Preaching With a Hangover | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Foreign. Hello, everybody. This is Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real raw and relevant. We are so glad you're here today.

It's the second one you've been back, Ron.

It's not. There's been more? No, it's not.

As. Just got back last week.

You try to act like I'm gone a lot, and you have to do everything.

They had to do about six shows with just me.

Oh, my gosh. Okay, we're gonna go back and count them.

Why am I stuffy today?

You woke up stuff.

No. Is it. We went to restaurant last night and you started making fun of me because I sounded like Rudolph.

You. You are stuffy. Yeah, but you just went to the doctor. What she say?

Nothing about that.

What else she say then?

Oh, but my blood pressure was good.

Yeah.

You know, from my. So you didn't have a science lifestyle. Why didn't we check that?

But you're sick. Why'd you go?

Why didn't you get her to check it? A little Benadryl.

Oh, my gosh.

Little allergy going back and forth.

Makes no sense to me.

Two different climates.

That's a man for you to go to the doctor and you got a.

Sinus, had to do other things, had.

To get a prescription, checked everything but that.

And I had to get my vitals taken, and my heart rate was just low and my blood pressure was good. And we need to be grateful for me to be at this age in life, in my late 40s. Okay, late 40s for my blood pressure.

I am proud of your blood pressure.

Yes. Because you remember when it used to be awfully, awfully high, but it was 131 over 82.

That's great, Ron.

So a lot of people may not think that's very good, but for Ron Carpenter, what. What was that time when I was having all those headaches years ago and you snuck me out and took me to the doctor and I didn't know where I was going, like 210 over 1. And that Dr. Looked at me and said, son, he said, you want to die? From here to the door. And I aim. All I knew was I was having headaches, and so I'd take the BC powders and knock it down with Mountain Dew.

Yes. I was about to say, you take a BC powder with a Mountain Dew for a headache.

But it would help my headache. My headache would leave for about an hour.

So the moral of the story, women listening to this, do not let your husband go to the doctor alone. They don't get seen for the right things.

You did not.

Sometimes you have to send them to the doctor and go with them.

I have a prescription where they had to take my vitals. She said, you got to come by and take the vitals. And they all checked. Good.

Good for you, right?

Good for me.

I'm a good wife.

Just gotta. Yes, you are.

Gonna keep you all at peace.

You gotta bring peace to the house, right? That's what the women bring. So that's what a good wife brings. This is the heavy one, right? Is this a heavy one?

We're gonna talk.

I tell people, we try to mix it up between the funny and the heavy. I don't wanna be heavy all the time. Cause our life. Our life has a lot of responsibility, period. And, you know, a lot of eyes on you. So you live in a little bit of a glass house. No, you don't. You live in a whole lot of a glass house.

Fishbowl.

But the other side of that is, you know, I just don't want to try to be comedy show all the time. So we try to do a little bit of both. But we felt like, you know, there was some things that, honestly, we've never talked about that people inquire about on a regular basis in private.

They'll ask us across the table, you know, and this is what we're going to talk about across the table. Sometime we'll be with another couple and we'll be talking about our story and what a miracle we are, and, you know, how we've overcome. Look at this on my finger.

It's all right.

A Sharpie. And then they'll look at you and say, but, Ron, how did you make it? How did you come out?

They want to hear you. They say, your story. What's your story?

Because I. I go on daystar. I go on different places, you know, giving the testimony, telling the story. I've written the book, the Most Beautiful Disaster. But people want to hear from your side, you know, how you made it, how you are okay today, how you're not sitting in a corner sucking your thumb, you know, with a straight jacket on. So we're going to talk a little bit about that today.

And you gonna kind of interview me, right?

Yep.

Let me tell them. Let me tell them why we hadn't talked about it. Guys, I've. If you're listening, you're a guy or you're a woman and you have a guy. One of the primary, not secondary, primary functions of the role of a husband, not the role of a man, the role of a Husband is to cover everybody. I did not say cover up. I said cover. You're a protective mechanism. It hits you before it hits anybody else, or it can't hit them at all because you absorb the blows. That's why. Jesus is my head. He's my covering. And the mercy of God, I have no idea how many things the enemy intended for me today. And God has had mercy on me all day that I don't even know about because he gets in the way and he covers Ron. That makes me want to cry. He gets in the way and he covers Ron Carpenter in the same way. God has likened the man to the woman in the household where he is a covering. He's a protector. And we've been asked several times by TV shows and podcasts and other stuff to tell your story. And I said, there's just parts of my story that I'm never gonna share. And the reason I'm not gonna share it is because to share all that I went through would have to uncover my wife. And I said, that's just not gonna happen. And I'm not trying to be a superhero here, but. But I think, you know, I take those things very seriously. I take them very seriously. I cover my children. God has never taken my sin and exposed me, and I'm grateful for that. He washes it away. And the Bible says in the same manner, I'm to take my wife and wash her with the water of the Word and present her to myself without spot or wrinkle.

Right.

So there should be a cleansing element and a protective element to my life and a real man, you know, the woman doesn't have to hide a real man. He sees the broken places and the places that are put together, and he knows what to do with both. And I think that's a part of your journey in growing together, becoming a woman, and becoming a man. So, no, I haven't done an interview, I don't think ever. I've sat down with you several times, but I don't think I have ever sat down in an interview chair and had somebody just drill me about my journey. And we won't get to all of it in 30 minutes, but there's a lot of miracles in my journey.

Oh, my goodness.

You've talked about yours. You had some miracles, but I would call some of yours defining moments. You had moments that took you down here for healing, then you had another moment, and it took you here. I had some miracles. It was just. Had God not have done that. I don't know if I'D have made it, but it was God, and I've never really talked about him. So call your friends, text somebody, subscribe, like, do whatever you got to do to get the word out. But you just ask me some questions that's on your heart that you feel safe with me answering. And we'll delve into how I came back, how I survived a little bit. So I'm gonna let you interview me. How about.

Absolutely.

Just talking. You interview me.

All right. Ronald Carpenter, or Ronaldo, as I call you. How did you make it?

That's a big one.

Yep. How did you make it through? The pain was so excruciating. October 2013, when all the truth came out and we sat and I told you everything, and the pain was just overwhelming. How'd you make it?

See, that's a big one. What I mean by that is there's no one thing. It's a million little things. Okay.

It was awful.

I'm gonna. It was awful the first few weeks.

I'm sure you thought you would never make it.

Let us build a context for everybody. There was about a nine year deterioration of you where I just don't think people know your emotional state. It wasn't your mental state. Your mental capacity was never off. You were emotionally a wreck.

Right. Started in 2004.

Yeah. I mean, and I saw signs.

Well, let me back up. It did not start in 2004. It started. It was my whole life.

You hit it till 2000.

I hit it. The. The boiler pot. The. On the inside of me was just in a state of anxiety. Anxiety that built and built and built and built till 2004. And then I couldn't hold it anymore.

And here's the enem. 2004 is where we built that dome.

Yeah.

Our life essentially exploded. Tv, multiple services, tens of thousands of people on stages everywhere. Opportunities, books. It just exploded right about that time. I don't think this is a coincidence that it was right at the time, literally, we were dedicating that.

Building the enemy is very strategic.

You can see the strategy of it. Looking back, you couldn't see it in the moment, but there was a nine year deterioration of you that wore me out of trying to buffer your decline from the public, which had more eyes on us than it had ever had. And not just that we were a different kind of church. Not just that we had broken the racial. So we were intensely under a magnifying glass. A massive church in a small city. Unlike everything about it was an anomaly. It was unlikely. So you got to give context there's so many eyes and so many opinions and honestly, a lot of people waiting for you to screw up.

Yeah.

They wanted you to fall and they wanted you to be crushed and you could feel it every day. And I just noticed you weren't doing well. I noticed you weren't the same. And I confronted it a lot. And I remember in your emotional state, you're like, well, maybe I never was that. Maybe this is the real me.

Because I didn't know. Because I had never been given, afforded the opportunity to find out who is hope.

And the clothes, you never were provocative. I'm not talking about that, but just things you'd never worn.

A mini skirt.

That would draw attention. Yeah. Things that would draw attention to you more than it, far more than it would anybody else. The clothes, the friend choices, the activity choices and all eyes were on and people were starting to pick you apart and people close were starting to turn on us and this and that.

A lot of stress.

And so I was coming, coming around, trying to get my arms around it and incubate it. I couldn't change it. I tried. So the only thing you do is, number one, you go down the path of splitting up and divorce, which would basically drop a nuclear bomb on everything God had done. Or you say, I'm going to hang in here. God's going to shift this thing one day. And I just need grace.

And this is prior we're talking about.

Prior to, prior to anything. 2013, 2015 was okay. And that's what we talked about some nights ago when we talked about this. It really wasn't an eight or nine year thing. It was about a 13 or 14 year thing because you had the slow spiral that was unbelievably stressful.

Right.

The way we wanted to discipline our kids, our standards were different. We were seeing things from totally different vantage points. And up until that time, I had never. We had never functioned like that. I remember saying to you one time, why has it become so hard? Because, you know, for earlier days, it was so easy. It was easy. And all of a sudden there was this intense war and conflict between me and you. And the problem is the show goes on. Got to get up and preach every Sunday. You got to sit on the front row and cross your legs and be the first lady every Sunday. And, you know, our kids have to be perfect every Sunday and then Sunday and Wednesday, you know, so we're doing church 250 times a year and our world is slowly, not fast. It was slow, slow, long, crumbling. That I was manically trying to stop and could not find answers. So your question was how did you bounce back? I wanted to give some context to how bad it was then. 2013, the bomb, it was just awful. People who watch us now don't live in Greenville. The local media, Brutal.

Brutal.

Savage. Savage. Yeah, I mean, just. I mean, things that were political, talk radio, political pundits turned into national enquirer websites, started whereishope.com people thinking I killed you.

Yeah. And buried me somewhere.

And buried you somewhere. And we was going to be the next thing on Forensic Files.

That's so funny.

Now this stuff was really happening.

I know.

I mean, it sounds absolutely insanity, but that is the nature of stuff that was happening. Our kids catching hell at school, being mocked, made fun of for what's happening to their mom and dad. And you know, you are just an emotional mess. And literally what people don't know is the Neice Boggs and the living waters. I called even though I had intending on ending the marriage. My love for you was never in question. It was. I just did not think I could live that way no more. I had reached the end.

You didn't know if you could trust process.

Yeah, I just. I didn't. Well, I didn't know if I had any more gas in the tank because like I said, the nine year, then the bomb. And the bomb, you know, goes right to the jugular.

And that's not the only thing we'd been going through.

No. Our oldest son is a full blown drug addict.

Right. It's not just our marriage.

I'm going through an FBI investigation. I'm going through a class action lawsuit. I've got a guy who's been with me 18 years who split the church or attempted to. And I've got.

And then we've got a drug addiction.

An oldest son on drugs and robbing and stealing from us and everything. And my wife is falling apart right in front of my eyes and I don't know what to do. And our world is getting bigger by the day. There's the irony. The best of times and the worst of times. The worst of times at the same time. And trying to not let one sabotage the other. Trying to not let the boy that is the boy that is in the David sabotage the king that is in the David. Yeah. And the stress. I don't even know. I mean, you know, I got hospitalized in 2010 for insomnia. I didn't even know they hospitalized you for that. That's a whole nother thing. Just all this stuff going on. And some of this stuff, Hope, any one thing would take a family out. And we had three or four major.

Things on top of one another.

Yeah. And then, you know, then we had recession and we had a lot of our income was never from the church. It was from our side businesses. And we, you know, our credit was ruined. We almost went bankrupt. We lost houses in the recession. I was flipping houses. We had about five houses. Everybody quit paying us. I mean, it was awful. And all this is happening at the same time. So the bomb goes off. And I immediately said, what would it take to shut things down? I knew how much I had in my savings. I said, my wife needs help. I said, my wife needs help. And I'm not talking about marriage restoration. I'm not talking about family counseling. I'm talking about Hope needs help. And so I got you out of there as fast as I could because I knew it was going to be bad.

Right.

And the state, the Hope that I saw couldn't have took back. And so you left. But we didn't make a broadcast as to where you were. In fact, it was very, very private for a reason. Well, everybody thought that I had found out and I had done something to you because I was not saying anything and you're nowhere to be found. And it was always Ron and Hope. Wherever I was, you were there with me.

Right.

And all of a sudden, Hope's gone. And so, you know, media does what it does. It starts assuming and supposing and creating stories, and it was just all around terrible. So then after that, you got recovery. So you look at it, I told you, probably a 12 to 14 year process. Number one, Hope, this is not going to excite anybody. My relationship with God.

Absolutely. I tell everybody that the only way we have survived our relationship with God has been Ron's relationship with God at that time. I mean, there's no other way to explain it because it's all you got at the end of the day. And if you don't have that, you don't have that strong foundation. You know, there's so many other options. But you had a relationship with the Lord and he is the only one who sustained you.

I learned the power of crying out.

Yeah.

I learned to value his presence. I learned that all of those sermons I have been preaching, they really do work. And so you don't know what you got until it's been put to the test. And so I was able to get up and preach those fiery sermons for two decades. And then all of a sudden, I.

Need them yeah, you got to pull on them.

And so that's when you find out, is this just a gig or do I really have convictions about this thing that I preach and this thing that I do? It was my relationship with God. And guys, I'm going to tell you, I know that's not, excuse the word, sexy. I know that's not. I wanted the four points of how you got your journey back. I don't have a four points. These are the things I clung to. I cried out to God, I complained, I murmured, I wept. I didn't have anything good to say. God probably dreaded seeing me get up in the morning because he knew he was going to get an earful all day.

But even in your extreme, because you've always been an extremist in your relationship with God, and I appreciate and honor and value that. Even in your extreme relationship with the Lord, I'm sure there's people out there listening. Ron, you're the exception. You're not the rule in your relationship with God. I mean, period. You just are.

I don't want to think that, but you are.

You're one of the exceptions. I'm sure there's men and women out there listening who sit in the same seat that you were in. They've been hurt, they've been violated, and they're like, man, I didn't handle it that way. I don't have that kind of relationship with God. You know, I went out on drinking binges and I paid her back, or I paid him back, or I didn't.

Say, I didn't do nothing stupid.

Right? I was about to say, but Ron is human, too. And I don't know that we've ever admitted this, but I remember one night you told me that you went to the liquor store and you bought a bottle of liquor and you drank it all night and had to get up and preach the next morning.

I was in the shower the next morning, running cold water on me, repenting. And I was in the bathtub, floor of the shower with water hitting down on me, asking God to clear my mind and help me. Yeah, the pain was so great, I did not know what to do. I told you several times. You said, what did you feel? I said, it was like I was going hurt to death. I'd never. I didn't know that kind of pain existed in a soul. And my counterpart, the love of my life, I was looking at moving forward without her. I thought that was my only way. And I had never thought about anybody but you. I'd never Those things have never even rolled through my mind. And the thought of Ron without a hope was so depressing to me and so overwhelming. Yeah. There were times I saw things outside of God.

Right.

Not sin, but things that are not common to my habits.

Right.

And my lifestyle, just to try to get it for a minute.

So we're just. I wanted to say that and insert that because. Not that because Ron has such a. An incredible relationship with the Lord that he didn't hurt. He hurt just like anybody else hurts.

I would walk around tonight. I would walk around 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning in the subdivision, which at that time was just one circle. And if you saw. I wasn't drunk, but if you saw me, I probably looked like a drunk. I mean, walking around weeping in my pajamas. I mean, floundering. Just emotions everywhere in the. In the middle of the night. And this was, you know, after all the kids come home from a day of hell and everybody walks to their room, slams the doors.

Yeah.

Nobody's talking. Everybody's hurting.

It's chaos.

Mama's gone. The news is sitting out in front of my. I've got police sitting in my driveway.

And the kids still have 24 hours of school.

Kids still have.

And they still got projects and tests.

And their mom and they've got a function. And all the kids, you know, are hearing everything that's on the news.

Right.

And everything else. And so what it did to our family, that's why I cut my kids slack, and maybe too much slack. Because, Hope, it was not easy to be our kids.

Right.

And people say, well, you know, the Carpenter kid, man, they get. Well, I'm going to tell you something. It was not easy to live in a house.

People have no idea what our kids have had to do.

It was not easy to live in an island.

Not just this situation, I mean, just period.

And Chase started getting in fights, our oldest son, because people were talking about his mom and dad. So then I start going to the principal's office because he's whooping people's butts, you know, because of people talking about his mom.

I wouldn't want to get in a fight with Chase.

No, I wouldn't want to, especially now. But I just. It was. Use the word chaos. Looking back on it, it had to be God navigating through a hurricane.

Yeah.

Because there was. I didn't have no vision. I've talked about vision. I didn't have no vision, man. I was surviving. If I made it up that morning, through that night, it was a good Day. It was a good day. I made it still here. I'm still alive. And there was a grace a day by day grace. Take no thought for tomorrow what you will eat or drink in 24 hours a day. Yeah, there was a day by day grace. I didn't have a short, mid long range plan. I got up Tuesday to live Tuesday night, thank you, Lord. And I know that's not here again. It's not sexy. I got up Wednesday, Wednesday night, thank you, Lord. I got up Thursday. I made it Thursday night, thank you, Lord. And you and I were not communicating at all. And so the love of my life, and all of a sudden I'm in a bedroom, the bed's empty, and I'm looking up. And everything that warms my house and everything that makes me want to come home every day is gone. That was sweet. You gotta admit. That was very sweet.

That was sweet. The good news is I'm there now.

Yes, you are. And I take full advantage of it.

Yes, you do.

You know, and I have a plan for this question. It's just my relationship with God. Then there was a day by day grace. Like, his mercies are new every morning.

Okay, that's amazing. And that is about how I survived was a day by day grace.

See, when you let me. I know you want to go. The thing about this is when you don't have the. You said people out there that say, well, I didn't have a relationship with God, then it all becomes cognitive.

Yeah.

You sit down with a counselor and.

If you can afford a counselor, they're.

Going through your head. They're going through your head. Your head is a part of your soul, but it's not all of your soul. And your soul has been. Your soul is broken and fragmented. And so it was the God relationship I had. You know, David said, he restores my soul. My soul. And I needed something no medicine and no doctor could do. I needed God Almighty to take my inside and put me back together. Because I was broken and fragmented.

Yes, he does restore our soul. But Ron. But was there any, like, God encounters, defining moments that kind of like gave you hope? Because you were just. There was no hope. We were getting a divorce. I was over here at Living Waters. You're over here trying to survive. Trying to even get up and eat and preach and manage.

I wanted it over quickly. Hope. I went. I got to. I got to. As soon as I got you settled and I wanted to make sure you were taken care of. I got a divorce lawyer immediately. And here again, it looks like, dang, man, he's cold, ain't he? I couldn't take it no more. And I just. I want to get it over. Just what's the quickest way if it's uncontested? I just. You know what? The pain was so bad, I got to start finding some way to get it in my rearview mirror.

I would have contested you, though.

Well, maybe I'd have fought you, but see, you wouldn't have contested.

No, no, no, no.

You wouldn't have contest me much because I was willing to let you have everything. I didn't care.

I said, no, no, no, you're not doing this.

Yes, I did have several God encounters, and I don't know that we'll get them all in today because this is, you know, taking a little longer than we thought. Skipping a lot of time. What was a couple of months, baby? I can't remember.

Six, eight weeks before you had a God encounter before?

No, before that night when I. That day when I came.

Yeah, it was about two months. Yeah.

Okay. So the only communication we had was, you know, about this bill. Where'd you put this? Cause you did all that. Then there I was, left with it and, you know, something about the kids, and sometimes it's fighting. We'd call and, you know, Mr. Niece Bob would have to get on there and mediate because it'd go downhill in a hurry. It just. It was bad. And so I had this night. I'm gonna skip about what in my mind seems two months, maybe a little more of. We're just moving down that road. You know, we're gonna. We're splitting up. I went to bed that night, but.

Let me stop here. The whole time, though, I kept saying, no, we're not getting a divorce. I said, I'm believing for a miracle.

That was your side? Yeah.

I'm believing for a miracle. Go ahead.

And I will say this about redemption, because redemption is a different church. When I got up and announced, and I remember the words I used, I'm not seeking to restore the relationship. I didn't get any agreement from that congregation.

I remember your assistant, time Carol was sitting there, she said, when you said that, I'm not seeking to restore this relationship. She said, every one of us on our row and behind me, I heard the devil is a lie.

Yeah, they're different. They're different.

They helped us fight for our marriage, too.

You know, I gotta say something. I've tried to do this without crying. This was locally not we. We didn't have that kind of national Prominence then, but locally, this was the shot heard around the world.

Yeah.

And I remember that Sunday after the news was. I wondered, will anybody be there? I just. It was such a bomb, like the worst possible thing that could happen. I remember people were lined up at the doors. Remember the place was packed. And I remember nobody agreed with me.

Except them women that flew in, trying to want to start dating you.

And that was not women. That was a woman. Week two, that was one woman. So she takes it, tries to exaggerate it. So, anyway, I had this night. It was a night before workday because I remember I had to call off all my appointments. So it might have been a Monday night, because Tuesday's my big day. Just the most miserable. Just miserable. Hope, I can't explain. It was. It was not. It was not natural. There was something supernatural. The one thing I liken it to is when Jacob wrestled with God. And, you know.

And God won.

God won. And, you know, David, excuse me. Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life. I had a night, I mean, where by the time the sun was coming up, I was sitting up in the bed, screaming at the ceiling, what do you want? It? Was that real? I'm screaming at him, leave me alone. What do you want? I look awful. I look disheveled. I got bags under my eyes. The sheets are tore up. You know, I just look like a mess. And as clearly as I'm talking in this microphone, man, the times I've heard God speak on this level have been very few. He said, call her. And he gave me this exact word. You tell her you will not abandon her. You want to tell them what was going on.

I'll never forget that day. That day. I mean, it had been about two months, and I'd lost 23 pounds.

You weren't suicidal, but you was in a bad place.

It was very low. Very, very. Because I was seeing no movement toward reconciliation. And I was praying, believing I was doing the work. I was going to counseling. I was going to a psychiatrist. I was. I had abandoned everything. I had no car. I had no phone. I was doing everything they told me to do in the word. Praying, fasting, and seeing no hope. So I was getting very discouraged. And that day I got up and it was the lowest day. I felt so hopeless that day. And I went out for a walk. And I remember just feeling like it was in the country. So I asked the Lord, I said, I wish you would send one of those big trucks around the corner and just take me out. Just kill me. It would Be better for Ron, be better for church, be better for my kids, Be better for me. And I remember looking down when I was walking on that old country road, and there was a daisy that had popped up out of the asphalt. And it was like. It was like a movie. It all happened like at once, like cinematic. The daisy popped up and then I saw this bird fly out of this old, desolate, burnt up fall field. And the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, if I care for that and I take care of that, how much more hope am I going to take care of you? And hope just sprung up that was happening right then in that morning. Like 11 o', clock, 10 o' clock in the morning when I was on a walk, hope just sprang up in me. And I turned around and started walking back toward the house. And when I went around the corner, Pastor Lee was coming to me. He said, I've been looking for you. He said, ron has called and he wants your heart sink and he wants to talk to you. And, well, I. I was discouraged. Yeah, I was like, oh, no, I'm feeling good now. Ron's called. And then I went back up to my room and I started praying. I said, God, please prepare me, Lord. What do I need to do? There's something I'm missing here. And he took me to scripture in Samuel, where David goes to buy a field. And he. And the guy said, no, you're the king. He said, here, have it. Have the field. You don't have to pay me anything. And David said, I will not offer anything to the Lord that doesn't cost me and the whole thing.

So people hear us talk about tithe and offerings, need to hear this.

So that spoke to me right then. I was like, but, God, I don't have anything. All I had was $1,000 to my name. I had $1,000 because you'd taken the credit cards, you'd shut down the bank account. I had nothing and. But I had kept $1,000. And the Holy Spirit said, give it all to Lee and Denise. So before you called, I ran down there and I said, okay, God, this is all I have. I've given you everything else.

Literally all you have.

I'm in this process. I'm giving you all I have. Slid it over to Lee and Denise. I said, I'm believing for a miracle. And then you called five minutes later. I said, hello, and we did a little small talk.

They were in the room with me, weren't they? Yeah. So, like a speakerphone.

Yep. And we did a little small Talk. And you said, hope, I don't know what this means. Yep. But you said to me, hope, I don't know what this means.

Yeah, I was scared.

It was like a precursor.

I was scared.

And you said, but I've wrestled, excuse me, with the Lord all night. And he told me to tell you that I will not abandon you. And when you said that, a cry. Do you remember that came up out of me like. Like a whale. And I bent over on the desk and I said, I got my miracle. I got my. And you said, no, wait, wait, wait, wait. That don't mean we're getting back together. And I said, no, because I knew I had already. I mean, I preached it up until that point. If God starts a thing, he'll finish. It's already finished. So that that word that you spoke, that I will not abandon you, was just sealed in the spirit for me that day that, yeah, it's going to be long. It's going to be hard. It's going to be a rough road. It's going to be rocky to reconcile. But God started it right then, and I knew that he was going to complete it.

And we'll take this into a part 2 for sake of time, but let me shut this down right here. And I can. I can almost hear people saying, you know, we've gone through this right now, and I'm hanging on every word. I wanted him to give me a plan where I can come back, but we're right back to hope. My relationship with God.

Yeah.

Where did that come from? I heard God. You sowing that seed, where did that come from? I heard God. You heard God. There's no way to get around this. I'm not a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 preacher.

And everybody's story and everybody's reconciliation and everybody's process is different. Everybody's.

But without that relationship with God, we wouldn't have made it.

No, we wouldn't.

We wouldn't have made it because it was responding to those that kept us in the game. And then. Yeah. And then kind of started bringing us out. I think in our next podcast, I can give some definitives. Okay. I had to do this, and I had to do this, you know, but in this one, I think the underbelly is, had I not have known God on a personal level, there's no way.

You could have walked away.

We wouldn't be married.

No, we wouldn't.

We wouldn't be married. And if we weren't married, we wouldn't be here, because there's something about Run and hope together that Ron can't by himself. And for that matter, Hope can't buy herself either. And so God did a miraculous thing. Let's shut this one down and just whet their appetite for the next one. I think I can be less emotional and give them some more practical. I think the word's practical. Some more practical steps. And basically, I want to take it this way. How do you rebuild trust? Forgiveness was not hard for me. Yeah, I didn't want no harm to come to you. I didn't want nothing to hurt you.

Rebuilding that trust.

But rebuilding that trust, can I just say, it was the process.

It was the process that saved our.

Marriage because it makes you vulnerable again. And so, you know, after you've been slammed like that, last thing you want to be is vulnerable to that same pain. So we'll talk about that in the next one. Guys, I appreciate you hearing us out. I hope that the story is helping somebody because, you know, there's a lot of other things we'd probably rather talk about. But the fact is we felt like we needed to today because I haven't shared some of these things. And anyway, it is real raw and relevant. So I'll let you close it out.

Thank you guys for being here. Share this if you know somebody going through a tough time in their marriage, in their relationships, if they've been violated, they've been hurt, you know that somebody needs hope. Just share it. Put it on your Facebook page like it subscribe. We love you. And you know what? That's why we do what we do. We want to help people. We want you to live the very best life that you can. Marriage is not supposed to be tolerated. It's supposed to be celebrated. And we believe you can do it. You got it in you. We love you. It's Ron and Hope Unfiltered. Real, raw and relevant.

On the next episode of Ron and.

Hope Unfiltered Last podcast. We kind of exposed you, but let's expose me.

I had been nine years with a very broken version of you.

We had gotten to a place where we were just like, can we overcome this?

Well, it's been tough. My kids and I looked at you.

You were like, I'm done with this.

I'm.