“I said, ‘I’m not giving you a divorce,'” she remembers, “I told him if he wanted out, he was going to have to do the work, and I don’t even think I’d sign it.”
She pauses, thinking back on that pivotal moment.
“And that’s where the healing began,” she recalls.
Suzy’s tough love and commitment to their marriage despite Josh’s repeated infidelity finally struck a chord with Josh. He moved to his parents’ house, and though it was hard and painful, began working with his wife to restore their marriage.
“I made the choice to love him like Christ loves the church,”Suzy says, “and that’s unconditional.”
Josh describes how God broke his pride, since all his friends and family now knew the secrets he and Suzy had been hiding for years. “It was at that point where we attempted counseling seriously,” he says. Slowly but surely, Josh began doing what he needed to do to become the husband God had always meant for him to be. He and Suzy both had counseling to work on themselves and their marriage.
Josh says the number one problem in their marriage wasn’t his infidelity, it was what LED to it -his pride and ego. “Pride is still a huge issue,” he says. “For me, repentance is still an every day thing.”
After years of working on their marriage, confessing, repenting, giving and accepting forgiveness, the Stolls marriage is whole. Suzy says Josh is now “the man that I always wanted to be married to.”
I don’t know about how, but the Stolls story brought me to tears several times and gave me SO much hope, as well as a great reminder to not let my PRIDE get the best of me. Please, please take a few minutes of your time to watch their amazing story in the video above!
