Book Review: Healing Your Marriage When Trust Is Broken, by Cindy Beall

Quote from Harvest House website:

"A few days after an ordinary Valentine’s Day, Cindy Beall’s life changed forever. She listened with disbelief to her husband, Chris, a respected pastor, confess to pornography addiction, numerous affairs, and the startling news that a woman was pregnant with his child.

With raw honesty and intimate knowledge of pain and of God’s power to resurrect something new out of the debris of betrayal, Cindy reveals how to:

• seek guidance, counseling, and prayer support when deceptions surface
• help the family heal from the grief and humiliation
• rebuild trust after porn, sex, and other addictions undermine a relationship
• protect a marriage from lies and unfaithfulness
• rely on God to pursue forgiveness and move forward in new promises

Cindy’s compassion, grasp of God’s Word, and the Bealls’ remarkable story will help wives and husbands trust God with their broken hearts and follow His leading, hope, and redemption."

This book is Cindy's very open account of the pain she endured while seeking God's will for her marriage. If you feel that you have a reason to leave your spouse, if you want out because he or she has hurt you badly, this is an excellent book to read for encouragement. Cindy's bottom line is that nothing is impossible with God.

I love what she says about forgiveness:

"...the key to learning true forgiveness is this: No more comparing...When we compare our sin with the sins of others, we turn our standard into a moving target. That means we will never have a consistent benchmark. Our standard for measuring up should never be horizontal. It should be vertical...(Hebrews 12:2)." (page 110)

That is so true. When our eyes are on others, and what they have (or haven't) done, we elevate ourselves by saying that we aren't as bad as they are, which leads to justification for our doing things so we can be happy. God wants us to be totally in the center of His will, and that means painful things will enter our lives, things that sometimes leave us in such incredible despair that we wonder if we will physically live through them. But, God is faithful, and He is still in the business of redemption. Cindy's story proves that.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who struggles with forgiveness.

Thanks to the publisher for a free review copy of this book. This is my honest opinion, and I was not required to write a positive review.