Matthew: “As a kid, I struggled with fitting in and making friends. I didn’t have the benefit of growing up in the church and struggled to find a community to call home. After my parents got divorced when I was 13, I started to feel that nothing in my life was happening the way I wanted, nothing was making me happy.
“An acquaintance of mine could tell I was looking for something else. He invited me to his church for an event with his youth group. I’d never been to anything like that. The people treated me in a way that was so foreign to me–they were friendly and interested. I felt like I could be myself. It was so clear to me that there was something different about these people. I wasn’t sure what it was, and it took me a while, but I finally realized the difference was Jesus.
“In 2004, I accepted Christ at a Christian youth camp. My life was transformed. I had a circle of amazing friends throughout high school and college, but I was still a very immature believer. I saw following Christ as just not doing ‘bad’ things but wasn’t deepening my faith or following Godly examples.”
Anne: “In some ways, my childhood was the opposite of Matthew’s. For my family, every time the church doors were open, we were there. I came to intellectually understand God’s character and my need for Jesus when I was eight years old. And I meant it. But because I was a ‘good kid’, it became difficult for me to truly understand the desperation of my own sin. Even in our ‘quiet sin’ we need Christ, but I didn’t see that.
“Matthew and I met in college, and when we started dating, we very quickly knew that we wanted to get married. We had such a commonality of interests, and we had so much fun together. It was so easy to talk and to laugh with each other. It was frictionless.”
M: “We decided to enter this sacred covenant, but we were deeply unprepared for the ways that being close to another person in marriage would hold a mirror up to our sins for the first time.
“Arguments that started from something seemingly small and silly would boil down to serious problems within our own hearts–selfishness, bitterness, and an unwillingness to serve.”
A: “Without us noticing, we were drifting in a bad direction–slowly, and undramatically. There was no ‘big’ problem, as the world would see it; no one was having an affair; no one had walked out. People might have looked at us and thought we were doing great, but deep scars were forming. Genuine bitterness was taking root in my heart.”
M: “I didn’t know how to be a spiritual leader in our relationship or point our household in the direction of Christ, and I wasn’t prioritizing my own faith. The results were becoming apparent in our marriage and family. Conflict would never quite get resolved, and we felt no emotional intimacy. Most importantly, we were growing increasingly far from the Lord.
“At some point during conflict, it was raised that we should go to re|engage, Watermark’s marriage ministry. We quickly learned that just because our conflict wasn’t dramatic didn’t mean it wasn’t desperate for the Lord.
“It was like we were settling for being on life support instead of realizing that Jesus wants us to thrive. He didn’t come just to deliver us from death, but to teach us to fully live (John 10:10).
A: “Re|engage gave us vocabulary to talk about what was going on in our relationship. We experienced genuine conflict resolution for the first time, and we were in community with other couples who were there for the same reason. We realized, with the help of Jesus, that we needed to dramatically change how we were living. We needed to pray for renewal and start from the foundation to build a new marriage.”
M: “Through our time in re|engage and then later serving with the pre-marriage ministry, Merge for the last seven years, we’ve been able to put building blocks on a new foundation. In every instance, God’s people have been the ones who’ve pushed us closer to the Lord–re|engage, Merge, our community group, Women’s Bible Study.”
A: “The Holy Spirit turned everything around for our family, and we experienced freedom as a result of Matthew humbly listening and making big efforts to lead our family. When the leader of your family is excited to be there, everybody else agrees that it’s a good place to be!
“And to be clear, we still have conflict. We still fall short, but we’ve experienced a night and day difference. We are here because of the Lord’s strength and faithfulness.
A: “Though our marriage grew over the past few years, that didn’t stop life from having its challenges. In fact, the hardest circumstances of our lives came after God took hold of our family. But because of the Lord’s provision, we can walk through these challenges with peace and joy, in a consistent relationship with Him and with each other.”
Editor’s Note: On Sunday, February 2, we published Matthew and Anne Olson’s story of God’s grace in the print version of the Watermark News. The article contained an unfortunate typographical error that mischaracterized the nature of their story. We apologize for this mistake and any confusion it may have caused. This online version includes the corrected line. We are grateful to the Olsons for sharing God’s transformative work in their lives with our church family.