Outskirts Press, INC.

“Nothing you could say or do can change anything between us. Don’t even try. I don’t want anything to do with you except to cooperate on raising our son.”

Bud Shipley heard these words in response to an effort to find out what he could do to save his marriage. His wife, Emily, and their six year old son had flown to River View, Georgia in July to help her grandmother recover from a stroke. Barely a month later she had filed for divorce. Her attorney had advised her to treat it as a hostile divorce. Bud was told that he needed to stay away from her or risk a restraining order that would also limit his ability to see their six year old son. Her harsh statement and the divorce came from Emily’s conviction that Bud was having an affair. Reluctantly, Emily listened to Bud that morning. She learned that he had made an effort to get to River View and help her with her grandmother last August, but had encountered her and Danny apparently already in an established relationship with another man and he left without talking to her. By that evening, she had finally checked with someone she could trust and learned that Bud hadn’t had an affair. Both she and Bud would have to move past months of false assumptions and find a way back to the marriage that they had committed to God seven years ago. This is a story of the role of faith in bringing Emily and Bud through all of the human fears that accompany the attempt to restore a marriage that has gone so far astray. It assumes that a marriage based on promises before God is always worth saving and that God is capable of leading us though even the most difficult challenges.