In a private vow renewal ceremony over the holidays, Lysa Terkeurst’s husband praised his wife for the “grace and forgiveness” she has shown to him despite his affair.
Lysa and Art TerKeurst renewed their wedding vows in an intimate ceremony with friends and family, over Christmas. The couple, who had separated over the summer, due to Art’s infidelity and substance abuse problem, found reconciliation this fall, leading them to walk down the aisle a second time.
Lysa TerKeurst Gives Stunning Update About Her Broken Marriage
Lysa shared a video of their ceremony to Instagram, which gave her 500 thousand followers a glimpse at their wedding vows.
“The way that you have loved me with grace and forgiveness gives me an undeniable understanding and perspective of how much God loves me,” Art Terkeurst said.
“And what He did for me on the cross, you have lived out in my life. You never gave up, you disarmed all of the dark with your grace and forgiveness,” Art added.
Lysa responded with emotion in her voice, “You, Art, are the great love of my life, I’ve never known love like this apart from you, and I never want to know this love without you. ‘Together’ is my favorite word for us, and what a together we have.”
Lysa shared another photo to her Instagram, addressing the topic of ‘why’ she chose to stay with Art, and fight for their marriage after everything they went through.
She said it’s “as complicated and intricate as trying to understand what makes a massive ocean pull back and stop at the shore.”
“Apart from God, who can ever truly understand a thing like that?” She added.
She added that “there was a season that it wasn’t reasonable or responsible to stay.”
“Just like when the ocean doesn’t respect the boundary of the shoreline and hurricane conditions force evacuations. So there were long stretches of silence, separation, and seeking wise counsel.”
“I was offered a second chance at moments like this one,” the author added, that forced her to decide what she wanted to do.
“Forgiveness is a process. Healing is a long journey. And I’ll never ever criticize another person for choices they made that were different than mine when placed in the same horror and heartbreak as me. Or maybe they had no choice at all. I have nothing but tender love and understanding. It’s a brutal walk.”
She concluded that with forgiving Art and renewing their vows, Lysa was able to find redemptive strength.
“And I’ve discovered imperfect love is still full of sacred possibilities, redemptive strength, it’s own kind of purity, and moments like the one pictured here.”
Lysa announced her separation to Art last June in a blog in which she detailed why they were separating after 25 years of marriage.
She wrote:
“My husband, life partner and father of my children, Art TerKeurst, has been repeatedly unfaithful to me with a woman he met online, bringing an end to our marriage of almost 25 years. For the past couple of years, his life has sadly been defined by his affection for this other woman and substance abuse. I don’t share this to harm or embarrass him, but to help explain why I have decided to separate from him and pursue a divorce. God has now revealed to me that I have done all I can do and I must release him to the Savior.”
In a poetic Instagram post on December 13, TerKeurst explained the miraculous change and forgiveness that took over in her marital relationship.
“Never doubt we serve a God who still does miracles,” she wrote. “In the middle of the work He did from the devastation in my marriage nothing looked like I hoped and everything felt impossible. I prayed a million suggestions to God that never ever came to be. And the number of tears shed in the process about leaked the life out of me. But all the while when I saw nothing, God was doing something. And in His way and His timing, new life came.”
In an interview with The Christian Post in November, Lysa encouraged couples to always be honest with one another.
“The minute we start keeping secrets in our marriage and hiding things in our marriage, that is a one-way ticket to a disastrous situation,” she warned. “I would just encourage some really honest conversations about those thoughts that you wrestle through when you wake up at 2 a.m. and you don’t know the answers, and you don’t know what to do. Don’t keep those things hidden, because that’s when Satan attacks.”
“I want to encourage those walking through really difficult marriage situations to know that redemption is possible,” she added. “Maybe it’s going to come in a different package than mine. Redemption and restoration don’t always hold hands, and that relationship may not be restored, but with God, redemption is always possible.”