Born-Again Marriage

Bonnie Psy.D. Libhart

Description

Tony and Bonnie's marriage endured many storms...From their survival of the press box crash at the Indy 500 to their struggle to hold onto their lives in an Arkansas tornado. But the whirlwind of divorce wreaked the most damaged on their lives. Their search for happiness in power, prestige, and possessions fed it winds. To support that search, Bonnie spent more and more hours at her job as a TV talk show host while Tony devoted more and more of himself to his company. Finally there wasn't left for each other.

When the storm winds had done their damage, they left behind only the splintered remains of the Libhart's marriage. That was when Bonnie called out to God- and He answered her cry.

Born-Again Marriage is a story of wreckage and rebuilding. But more that it's a handbook you can use to look at your own priorities. The unique Analysis-Action sections at the end of each priorities are-and a chance to set new ones.
Born-Again Marriage offers an exciting story of struggle and romance.

You, too, can have a Born-Again relationship, if you would please. Thank you for taking us home with you. Please let us now how this has helped you and if we can use your story in the sequel at www.DrBonnieL.com.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Développement personnel
• développement personnel
• Self-help
• Inspirational
• Motivational

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456601829
• Langue: English

Extrait

Born-Again
Marriage
 
 
By
 
Dr. Bonnie Libhart
 
 
 
Copyright 2010, Revised 2011 Dr. Bonnie Libhart,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0182-9
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 
www.DrbonnieL.com
[e-mail]
 


During her days as a talk show host in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Bonnie Libhart became the first woman ever to obtain a press pass to the pits of the Indianapolis 500. But just as the race began, the Indy pace car went out of control, skidding through the crew area. It toppled the press box, dumping she and her husband Tony and the other reporters and cameramen onto its hood in a splintering, head-cracking crash...
 
Bonnie's panic built as the emergency medical helicopter carried Tony in the direction of the hospital. Her eyes lifted heavenward as the whop, whop, whop of the helicopter's rotor blades carried him away.
 
His body would mend slowly over the next few months. But the damage they had done to each other in their race for happiness and security would have a longer lasting effect. It would nearly destroy their marriage.
 
When there seemed no hope left for them, Bonnie turned her eyes heavenward again. And this time it was to a source of help and healing more powerful than the surgeon's skillful hands. Her eyes looked to God...
 
 

 
 


Acknowledgments
 
I'd like to offer my thanks and appreciation to the following people for their help in editing, advising, typing, and the other various chores it took to get A Survivor’s Secret into your hands:
 
Sharon Mayhugh
Harry and Sharon Senn
Dr. Loyal could of Baylor University
Kay King
Betty Snyder
Kay Miller
Jeff Hensley
Rocky & Don Pettit
Summer Danielson
Sandra Fitzgerald-Pickens
 
And especially to my husband Tony and our children Emily Dawn, Deana, and Anthony.
 
Bonnie Taylor-Libhart Huntsville, Alabama
 
DrBonnieL.com
 
 


Lyrics from the song "Would You?"
by Grace Hawthorne and Buryl Red
appearing on pp. 90 and 91
© Copyright 1972 by Word Music, Inc.
in Sing and Celebrate II
All Rights Reserved
International Copyright Secured
Used by Permission
 
Materials quoted from Heart Gifts
by Helen Steiner Rice
are used by permission.
 
 

 
 
 
 



 
Chapter One
I Search for Happiness In my Husband
At KAIT-TV, where I hosted a daily television talk show for years, many companies would send me samples of their new products, hoping that after I'd tried them, I'd tell about them on the air.
I didn't care for many of these, but when one of the cosmetics companies came out with a new line, I thought, "Ah-ha! I’ll try this one."
As I was smearing the heavy gook all over my face one night, my little one who was watching asked in his high-pitched voice, “What're you doing that for, mom?"
Breathlessly and enthusiastically, while continuing to read their enclosed ad, I announced, "Oh! This is going to make me beautiful!"
He watched. . .not taking his eyes off my face for the next thirty minutes. When I wiped the facial treatment off, his bottom lip quivered as he said sadly, "It didn't work, did it, Mom?"
Many things we try in life are just like my facial masque-they just don't work as well as we would like. But marriage doesn't have to be one of those things. It doesn't have to be hit-or-miss: it can -- and will -- work when we decide that is IS going to work.
Just a few years ago, after two marriages, one divorce, and an audition for the second, I felt like an authority on failure. I didn't know a marriage could be born-again. But that's exactly what happened to mine, and I'd like to tell you how.
Born and raised in Paragould, Arkansas, I eloped at the age of sixteen with a basketball player who drove a convertible. But marriage was not what I had expected and thirty months later I had a child and a divorce, but not much more maturity. I blamed "them"- parents, society, my husband -- for my marriage failure.
After modeling for a while in New York, I was forced, due to lack of money, to move back to the South to be near my parents so they could keep my child. Then, despite their objections and my own guilt feelings, I entered a career in radio, fulfilling a childhood dream. With a sultry voice and the introduction, "You're listening to WHER-Radio, the nation's only all-girl station," I was on the air.
In the evenings I taught dancing, and waltzing around the dance studio I met HIM. He was just the kind of man girls dream about-- Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome!
His parents and the Marines had done a great job making him one of "the few good men." He had all the right credentials: He was a charter member of his hometown Jaycees, a Pennsylvania State University graduate and lover of the finer things. He was as beautiful inside as outside, and since he seemed so perfect, I expected him to perfect me. I thought he could settle me down.
The storm began brewing from the beginning. The Marine Corps didn't pay a Corporal scads of money, and we had $1,000 worth of dancing lessons to pay for--thanks to easy credit. Starting married life with a 3 year old child left us little time to get acquainted, and I had a difficult time putting it all together after my "tossed salad" life style. It was almost more than an engineer (by profession), Marine (by training), and German (by birth) could take.
"If you'd put things back after you get them out, you'd know where they are the next time you need them."
"If you'd not take everything so seriously, you'd be more fun."
He saw in me an easygoing manner, and I saw in him the ability to organize--areas in which we each wanted to grow. Years later our daughter was to write an English theme entitled “ Opposites Do Attract ," but at that time we were too miserable to allow that attraction to surface.
While Tony was in the Marine Corps, we moved around a lot, and I always worked at the local radio or TV station. I should have been happy, but I was depressed, miserable, and angry.
I had expected marriage to cure all my problems, but it only magnified them with angry flashes of "lightning" brilliance.
The tornado inside of me carried over into my job. I didn't really want to work away from home, but when I stayed home I was bored and had no money to call "my own." Besides, the prestige of my own radio or TV show fed my ego.
We sought happiness outside of marriage--in our social life, in our possessions, our children; the empty happiness which comes from seeing how many times you can get your picture in the paper through position, power, and prestige.
But the nagging emptiness inside of me remained. It argued with its unknown tormentor.
"Get your life straightened out.”
"But we go to church all the time," my threatened conscience would reply.
I taught Sunday school, Tony was a trustee on the building committee and served as church treasurer, and we both helped with Vacation Bible School. Even the minister joked about the death of some of his members-- "They starved to death," he would say, "from attending all of the meetings!" With the whirl of activities and the meaningless round of social events, church had become just like any of the other clubs we belonged to.
We studied on Sunday that "God is love" and "love is giving," yet I was only interested in "getting."
Now I’m supposed to adapt myself to my husband. But how could I, a former board member of the Women's Political Caucus, accept that?
Meanwhile, I had finally become an expert at something--I could criticize.
In public I was vivacious, outgoing, the public relations director for the human race. But at home I brightened up the room when I walked out. And when I was being mean, I couldn't allow my husband to be the nice person he really was. My attitude toward Tony and our marriage had changed him from a warm, loving individual to an old grouch. But I felt justified because he seemed to be so cold to me. (I would lie on my side of the bed at night, hoping he would make the "first move." Wasn't the husband supposed to be the aggressor?)
The cavity of emptiness inside me was getting huge. It wasn't that we didn't talk. I complained that he didn't. He said he would talk more, but he hated to interrupt!
The downward spiral continued until Tony moved out, and I filed for a divorce.
 

 
For two weeks during that time I sat in a stupor. It occurred to me the way things were going I could go from divorce to divorce to divorce. In fact, at our wedding my uncle had said, "We'll have this to go through again." Would we?
I was reminded of the mother who was watching the school drill team perform when she said, "Look, everyone is out of step but my son!" I felt like that son.... except that when everyone was out of step but me, I began to wonder about ME! My first marriage ended and the second one was dying because I couldn't cope with the problems, situations, challenges, and obstacles. That day when I looked at myself in the mirror I knew I was in the eye of the tornado. I was in a trance while the debris of my life swirled around me.
I had expected Tony to give me all I wanted, to be my one, sure, straight path to happiness. But did I have a choice? I wondered, "Is there an alternative to this cycle of excited love, disappointment, anger, disgust, apathy, divorce?" I pondered the question many times.
I asked myself and God, "Why did I get married?"
 

 
Have you ever wondered that? Have you ever wondered why you got married? Was it a search for love, romance, or sex? Or was it because of restrictions, school, poverty, pregnancy, or rebellion? Was it because everyone else was gettin