Ron’s Journey Back | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Foreign. Hello, everybody.

We ain't even change clothes.

Here we are. We're back. Ron and Hope. Unfiltered.

Let's just be honest with what we decided to do. We. We in a thing. So we decided to stay in a.

What?

We were in a groove.

We were in a groove.

So, I mean, we. We did. We usually do these different weeks. We just said, you know what? We gonna flow right on into part two.

Yes. Part two.

I said, do you think I should change my shirt? And I said, well, I'll just sit here and. Why does it say purple?

It's the brand.

The shirts. What color is it? It's aqua blue because I tried to match it with my tennis shoe and you said it wasn't right.

That's wrong. That's aqua blue. And that's Kelly green.

Usually I have very good fashion color sense.

Oh, Lord.

But I missed it today.

So drippy.

Did I miss it?

You missed it.

I do drip.

Yeah.

That's why I have to have a maintenance team buying me on something.

That's right. That's who you are, Ron.

Need a mop in a bucket right now, do you? Yes.

Oh, call Clark.

No.

Where's Clark?

The carpet soaked underneath the.

You're retarded.

Dripping so hard.

Anyway, we need to laugh after how heavy podcast we titled it.

No, y' all titled it. I think it was. What with the revelation. With the revelation hangover. With the revelation of my night preaching with a hanger. My night of weakness and my.

But that should encourage people listening because, listen, we are real. This is real, raw and relevant. And pain does not discriminate. Pain touches everybody's life. And even though, Ron, I always say, I mean, you're a unicorn. You just. You walk with God on a different level. But even in your relationship with the Lord, you had such a weak moment where the pain was so bad.

It was all about pain.

Right? And that's the only reason.

And I knew that that wasn't going to stop the pain. I just wanted some relief for me. Yes.

And that's the only reason any of us do what we do, because pain is so bad.

Trying to numb it, trying to self medicate.

But here we are today in 2024, living our best life. Do we have. Do we have no trouble?

Oh, gosh, absolutely do what we do and not have trouble.

We have trouble. We have trauma. We have tough times. But we are living our best life and we love each other and we put in the work and we've done the hard work. We stayed together. We followed God, was it easy? Absolutely not. It's been a journey.

It has been our healing. I heard, I was told by someone a few days ago, I don't mean I hope that they're wrong and that they're lying. I just. I hate the statistic. I was told less than 3% of marriages that face infidelity stay together. Less than 3. Hope.

Because it's such a hurdle to overcome.

Yeah. The trauma of the.

There's so much work to overcome.

I don't even know if you try, because I think it looks so overwhelming. It does. I remember that. I remember once, God gave me that message I talked about last week. I'm not abandoning you. Those were the first times in my mind I started entertaining, you know, trying to make it. And I remember, like, I don't have enough gas in my tank for what this is going to be.

Well, you've been through a lot. Not just. We said this in the last podcast. Not just what we've been through, just life in general. Just church planting, no money, lawsuits, staff issues. Just so many programs, so many things we had been through. You managing growth, your poor adrenal glands probably fried. Fried, really. And I mean, there's so many. And that's the other thing that's so. It just compounds. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It doesn't just affect your mind or your heart or your emotions. It's holistic. It affects your body. It affects your health. You know, I was away for nine months. You probably needed to go away for nine months after that to get whole yourself. I mean, you had really been affected.

I'd been affected and I was grieving you being gone.

Yeah.

I didn't like a world that you weren't in. I'm just being honest. I'm not trying to get points here. That wasn't the world I want. I was very slow, Hope, in picking a wife. I took my time. And you were so aggravated at times of it. We waited years and years before we got married because I was so picky, because I knew I had a feeling my life was going to be bumpy and challenging. And I knew what kind of woman I thought it was going to take to walk with me through that. And I was the kind of guy I didn't want to get married but one time. And so, you know, I was fully invested in you. I didn't save a little bit over here for nobody. I was all the way in and that was taken from me. And so I'm grieving that on top of managing a mega Ministry.

Right.

You know, and the kids.

The kids that are going ham.

And so I promised to be more practical and not tears and drama and crying this time. Because your first question, how did you make it okay? I think the rest of the things that I did actually were not things I did. They were things you did that helped you make. Let me tell you some things you did that helped me make it. And I need everybody to hear this, especially those who have or are going through this. I've always says when you have violated somebody, you have got to give them permission to over scrutinize in the area of the violation.

That's true. We don't like it.

So when we finally. I think you were coming back. Help me, sweetheart. Two weeks and two weeks. So you were there seven months, then you were coming back and forth.

I was there nine months and then it was both. I came home and I went every other weekend to live.

I knew it was some back and forth. It's been a while now. Forgive us if our details are a little off. You were back and forth. I remember every area and everything that you would have used to maintain that other lifestyle. You exposed that to me. So there was never an attitude. If I wanted to see a receipt, right? There was you. You. You didn't have a phone, Right. For two years you didn't have a phone. You didn't have. You had a car, but you didn't have a car. I'm not going nowhere. I remember one Christmas you told me to buy you bakeware. I mean, you don't do bakeware. Tremendous cook, but that ain't what you want for Christmas. And I remember you because I'm gonna stay right here. I'm gonna make this home warm again. I'm gonna reestablish myself as the mother and as the wife that I always knew I could be. And you allowed me to scrutinize the areas that at one time caused me pain.

Right.

That's how I stayed in the game. If there would have been this hiding.

There would have been a civil war.

Shadiness. Why do you want to see it?

Yeah.

Don't you trust? You didn't say don't you trust here. So there was full disclosure on your part of everything that beforehand was concealed and off limits. And we know what those things were, right? I don't have to tell everybody those things. We know what they were that helped me stay in the game. Number two. I've always said trust is repeated reality. You realized that this was not going to happen in Two or three weeks. You came back, like you said, two years. You laid down roots for the long haul. And the thing that I appreciate is you didn't do it with an attitude. Well, I'm doing this so you can get your act together. It was loving, and it was from a vantage point. You knew the pain that had been created. And I will do whatever. I don't know if you were taught that by Denise or I don't know if that was just something God put in your heart, but it was whatever. And it was whatever. With kindness and a smile. And I won't hurt you. I won't. You know, anything that bothered me, you quit. Anything that you know was a trigger, you stayed away from.

Now, let's stop here. Last podcast, we kind of exposed you, but let's expose me. Did I always do it with a smile to your face? To my. In my. In my heart, I'd be like, oh.

So we're real wrong. What was tough on during that process?

Once I'd been home about a year, I'd be like, oh, you know, I've been doing this for a year. Then a Two years. I've been doing this two years. And I'd go to. But I'd go to God. God, this is tough on me. I feel like I've paid the price. I feel like I've done X, Y, and Z. But I. But I did it. But, yes, there were times, because I'm human. I am not God. I don't glow in the dark. There are times my feelings did get in the way, but. But I knew that I had to do it. I knew that I needed to do it. It's just like anything, you know, I don't want to not eat French fries every single meal, but I don't do it.

Yep. I think in the Bible, we call this process. I talk about it in our marriage conference, you know, rebuilding trust. I talk about the five steps of rebuilding trust. It's called restitution. Restitution is where you see the principle in the Bible where you go above and beyond what was taken.

Right. You give back more.

So Job, everything he had, he lost, but God gave him double. Zacchaeus said, I will repay fourfold that which I have taken from anybody. If the thief be found, he must repay seven times.

Seven times.

So it's retribution, and you were coming back, doing unnecessary. Going above and beyond to show me. To show me your heart. Things that probably.

And that is a necessary process. You may not like it, you may grit your teeth doing it, but you have to embrace first. This is a necessary process to rebuild trust, period.

And not doing a lot of going out because that was where some of the problems began happening. And the phone, you not having that. I don't think people understand how hard that was for you. You are Miss Social Light. You are extremely vocal. You are in the midst of people. You are the life of the party. You are the ray of sunlight in the room. To remove you from that was an unbelievable. Taking you out of your personality.

But even saying that, I think that was even a role cover up. A cover up role that I played because growing up, you know, I had to be the cheerleader in the house growing up in my home to try to divert some of that tension in the house. So it was a role that I started playing that maybe really wasn't who I was. And you can attest now, I mean, the last 11 years, I'm not nearly what I used to be. And I like to say, Ron, we'll go for an hour and we'll leave. I mean, because now, I mean, it was. Well.

And there was a time you couldn't get enough.

Yeah. So God has really, in the healing process, balanced that in me.

I agree. I agree. So the restitution kept me in the game. The attitude kept me in the game. I think if you'd have done it with an attitude that had been hard on me, you know, feeling like you did this to me, now you got an attitude about that would have been really hard on me. So if you did have one, you went with God and took care of it because you didn't do it around me and you didn't press me. When can I have a phone?

No.

And I think that story needs to be told.

Yeah.

Because restitution repeated reality. Going above and beyond doing things daily. That was proving to me, I'm all yours. I'm not divided, I'm all yours. And that's important because you can't. A marriage. I gave my heart away and it got crushed. So what do you do? You take it back. Take it back and you build up walls all the way around it. Okay. But for a marriage to work, there's no way it can work without giving your heart away.

Right.

So the last time I gave it away, bam. And so you're giving it away with your hands shaking the second time. But it won't make it if you don't give it away. Marriage can't. You got to give it all to marriage. You can't give a portion. And I knew that. And you did the things that it took to as much as I could reasonably feel safe again. Then here's one of the miracles. You never asked for one. I don't remember you asking for one. One time I went and bought you an iPhone. It was about two years. You seem fine, really. You act like. I think you made something to the effect when I gave it to you. I don't even know if I want one anymore, you know, because it was actually peaceful. And I remember I took you to a restaurant, I think.

Yep.

I took you to a restaurant and I bought you an Apple iPhone. And I remember sitting there having dinner with you, and I said, that's something I want to give you. And I pulled it out. And I do remember my hand shaking. Not because of the phone. The phone back then was four or five hundred dollars. It was what I was saying to you.

Right. And we both burst into tears.

Trust the table. That basically said trust has been restored. Because any relationship, good and bad, are sustained by communication.

Right.

And I was giving you your communication back. And I do remember tears going down my face and tears going down yours, and you looking at me like, are you sure? And I remember I was nervous. I remember that was a very vulnerable feeling because, you know, that at one time was a source of great pain. And I gave that back to you, and it was what it was saying to you. And I remember that was a big, big deal in our coming back. I'll tell you another one that helped me stay in the game. I jumped on your inner circle the other night for the first time, and.

They loved that, by the way.

Did they?

Yes.

You got some good feedback on it. I jumped in there and made my first appearance on Hope's Inner Circle. Bishop Jakes. I don't know about a spiritual father, but for years, he was our pastor, and he hooked us up with a place called Blessings Ranch. And I think it's still up and running, but it's moved. It was out in the middle of nowhere, Colorado, when. I mean, nowhere. I remember me and you drove like, this thing can't be out here. Middle of nowhere, snowing, pouring down. He fixed us up with the people there. And it is a counseling center. Somewhat different than Denise. Very cognitive. And I remember just being in that room with that counselor and just going through it and just going through it and just regurgitating it. And then me and you would get mad. Then one of our feelings would get hurt because you happen to talk about all this stuff. And I remember, I don't know what we were probably supposed to be there a week. It was about third or fourth day in. I just looked at you, and I looked at the counselor. I said, I can't do this no more. And God had put in my heart Psalm 122. When we were released from the captivity, we were like those who dreamed again. And I looked at you, and I looked at the counselor and said, I'm not going to do any more counseling. I think she kind of got offended. She didn't like that.

You were like, I'm done with this.

I'm done. And I said, I got to get out of here and I got to go dream. And I took your hand and we walked out and we got out in that car and started driving through across that snowy Colorado and ended up in that town where. Colorado State, Grand Junction. And it was so cold that water fountains were frozen in the act. It was so cold. And me and you went and walked around that city with a cup of.

Coffee, talked about what we wanted our.

Life to be, what do we want our life to be, and what do we want to do? And. And what did we see instead of.

Dwelling on all that had come up.

To that time to stay in the game. Man, I feel his presence. Sometime you have to dream of a tomorrow that is so great, it destroys the pain of yesterday.

Yeah, it's true.

And if you don't ever start looking at something else, then all you have to look is the pain in the.

Ashes of your life.

And we had been doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it, and I couldn't take it anymore. I'm like, I've got. I've got to think of a day where me and you laugh again.

Right?

Let's go somewhere. We never gone.

We needed some.

Let's go do something we had never done. I went back to the church and remodeled it. Yeah, you remember that? I pulled the whole stage out. Everything. Remodeled it. I just. I had to. I had to get my eyes on something that would just pull me out of that pain. That was a significant day. I don't know. I didn't know it was that significant at that time because I thought I was just sick of counseling. But looking back on it, I think it was a turning point where we started turning our focus forward instead of just continuing to eat this painful meal all the time. And so here again, how did you stay in the game? My relationship with God, your restitution, your repeated reality, teaching me to trust again, God moments, giving you back the cell phone, you proving to me that you could do. You could use all those things for all the right reasons. The God moment of dreaming again and me and you beginning to focus in on what do we the rest of our life to look like. We can't go back and fix the mess we made.

Can't.

Okay, it's done. We need the grace to accept it, understand it's a part of our journey. God will use it in some way. But I've got to look at something else. And we did. And I think for the most part, we still do. Even at 55, we are probably innovating more and creating more.

We're always talking about the future than.

We ever have in our life. Always talking about the things. Maybe not, maybe that's debatable, but in my mind we would be. And so those are five things right there, you know, and it wasn't just one thing. It was a lot of things. I'll tell you another thing that nobody talks about because they want to talk about your great love. One for another. But my mindset, I. I just thought about things when I wasn't with you. I had so much time to myself and I would envision, you know, my kids going to three or four houses on Thanksgiving.

Right.

Because you're remarried or. Man, I didn't want that.

Right.

And you know, and blended families and I respect so much people who made it work because it is work. I just. I didn't want that. And those things just held me. They held me in the game. I didn't want to be a single pastor. I wanted to help me. And this was one of the biggest ones. And call it selfish, but I'm just going to be honest. I had been nine years with a very broken version of you. And I knew in my heart you were going to be healed. I knew you were. There's nobody that can go away seven months and turn all their attention on God.

Nine months.

Nine months and turn all their attention on them that you can't. I don't even know many people ever that have gone through anything that intensive.

Right.

A lot of people have a counseling every day, every Thursday at 2. That ain't what you had. I couldn't bear the thought of me living all those years with the broken hope and sending the held hope off to somebody else. I'm like, if there's a version of her where God makes her whole, I want to enjoy that person. And I had hope that God would do that for you.

Have you enjoyed me?

Amazingly. Do you remember how you said it made you cry? You know when you were just. I just didn't know what was going on inside of you, and you were all over the place, and you would be asleep at night, and what would I do?

Lay your hand over my head?

I wouldn't touch you. I said, God, give my wife back. Heal her mind. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what she's thinking, but bring me my wife back. And somehow I think in the quietest part of me, I never lost that hope that he would. And you take all this stuff and put it together. That's how I made. Wasn't one, two. All of it. And when I got to thinking about how. Listen how much I love the broken hope. What would my love be like, one that's been healed.

Talk about it. Ron Carpenter. Tell me.

I mean, tell me about your love. I was pretty. I was pretty crazy about you when you weren't doing well.

How deep is your love?

Very deep. Very deep. So, you know, I don't know if we've spent all our time. We went over time on our last one. That's my not so short answer on how I made it. A lot of God moments. A lot of you doing the right things. A lot of moments where we obeyed. Restitution, dreaming again, you know, seeds being sown. It was a lot.

I really want to emphasize the importance of.

Excuse me, babe.

Getting help, like counseling. We went to Living Waters. There's tons of places. Because when you're in the middle of trauma like that.

All your discernment.

Hard. Yes. It's very hard to see things correctly because you're always seeing it from your side and from a lot of times through your pain. And I remember, even at Blessings Ranch, this was the last day. This is the day that you said, I can't do this anymore. I remember they had taken us into a boardroom and we were fighting. And we had come to a place right there in that boardroom where we said, maybe we should just go on with the divorce.

It was bad that.

I just don't know if we can get over it over. Or if it's always going to be this way. I mean, it was like your way, my way. You couldn't see that it wasn't personal towards you. And I was trying to say this had nothing to do with you. Your ego was involved. You were like, well, you must not have loved me. Your manhood was like, well, you chose somebody over me. And you don't, you know. And I was like, it's not you. I'm the broken one over here. I'm. I was acting out of pain. I mean, we'd gotten to a place where we were just like, can we overcome this? And we.

That's when I said, I got to.

Get out of here. That's when you said, I got to get out of here. But we continued to have somebody hold our hand and navigate us through when we would get to impasses like that.

We just didn't have somebody there. We submitted to it.

We did.

There's a big difference. We didn't just have somebody that had given us advice.

So my question is, you know, how bad do you want to be healed? How bad do you want to get over whatever area it is? Yours may not be married.

And there are people saying, well, you know, good for you. You know, I'm a real estate agent or I'm a schoolteacher. I can't run off somewhere for several months.

No, you can't.

You had a full time job. You resigned your place at the church. I did.

And my pay.

You resigned your pay and your salary. Yes. Just like we do other pastors and we restore them. You gave up your credentials. Yeah, everything. You did all of that. And we decided, you know, together to take basically our life savings and put it toward this effort. So I don't know your position. I don't know what you. That was our choice. That was the road we decided to do. And because I will tell you, even though at that time I didn't see us remaining together, I didn't want nothing bad to happen to you. And I knew in the state you were in, it wasn't going anywhere good. And I wanted, even if it wasn't with me, I wanted you to be okay. And so.

But having that outside voice, several outside voices, several is so important. So when I meet with young couples or older couples or whatever who are going through traumatic events in their marriage or in their life, whether it be, you know, infidelity or it's drugs or it's alcohol or porn or whatever it is that's bringing that wedge and separating what God wants to be amazing. You know, I just have to ask them, you know, how bad do you want it? How. What are you willing to stop to fix this, and what are you willing to start to fix this? So don't tell me you want a great marriage if you're not willing to do the necessary steps. Ron and I will jump right in there with our people, but I'll back right out as quick as I jumped in. If I don't See you putting in the work. Because I know what it takes and it is work.

You can't fool you. You know what it takes.

That's right.

You know what it takes.

So, you know, seek out help, get you a counselor. You know you struggle with anger, go to anger management. You know you struggle with porn, get you an accountability person and go to porn and sex therapy. Do whatever it takes so that you can break the cycles in your life and you can live a whole and happy and free life that you, you don't have to hide, you don't have to delete, you don't have to sneak. Man, that's a terrible way to live. I've lived it and I don't want that for you. And you don't have to live that way.

Hope won't go down another trail. That had to be terrible.

It's awful. It brought another amount of stress and pressure of what I was trying to say.

When I look back on all you had to go through to conceal, I'm like, how is that any fun? It looks awful, right?

It's another amount of pressure and anxiety. It's just the ploy and plot of the enemy to pull you deeper. Just a. It's an. It's another pull to, to weave you in a web that he hopes and believes you will never be strong enough to get out of.

I remember Bishop Tony Miller looked at me and you rest his soul, he's with Jesus now. And he said, I'm telling you, he said, this is a great loss for the enemy. He said, because this was designed to take y' all out, right? He said it wasn't designed to hurt you, harm you, or set you back. He said it was designed to take you out. And in the natural, it should have and it didn't. But God let me end with this. I got a great little two minute story to end on. That next May we had resumed. We were coming back together. We were making it work. We had announced it to the church. Standing ovation, we said, pray for them. He said, we got road less traveled. We need your prayer. This is tough. And they did. But we carried back on with our regular may, you know, 2:12, which I think was Kingdom Momentum at that time. And my biggest impact on my life, my biggest mentor is Dr. Miles Monroe. And I remember still feeling the pain and the residue of it, you know, this is what, seven months later, eight months later, and we're just starting to put it together. And I had one of them talks where he always found a way to stay around with me a couple extra hours after the night. So you know what I'm doing? I'm having a mini pity party. Well, it's been tough, you know, and my kids and you know, and Hope. Hope really seems to be doing better. And you know, we're gonna. It was just. It wasn't a full blown, but it was a mini pity party. And he just sits there and he looks at me and he don't say nothing. He just keeps smiling. He had this grin, which honestly at the minute I didn't appreciate because nothing I was telling him was funny.

We were in the green room at the table.

Were you with me?

Yes.

I wouldn't, you know, I wasn't telling him anything funny. I was telling him stuff that was, you know, this had been the worst seven months of our life, bar none. And after I got finished, he looked at me and said, ah, Ron, you know, it wasn't Jamaican or. Oh, Ron. He said, you were in the best place.

Bohemian.

Yeah, best place. That's right, his Bahamas. And I'm like, best place. Man, this has been awful. He said, you've been reduced all the way down to him.

He said, you have no other options but him.

You've been reduced all the way to him. When life reduces you all the way to him. You got all you need.

So good.

We love you guys.

So good.

Well, if we've helped anybody, statistics show there's a lot of marriages weathering this kind of stuff. And maybe if it's not you, you know somebody and if this will help them, just, you know, anytime you subscribe, like share, it helps. But maybe it can help somebody else. Because this is real raw and relevant.

It is.

This is real raw and relevant. But we're willing to do it because we love you. We love you. And if our story can help you, we don't have an S on our shirt and we don't wear a cape. We've been very human, but the grace of God in our weakness. He's strong.

Yes, he is.

And I just thank God for that. And I give him all the honor, glory and praise. I love my baby and I'm glad that we get to share this time with you. So I'll let you give the clarity.

Listen, if you are listening and you say, man, I'd love to sit up under them and get more of this teaching, more of this anointing, what God's done in our life, I would encourage you to join my inner circle. You just go to hopesinnercircle.com you join the first month's free. You get my book for free. You get a lot of resources. We meet twice a month via Zoom. We have Dare Daniels, John Maxwell, Christine Cain, Real Talk Kim. Ron Carpenter will be with us in August. Just powerful teaching on how to live this life and live it the way God wants you to live it, in all areas. Body, soul, spirit, in the natural, in your marriage, in your ministry, in your finances, in your mind. I would love for you to be a part of the inner circle. We have over 700 people in the inner circle in five countries. So come join us, men. You're allowed. The word works for you, too. So go to hopesinnercircle.com and come join us and come grow with us. We love you so much. Thanks for being here today at Ron and Hope Unfiltered.