not the only one who had missed opportunities. I was not the only one who had sinned. In particular, I found that when others were honest with me about their faults and imperfections, I became more comfortable sharing my own mistakes. Once we take off our masks—once we expose our ruins—we give others permission to do the same. And that is when real ministry and healing take place.

In this same spirit, I now share my story with you. I will start with a dark moment of my own. As God leads you, consider your own difficult moments and test them against the message written here. Let us ask the Lord to help us reach for his Welcome home.

2. HOW COULD THIS BE HAPPENING TO ME?

The Shock of Brokenness

My husband, Ted, turned forty-two on a balmy Saturday in May 1987. The day was unusually idyllic. Ted, our three children, and I entertained a potential business partner over lunch at a local restaurant and then spent the afternoon swimming in our pool. We made ice cream and later grilled hamburgers. The children—Noelle, 13; Graham, 11; and Windsor, 8—were especially cooperative. Ted and I were relaxed. Our 185-acre horse farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley afforded us privacy and peace. We lacked for nothing, and in many ways, it seemed our life as a family was beginning to resemble the life I had dreamed about for years. My relationship with my husband had deepened, and the kids truly seemed happy. We were enjoying one another.

That evening I fixed a fruit salad for the following day's Sunday lunch, which we had been invited to share with friends. I joined Ted in our room, and we talked leisurely about the events of the day. As we conversed, I decided to ask Ted the question that had been haunting me for the last several months. Actually, I had wanted to ask Ted this question for some time, but whenever I planned to go through with it, I ended up pulling back. Weeks earlier, while we were out of town on business together, I had intended to ask the question, only to realize when we got to our destination that I was unprepared for Ted's response. That I might hear my suspicions confirmed seemed a threatening prospect. Did I really want to know the answer?

Since returning from that trip, I had become more anxious under the weight of my unspoken question, and I concluded I would be better off simply knowing the truth. I was tired of suspecting. I needed some relief. I wanted the matter settled and decided I would ask Ted when the time seemed right. With our marriage relationship seemingly stronger than ever, I supposed I could handle what he might say. Now, lying next to my husband on his birthday, with a good day behind us, I thought it would be safe for me to ask.

Turning to Ted in the dark, I gathered my courage and said, I want to ask you something The environment in our room felt intimate and nonthreatening. I gazed in my husband's direction, and then, as I had imagined on so many occasions, I spoke the words:

Have you ever been unfaithful to me?

Ted did not respond. I could not see his face, but his silence communicated everything. At once I knew the answer. I braced myself, both wishing he would say something and regretting I had ever asked. A moment later he told me what I dreaded to hear.

Yes, he said soberly. Yes.

I felt like a shotgun had blasted me in the stomach, or like a fullback had knocked the wind out of me. The shock was seismic—it took my breath away. I felt flattened. Completely leveled. Then, somehow, I managed to recoup and focus on Ted. On the guilt he must have been carrying. On the courage he must have mustered to answer honestly. I tried to comfort him as he haltingly told me the truth. I told him I forgave him. But I had a million questions. Was it more than once? Where did it happen? When? Ted answered these questions, though it would be months before I knew everything. The infidelities had occurred over a period of years while we were living in Texas. More than one woman was involved. The details devastated me. Too tired to talk any more, I finally drifted into a fitful sleep. I didn't want to think. I wanted to forget. I wanted to forget it all.

The next morning, reality asserted itself like an open wound. Woke up about 6:30 to realize what had happened, I wrote in my journal. Sickness. Heaviness. Tried to act normal…. On the outside I'm calm & cool—inside I'm dying. I'm not even sure I know how I feel. And I'm afraid I'll come apart if I start.

At church that morning, I sat in the pew in a daze, outwardly carrying on as normal, but inwardly disconnected from what was going on around me. I felt little but the knot in my stomach. After the worship service, Ted, the kids, and I went to lunch at our friends' house as planned. Driving home, Ted reached over and took my hand while I stared out the window and watched the Shenandoah Valley go by. In the distance, I saw storm clouds gathering over the mountain peaks of the Blue Ridge. The sky looked dark and foreboding, and I remember having the sense that storm clouds were similarly gathering over my life. I wondered what darkness threatened to overtake me. And I was afraid.

Married Life

Marriage had not come easily for Ted and me. We shared good times. We made good memories. But we struggled from the beginning. We married very young. I was just eighteen, and Ted was five years my senior. I knew little about life. The middle of five children, I only knew I was ready to feel significant. Both of my sisters had married young. Now I wanted to feel special. I wanted to be needed and loved.

To my parents' chagrin, I dropped out of college to get married. Mother taught my sisters and me that a woman's highest calling was to be a wife and mother, and I looked forward to fulfilling that calling. My parents strongly advocated my completing my studies, however; and as a student at Gordon College, I had majored in Bible because Mother suggested the knowledge would serve me well when I began to rear children. Otherwise, I felt unmoored academically, and being part of a high-profile family, I also felt like something of an odd duck on campus.

Ted Dienert stepped into my world when I was a college sophomore. We had first met at one of my father's evangelistic meetings in London when I was sixteen, but now Ted came into my life in a significant way. He was blonde, handsome, and athletic. He was a man with a huge presence, and he seemed to know where he was going. More than simply drawn to him, I was bowled over by him. His parents were friends of my parents, and he seemed to fit into my world. He pursued me with determination, and I fell hard. I was in love with Ted—and I was in love with love.

Our marriage, however, got off to a shaky start and could not seem to right itself. We lived in the Philadelphia area, where Ted worked for his father, a founder of the advertising agency that handled the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association account. Ted made a good living, but we struggled to get along. He traveled a lot, and I developed my own interests. Following the lead of my older sister, Anne, I helped start a class for Bible Study Fellowship (BSF)—a rigorous, life-encompassing program of in-depth Bible study—and organized occasional women's ministry events.

As the years passed, Ted and I learned better how to relate to one another, and our marriage seemed to improve. We started having children—our daughter, Elizabeth Noelle, in 1974 and our son, Graham Pierce, in 1975—and a new depth of intimacy developed in our marriage. Still, our old dynamics always seemed to resurface. Conflict persisted. Strain and frustration were ever a part of our lives. We managed, but it wasn't easy.

By the time I was pregnant with our third child, Windsor Ruth, we were ready to leave Philadelphia, and Ted's father agreed to let Ted open a new office for the company in Dallas. The transition proved difficult. Ted wanted to buy land and set up a ranch. Knowing I would be caring for three young children, I preferred being in the city, closer to Ted's office, closer to stores and community, and closer to a favorite aunt and uncle. Still, as Ted felt strongly about purchasing land, I tried to follow my mother's example and support my husband's dream. In the end, we bought fifty acres outside of Dallas in Argyle, built a house and a barn, and acquired several Arabian horses.

The years in Texas were the most challenging for Ted and me. We lived largely separate lives. Ted made the commute into Dallas every day for work. I stayed out in Argyle with the children. Our daily lives rarely intersected. I was heavily involved in the kids' activities during the school year, and in the summers, I drove the kids to my parents' home in Montreat to spend time with my sister Anne and her children.

Eventually, I took a part-time position as an acquisitions editor with book publisher Harper & Row, working from home and traveling occasionally to meet with authors. My personal outlet was Bible Study Fellowship. I had helped start a BSF class in Philadelphia; now in Texas I served in leadership. I learned a great deal of Scripture during these years, putting in countless hours studying the Bible and preparing for class. The women in BSF leadership were my closest friends and most ardent supporters. They were like sisters, and they made me feel part of a vital community.

Meanwhile, Ted and I were miles apart—not only physically, as he worked such long hours in town, but also emotionally. Much later, after I learned of Ted's infidelities, this period in my marriage made more sense. Ted and I rarely went on dates, and day-to-day we hardly saw each other. Though we did take vacations together and do some things with the children, we basically coexisted. We did not share our hearts with one another. We were not good friends.

In 1985, a new opportunity prompted us to leave Texas for Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, and our lives took a turn for the better. The Valley was home to my mother's family, and my grandfather's cousins offered Ted and me the chance to buy some of the family land. We fell in love with the property. When we first went to see it, I knew almost immediately I was home. I met people who had known my grandparents, Nelson and Virginia Bell, to whom I was very close as a child. I encountered Valley residents who remembered playing with my mother when she and her parents and siblings would return to America on furlough from their medical missionary post in China. Being among such people in the Valley, I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. I felt I belonged somewhere, and I knew I wanted to relocate.

Ted also welcomed the idea of a move to Virginia and sought to create in the Valley an expanded version of our Texas ranch. In all we bought nearly two hundred acres, about half of which had belonged to my mother's family. We enlarged the colonial house on the property, built a sixteen-stall, state-of-the-art barn for the horses, and christened our home and lands Windmere Farm.

Virginia was a good move for us as a family. We built the barn to include space for Ted's office, which meant he was always nearby. He would talk to me about his business, and I felt included in his life in a way I never had previously. We found a church and got involved, developing a close relationship with our pastor and his wife. The kids seemed to thrive in their new environment. Ted and I were happier than ever before.

During these years, Ted poured a great deal of effort into improving our marriage. I also experienced significant personal growth, which affected the marriage positively. I became closer to God and more aware of my emotional needs. Ted and I became better able to talk openly with one another about our feelings. We discussed our relationship with a new honesty. We probed difficult aspects of our marriage and tried to trace the issues back to their roots. These were not easy conversations, but they produced trust. We were laying a new foundation.

By the spring of 1987—about two years into our new life in Virginia—I began to suspect Ted might have been unfaithful to me at some point during our marriage. He and I were closer now. I could read him better, and my suspicion began to bother me. Because we had grown closer, I thought I felt