By Lavern and Ronda Nissley
How we were forever affected by a marriage retreat and home invasion in March, 1990 - 11 years into our marriage.
 
In March of 1990 we were invited to attend a weekend Marriage Seminar by a friend of ours. At that time, we had been married for 11 years, had 3 kids (1, 7 and 10 years of age) and were well immersed in our respective careers – Lavern as a Pastor, Ronda as a Financial Analyst. We didn’t really feel like OUR marriage needed help, but we agreed to go to find resources for “the other couples” in our church.

That weekend changed the course of our marriage in two important ways. (1) We made a commitment to pray together on a daily basis;  (2) We became intentional about developing a “one-flesh” marriage where we worked side-by-side – completing each other instead of competing with each other.

That weekend also birthed within us a calling and heart passion for marriage ministry. We envisioned the rest of our lives invested in other marriages as we ourselves lived out God’s original blueprint for marriages from Genesis 2:21-25.
At the end of the weekend we gathered our children around us and let them know that things would be different – that we were committing to pray with each other and for our family on a daily basis. Little did we know how important that commitment would become in the days and weeks ahead.

Two days later we woke up to discover the incomprehensible. While we were sleeping, our home was invaded and an unknown male entered through a basement window and victimized our 10-year old daughter.  Ronda found our daughter in her bedroom – pale and trembling uncontrollably.  It took us days to comprehend fully what had happened.

In the aftermath – the trip to the ER, the interviews, the detectives, the counselors, the reactions of family and friends, the investigation, the suspects – we sought to make sense of the senseless. We were scared. We were angry – angry at God; angry at the offender (whoever he was); angry at the police; angry at insensitive comments. The next night we all slept in one room with the door barricaded and a baseball bat nearby – the man had threatened to come back and kill her if she told anyone. A friend offered us a handgun. We were ready to do anything to protect our family.

Out of our hurt, we prayed. Within a month we launched a marriage group in our living room. We taught our first marriage class, and we shared openly about our journey while attempting to practice what we were teaching. In hindsight, we believe the principles and skills we learned kept our marriage from blowing apart during that traumatic and stressful time in our lives. Gradually, the healing came, and we began to put our lives back together. The offender was apprehended 18 months later in Florida.

We continued to lead marriage groups and retreats within our church and around the country, while continuing with our “day jobs” – dreaming about some day working together exclusively in marriage ministry. That “some day” opportunity arrived in 2005 with an invitation to assume directorship of the fledgling Marriage Savers of Clark County – the predecessor of Marriage Resource Center of Miami Valley.
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We believe there is another type of home invasion experienced all too often by far too many families across this country – DIVORCE. It tears apart families and destroys the innocence of children.  We commit ourselves with the same intensity with which we defend our own family to supporting other marriages and equipping couples with the tools to go the distance. We commit to walking the journey with couples - not having arrived ourselves, but always learning. We commit to encourage, inspire, support and raise up other champions for the cause of healthy marriages.
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What we do is not just a job….it’s our life.

By Lavern Nissley, Tuesday@10:10 blog post

I am a junkie of data and stories related to marriage and marriage education. Every day dozens of articles and posts come my way that address various factors in marriage dynamics and research.

So what do I do with these articles and posts? How would I be able to access one quickly in the future?

Glad you asked! An app called Flipboard has made capturing such information into visually pleasing "magazines" super easy. I'd like to connect you with one of the magazines I curate.

• Magazine name: MARRIAGE STORIES, RESEARCH, STATS, TIPS, QUOTES
• # of articles: 125
• # of  followers: 402
• # of page flips: 12,930

​How to connect to this magazine

• In a browser simply go to http://flip.it/LfPZm and SCROLL DOWN. You'll want to BOOKMARK and FOLLOW.
• If you have a smart phone, look for the Flipboard app. Find this magazine and others I curate under username @lavernn. 

Hope you find this useful. Realize that articles I "flip" into this magazine are not necessarily ones I support or agree with. But they do inform our understanding of what's going on and happening in the marriage field.