Bridal Section

By SAVANNAH ROGERS
Staff Writer

Valentine's Day holds a whole new meaning for one Fayette County couple.

Ron Stribling, pastor of Heritage Harvest Church, and his wife, Terri, were remarried Dec. 5 after a two-year divorce. For them, Valentine's Day now serves as a reminder of a love renewed, and of God's power to heal hearts and mend marriages.

"We are two changed people relating to each other in a different way," Terri said this week. "It's a surprise, a delight, to see yourself change."

Ron said two years ago, after they divorced, he would tell others they were working on getting back together, but in their hearts, they felt there was no way that would ever happen.

Terri is the one who filed for the divorce, after 14 years of marriage. At that time their three children, Sara, Ron Jr. and Hope, were 12, 7 and 4, and their foster daughter Tammy was 21.

"I knew when I walked out it was wrong," she said. "But at that point, I didn't care. It sounds hard, but it's the truth. The whole time we were divorced, I knew it was wrong."

Terri said in the span of nine months, she saw her young mother and father and her grandmother die. "I saw so much of my life go so fast. ... I felt the need to break out. Maybe from raising lots of children, from raising lots of foster children, from trying to do the right thing as [Ron's] wife, as the pastor's wife, as whatever. Three years later I can tell you grief does funny things."

She said the fact that Ron was a pastor is why the divorce didn't happen a couple of years before. "But something snapped. I saw all that death and said, 'I'm living!'"

"I promise you I wasn't the easiest person in the world to live with," Ron added. "It's amazing how if you submit your life to the Lord, he works in you in ways you don't understand. He began to deal with me about selfishness, pride and humbling myself."

"For the first year, I channeled a tremendous amount of anger, bitterness and resentment toward God," Terri said, "but it wasn't him. I know that now. I knew that then."

The children were devastated by the news of their parents' divorce, the Striblings said. They would cover their ears and hum if the subject came up, and never lost faith that God could bring them together again as a family. "Some of the hardest things in the world," Ron said, "are telling your kids it was about the hardest day of my life and obviously, having to come and relay that to the church.

"Apparently we had built a great relationship with the church," he added. "In spite of my heart being wrong in some places, it was right enough to teach them mercy and grace." The congregation of Heritage Harvest began praying for "Sister Terri."

Meanwhile, she had set out on a quest to find herself, to feel whole again. "When I got there, I thought of the price that was being paid for what I thought was my own personal happiness," she said. "Achievement is always nice, but the ultimate is the inner peace you have when you surrender yourself to God.

"Do I feel guilty? Oh, no. Am I glad that God was with me and he still had his hand on me, still loved me enough to bring me back? You bet. I think that's what the restoration process is all about."

During Christmas holidays one year after their divorce, a tearful comment from their youngest daughter brought Terri to her knees. "She said, 'I don't want to go home [to Georgia], because you're always going to work and I won't see you at all.'

"I got down on my face," Terri said. "The first thing I had to do was ask God to forgive me for turning my back. I said, 'God, I'll do whatever it takes, whatever you ask, whatever you need me to do to restore my family to where I know you want it to be."

"When I stood up, I felt like I was a totally different person," she said. "I didn't know how it was going to happen, but I knew it was the right thing to do; though it still wasn't necessarily what I wanted to happen. It wasn't like there were any warm fuzzies."

"We began talking, at least considering reconciliation," Ron said. "Shortly after that ... we said, 'God is changing our hearts. We know it is the will of God for us to get back together.' So, we set a date. We didn't wait for things to get perfect before we obeyed God; no marriage is perfect."

They said their children had to learn to trust them again, and it took almost a year, while the two of them worked out a lot of issues together.

"You don't fall into love," Ron said, "you fall into lust. Love is built. You make a decision to love first, then the other stuff follows.

"Relationships are not based on rights. They're based on being a servant, humbling ourselves, serving others," he added. "I turned back toward Terri with my heart because the Lord said, 'Serve her like you serve me.' It doesn't matter what the other person does. She did the same thing she returned to God.

"You're not going to stay together because there's always going to be warm fuzzies and passion," Ron said. "There are going to be up and down days. We're emotional creatures; we need something stable and constant in a relationship. That stable and constant something in a relationship is Christ. If you're not a Christian, the place to start is on your face.

"From God's perspective, marriage is a covenant. I really can't sit behind my desk as pastor and advise someone to get a divorce," he noted. "If separation is what it takes for you to work on yourself, for God to work on you ... I'm not counseling people to separate, but God had to get me alone.

"From counseling and other situations, I've never seen a divorce or other situation yet that was only one person's fault," Ron said, even in the case of adultery. "If you look in a relationship, you'll find things on both sides that need to be dealt with. ... A lot is due to selfishness.

"If you ask God to change a situation, I'll tell you where he's going to start with you."

"You look back in awe and see the work God does through your children and the people closest to you," Terri noted.

"When your whole family goes through a divorce, you can't keep the children from getting hurt," she said. "So when you're reunited, it's very much a family thing. ... They have just as much a right to the joy as we do."

So the children were a big part of the couple's second wedding, held last December and put on by the church family. Ron Jr. walked his mother down the aisle. The children were in the wedding party on the platform, and sang a personalized version of Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me" while their parents lit the unity candle.

"We were puddles up on the platform when they were singing," Ron said. "It was a wonderful day. You could sense the presence of God in this place."

Fellow pastor and friend, the Rev. John Hatcher, said of the event: "It was a great victory of the family. It was a great victory for their church. And, it was a great victory for the cause of Christ."

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