Barbie's Story

Barbie and Richard

Barbie didn’t grow up going to church, except maybe on Christmas and Easter.  She would, however, go with her friends at times, if invited.  No one she knew ever told her about the Lord. 

In fifth grade Barbie asked one of her friends that she sometimes went to church with if she was ever going to Heaven.  The next time she went to church with her, Barbie went to the front during the altar call.  She said, “I prayed with men in suits who told me I was going to Heaven, and I believed them.  I knew I had God’s hand in my life, but I didn’t really know Him until I was 32.  It wasn’t until then that I knew what it meant to have a relationship with God.”

Barbie admits that she always had to have a boyfriend, and she knew it was an insecurity.  She had always looked for her value in a man and didn’t understand about looking for her value in God.

She got married at 20.  At 21 she got pregnant with her first son.  By the time he was two years old, her husband was seeing someone else.  Barbie said, “I moved out, and the other woman moved in.”

Within a year, she jumped right into another relationship, and she saw red flags from the start.  The day before they were married, she was cleaning up a glass of tea that he had thrown across the room and thought, “What am I doing?  What have I gotten myself into?”  But at that point she was too far in.  He had already moved to the same town she was living in and had already transferred his job.  Perhaps she was just feeling this way because of all of the stress, and so she went on with the wedding plans.  They were married for 12 years.  Barbie had two more sons.  She acknowledges that it was 12 years of a pretty abusive relationship, but in the midst of it all is where she met Jesus.

When her youngest son was just a baby, a woman she knew who was a Mary Kay consultant invited her to her house.  Barbie thought, “Well, I have three boys at home.  A night out with adults sounds great!”  It turned out not to be a Mary Kay party.  It was a prayer night.  One of the women there was talking about the book, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat.  That was the first time Barbie ever heard the Bible story about Peter walking on the water.  She heard the woman say that as long as she stays focused on Jesus and not the storm around her, then nothing is impossible.  And Barbie had a lot of storms around her.

As a new believer, Barbie recalled difficult times in her first marriage.  She thought, “If this is what being a Christian is, then I really don’t want to be a part of it.”  But it was as if the pastor of her church was always speaking directly to her. 

She got more involved in church, signed up for a 9-month walk through the Bible, continued getting together with the Mary Kay ladies, and went to prayer breakfasts.  She was confused when she read that God hates divorce and that wives must submit to their husbands.  Barbie’s parents had been married for 53 years, and she thought that would also be her story.  The idea of two divorces was unthinkable to her.

There was a lot of emotional and spiritual abuse in her marriage.  For a long time, Barbie had been considering the notion of leaving her husband, but then she rationalized, “Well he hasn’t hit me.  I was looking to prove it wasn’t as bad as it was.  I didn’t want that to be my story.”

Barbie’s research showed her that the cycle of violence is first the episode, then the apology, then you start walking on eggshells, then there’s another episode, and it just starts over again.  She knew her life was in a cycle.  For some reason it didn’t get better.  She finally got the courage to leave that relationship.

After the divorce, she seemed to be making a lot of bad decisions and had a lot of anxiety.   “At first,” Barbie said, “I decided that God could never use me, I had already blown it, I was not going to have a happily ever after, and so I went back to my same old pattern of looking for a man to give me value, to tell me I was worthy, to tell me I’m beautiful.  I started online dating within a few months. 

“Things got dark.  Once the house sold, I moved into a smaller home.  I can remember moments of just sitting on the floor in my bedroom in tears.  I didn’t know what was going to happen. I wondered, ‘Is God mad at me?  Am I doing the right thing?’

“I was meeting with a good Christian counselor who helped me understand what God wants for me.  I also leaned into God more and stopped making bad decisions.  I was going through my darkest time, but I was online dating.  When a good-looking guy texted me to say, ‘Good morning, beautiful!’ it gave me a high that’s fleeting, like a drug.  But I realized it’s not fulfilling.”  She heard the Bible scripture John 10:10 (The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy.  But I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.) for the first time and discovered there is no stipulation on it.  It just says that I’ve come to give you life abundantly.  It doesn’t say unless you were divorced or have made bad choices.  Barbie continued, “I gave up online dating.  I was looking for things in the world to satisfy me, especially with dating and men, but that also came with shame and guilt.” 

When she realized all that she needed comes from God, her life turned around.  She was holding onto God with everything.  She was counting on Him to take care of her and her kids.  And He did.  After a few years, Barbie was at her house in the kitchen doing dishes and had such a sense of peace.  She was content.  She thought, “If I don’t ever get a guy, it’s okay.  For the first time in my life, I am completely fulfilled outside of a man in my life.”  She knew that God was working on her, building her up, giving her a renewed confidence.

Richard was always, as he would describe, a player.  He liked partying.  He and his ex-wife had only known each other for a couple of weeks when she got pregnant.  They wanted to do the right thing, so they ended up getting married.  A couple of years later, she left him.  He got mad at God.  “I’m trying to do all the right things, and this is what I get?”  He was partying a lot and found himself in a faith-based treatment center because he had also been using drugs.  He had been sleeping with a lot of women.  When he went to the treatment center, he got his life right with Christ and never did drugs again.  He had a total transformation and said to himself, “That’s it.  I don’t party anymore, I don’t do drugs anymore, and I don’t have sex outside of marriage.”  Barbie said, “When Richard makes a decision, he remains loyal to that decision.”

Barbie’s boys were on spring break one year, vacationing with their father for a week.  She got an email for a 7-day free trial with another online dating service, so she thought, “Why not?” and perused the dating profiles.  One of them caught her attention.  It was Richard’s: Padlock looking for the right combination.  Barbie and Richard started dating.  They didn’t even realize at first that they went to the same church.

Because of the pasts that they both had, Barbie liked his stance on no sex before marriage.  That was only until she had to live it out.  She said that he wasn’t doing the things that would make her feel validated.  He didn’t tell her she was beautiful.  He didn’t need to be with her all the time.  He really had a wall up because he had also never dated that way.  For a few years he wasn’t dating at all, not since before going to the treatment center. 

Barbie wanted Richard to be “the one” from Day 1, but he kept pulling away.  He was always honest.  He said, “We’re not a couple.  We’re just a couple of friends getting to know each other.”  As difficult as it was, she always knew where she stood.  “He was everything that I wanted – cute, fun, loves the Lord – but he was not letting me in.”

Dating like this brought to the surface every insecurity that Barbie had.  Even her well-meaning Christian friends told her that she was wasting her time with him, that he wasn’t truly interested in her.  They didn’t know anyone else at the time that was dating this way.  It was difficult, but it made her look to God all the more.  For two years of dating, Richard kept this wall up.

There was a ministry event that came up where she was going to help volunteer with Richard, but she didn’t have the address.  She kept waiting for him to text her with the information, but he never did.  She tried calling him, and there was no answer.  She told her best friend, “This is too difficult.  I’m tired of being forgotten.”  Barbie thought that he wasn’t really committed to the relationship after they had already invested two years of their lives, and so she decided to tell him she wanted to end it.   He convinced her that they should meet together so they could talk about it.  That was the first time they prayed together.  He confessed that he wasn’t giving her the best part of him.  Barbie remembers it was like watching an invisible wall go down.  He was completely different.  Barbie said, “I was suddenly seeing for the first time the fun, funny person that I always saw him with other people that he wasn’t with me.  He used to be so afraid to let me in, but from this point on there was an obvious change.”  When he had that moment, not only did he let her in emotionally, but spiritually as well.

After another year, Richard started talking about marriage.  She knew he had been looking at rings, but other than that there had been no signs.  She thought that maybe a marriage proposal would be a random Tuesday over dinner.  They went out for Valentine’s Day dinner, and she thought, this is it!  He gave her an Adele DVD as her Valentine’s Day gift.  There was no ring.  She was disappointed.

At this time Barbie was on staff at their church.  The women’s ministry leader asked her if she could interview Barbie about her relationship with Richard during a series she was doing on the subject of purity.  Barbie couldn’t say “Yes” fast enough.  She has a personal ministry to other women that is founded on the scripture John 10:10 because she wants other women to know that it’s not too late. 

During the interview, the women’s ministry leader said to the audience, “You’ve heard about Barbie’s boyfriend.  Maybe you should meet him.” 

Barbie thought, he’s not here.  His boss is in town, and they’re at a meeting.  But then Richard walked in, completely taking Barbie by surprise.  There were about 300 women in the audience, and Richard told them, “If there is anything I can say that hasn’t been said already, it’s this – you’re more beautiful than you think you are, you’re more valuable than you think you are, and anything worth having is worth waiting for.” 

Barbie thought to herself, “Oh, how sweet.  That is so nice for him to encourage these women like that.  What a nice touch to include in this interview.”

It then dawned on her right at that moment, “Is this it?”  All of a sudden it hit her.  About the same time, Richard turned to her and said, “If there is anything I can say that hasn’t been said already, it’s this – you’re more beautiful than you think you are, you’re more valuable than you think you are, and you’ve DEFINITELY been worth waiting for.”   He then got down on one knee and proposed. 

They had been together for 3 ½ years when they got engaged in late February.  They were married the following September 1st.

Barbie has been on an incredible journey of watching God’s redemption and what He can do.  On their wedding night, before physically coming together, Richard said to her that he had never felt this way before.  They both cried when they realized, “Oh, this is what God had for us.”  They both had sex with many other people before, but neither of them ever had a spiritual connection like what they experienced that night.  That was the gift that God had for them.

Barbie said, “So many couples get married, and they wonder what happened to their emotional connection, but they never actually had one.  We approach purity the wrong way.  It’s so much more than just “Don’t do it.”  It’s not about a set of rules.  It’s about the foundation that’s being built in your life.  It’s easier to have sex than it is to build an emotional and spiritual connection with someone because that’s more vulnerable.  The idea that you can grow that kind of a foundation for your marriage is how we should be talking.

“It’s not too late.”

Barbie and Richard wrote a book together about their journey.  It is entitled The Right Combination: Finding Love and Life After Divorce.  You can find it here.  The name comes from Richard’s online dating profile that attracted Barbie’s attention all those years ago.