I Don’t Want a Divorce: When Your Spouse Does–Vaneetha Risner

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I Don’t Want a Divorce: When Your Spouse Does

Guest:Vaneetha Risner

From the series:I Don’t Want a Divorce: When Your Spouse Does (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:July 6, 2026

Vaneetha (00:04):

It feels like when you say, “My spouse died, my child died, I have a disease.” There’s no question about your character. Nobody thinks, “Oh wow, what did you do? ” But the minute somebody says, “I got divorced,” our first question is, “What did you do?”

Ann (00:26):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave (00:33):

And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann (00:45):

Okay. I’m pretty excited about this topic today because I’m not sure we’ve really covered this topic at FamilyLife Today very often.

Dave (00:54):

This might be the first time.

Ann (00:56):

Yeah, because there are—

Dave (00:57):

Vaneetha Risner’s in the studio!

Ann:

Woo who!

Vaneetha:

Wow.

Dave:

And you may be the first person—I mean, we—

Ann (01:03):

We’ve talked about it, but I’m not sure we’ve done a book on the topic of divorce.

Dave (01:08):

And people are like, “What are you talking about?”

Ann (01:10):

I know. Tell us. Your book is called This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God—I like that you put with God—Through the Heartache of Divorce. And we know the divorce rate is what? Do you know what it is now?

Vaneetha (01:24):

No. I think it’s over 50% though.

Dave (01:27):

Yeah, it is in the culture and it’s 23% in the church.

Vaneetha (01:31):

Wow.

Dave (01:31):

So I got to start here. How many times have you been on FamilyLife Today? The first time we met you was in Little Rock.

Vaneetha (01:37):

Yes. Yeah.

Dave (01:39):

But you were on before we met you.

Vaneetha (01:40):

Oh no, I think you were—

Dave:

Oh, that was first one.

Vaneetha:

You were my first experience. So this is the third time, and I love being on the show. I mean, I could do this every week.

Ann (01:49):

We just love you because what you’re producing, what you’re writing, your Bible studies, your books, are incredibly practical, vulnerable, and helpful. I’m just saying they’re amazing. But I feel like maybe you’ve walked through a divorce or maybe one of your kids is walking through a divorce, a friend, or even it could be that your parents walked through this and you wish they would’ve done it in a healthier way. So what prompted you to write this?

Vaneetha (02:19):

Well, what prompted me to write this was my editor. I would like to say the Holy Spirit came first, but it was my editor who approached me twice and said, “Do you want to write this book? We think there’s a need.” And I said, “I’m sure there’s a need, but I am not your girl.” Because in the Christian community, even now, you don’t want to lead with divorce. So I was like, “No, I can lead with suffering but not divorce.” And then the third time he came back to me and said, “Our whole team has prayed about it. Have you prayed about it? ” I was like, “What novel idea, praying about it.”

Dave:

Pray about it.

Ann:

But you’re like, “I don’t need to pray.”

Vaneetha:

I don’t need to pray. God has already told me. So Joel and I prayed about it and I was like, “Yeah, I need to do this.”

(02:59):

But I realized the reason we don’t talk about—there’s not that many books—is because there’s still shame around it. No matter what the reason is it feels like when you say, “My spouse died,” “My child died,” “I have a disease,” there’s no question about your character. Nobody thinks, “Oh wow, what did you do?” But the minute somebody says, “I got divorced,” our first question is, “What did you do?” I do think about John 9 where they see a man blind from birth and in those days, they asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” We unconsciously ask that question when somebody says, “I got a divorce.” It’s “Who sinned?”

Ann (03:40):

And we think, what part did you play?

Vaneetha (03:43):

Yes, exactly. And you must not be pro-marriage or maybe your faith isn’t exactly what I thought.

Ann (03:49):

And they may not be thinking any of that.

Vaneetha:

Right, right.

Dave (03:52):

Or they may be thinking all of that.

Vaneetha (03:54):

Yeah, right. I mean, I’m going to be honest, when somebody just says, “Oh, I just got a divorce,” you’re kind of looking like, “Are you happy?” We don’t know. And so we kind of have that question. I feel like very few people just approach it neutrally.

Ann (04:09):

Do you think that’s why there hasn’t been much written on it from a Biblical viewpoint?

Vaneetha (04:13):

Yeah. Because one, I think there is, you don’t want to put it out there. I didn’t want to be known as the woman who went through a divorce and two, you really need to be clear about biblical divorce because in our culture with the divorce rate being so high, a lot of times it’s, “We were never meant to be,” or “We argued all the time. We’re better people being apart.” And those are not reasons to get divorced. And so you have to be really clear about biblical divorce, I think, as a Christian when you want to talk about it.

Dave (04:47):

Yeah. Well, when I first picked up your book and saw the title, I did not see the subtitle. So my first thought wasn’t even about divorce. This Was Never the Plan, I thought, I know your life story. Can you give our listeners—and there’s people watching—a little backstory?

Vaneetha (05:04):

Yeah.

Dave (05:04):

So that wasn’t the plan, and then you get married and there’s another that’s not the plan.

Vaneetha (05:08):

I was born in India and when I was three months old, I contracted polio. Now in India, you don’t get the vaccine at three months, usually it was six months. Polio had pretty much been eradicated, not totally, but I got it. The doctors didn’t know what I had. So they gave me cortisone to lower my fever. It was 105.

Ann (05:27):

How old were you?

Vaneetha (05:27):

Three months old. So they really needed to do something quickly or I would have had brain damage. But within a few days I was a quadriplegic. Then they realized, “Oh wow, she doesn’t have”—they thought I had typhoid—”she has polio,” but there was really nothing they could do. I could not move my arms or legs. So my parents left India, moved to England, moved to Canada; I had 21 operations by the time I was 13; lived in the hospital really one year all by myself. My parents could only visit on weekends. I was in a ward, grew up really angry at God, but came to Christ at 16 through the teaching of John 9, the verse I just mentioned, and really thought I was about to live my best life now. Truly, I remember thinking, “I’ve had my suffering. This is all that I’m going to go through.”

Dave (06:16):

“Now, I’ve got Jesus.”

Ann:

“And I have a testimony.”

Vaneetha (06:18):

Exactly. And so I was just so excited about telling people, “You commit your life to Christ, and it is going to be perfection.” And it was for like 14, 15 years, it was as great as I could imagine, but then—

Dave (06:34):

Physically, you’re good; you’re walking?

Vaneetha (06:35):

Yeah. I mean, lived in Boston, had my dream job, walked to work, lived on Beacon Hill—this prestigious thing—was all into my career, went to grad school, met and married a classmate. It was great, but then I had four miscarriages after we were married.

Ann (06:52):

That’s a lot.

Vaneetha (06:53):

And that was really hard. That was my first like, “Oh my, wow, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be.” And then infant son, Paul, who died because a doctor made a mistake in his care.

Ann (07:05):

How old was he?

Vaneetha (07:06):

He was two months old and that was just gut wrenching. And that song, Natalie Grant’s song Held, a friend of mine wrote it and it was really about Paul, the beginning, “Two months is too little, They let him go.” And so that was a traumatic thing. And then six years after that I was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, which I didn’t know what it was. I’m sure most people don’t, but basically my body is going backwards. They said my strength and energy is like money in a bank. Everything I do makes a withdrawal and eventually I will be back to where I was, which was quadriplegia. And it’s been a slow decline. I mean, now I use a wheelchair more than I walk. My arms are really, really weak. So just kind of adjusting to that. And then six years after that—

Ann (07:54):

And when had you had your daughters?

Vaneetha (07:55):

So my daughters were born, one was born before Paul died and one was born right after Paul died. And then I had a miscarriage and two other miscarriages in between. Six years after that diagnosis, my husband at the time came home and said he had met someone else. He said he was in love with her and a month later he moved out and I was left to parent two adolescent daughters as a single parent and just wondering where God was. I mean, it was the hardest thing because there’s so many layers of it and people don’t know what to say.

Ann (08:34):

Well, Vaneetha, I’m thinking about the listener who’s hearing your story for the first time and maybe they’re thinking this like, “Are you mad at God?” That feels like these are things that are out of your control, miscarriages, your son’s death, like so much of that.

Dave (08:50):

Not your fault.

Ann (08:51):

Yeah. Did you ever think like, “God, where are you?”

Vaneetha (08:54):

So I would say I was mad at God, certainly before I came to Christ and I didn’t know God, really pretty shaken after Paul died, like just “Where is God? This is not my plan. This is not what I signed up for.” I would say this is not the ticket I bought when I signed up to become a Christian.

Ann (09:17):

And you wrote about this in your other books.

Vaneetha (09:18):

Yes. But after this, I felt like God hated me, honestly. I was like, “Does God hate me?” But I wasn’t, and I screamed that in my pastor’s house, like, “Why does God hate me?” But I don’t know if I was as mad at God as I had been before because I had tasted the goodness of God. And before you’ve tasted the goodness of God, you can be really angry, but when you know God has worked through the worst things, like for me, the post-polio, my son’s death, and I have seen how God has shown up for me.

Ann (09:53):

You’ve seen His goodness.

Vaneetha (09:54):

Yeah.

Ann (09:54):

And you would say He’s good.

Vaneetha (09:56):

Yeah. So at first, I was like, “Do you hate me?” But in many ways, I did know that God loved me, and I knew I was angry, but for me not as much at God because I have been convinced more than anything else that God is good and everything God does is good.

Dave (10:15):

I mean, what is your—sounds like you’ve already said it maybe, but what’s your theology of suffering? Because I think we live in a country because we’re so prosperous and so blessed that in the church, and I’ve been a pastor for decades, there’s not often a theology of suffering. When it happens, we’re mad, we’re angry, we think God abandoned us rather than, “No, it was never the plan, and the plan never is what we think it’s going to be.”

Ann (10:40):

But God’s with me.

Dave (10:41):

So do you have a perspective of suffering that makes sense?

Vaneetha (10:45):

Yeah. Well, I mean, kind of like these two verses that I think are overused and I don’t love people quoting them to me, but they’re really the bedrock of my faith. One is Romans 8:28, which somebody said to me at my son’s funeral, and I was so angry, I was like, “Don’t ever say this to somebody to try to make them make sense of their suffering.” But it is truly what helped me and that is “all things work together for good, for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose,” recognizing it doesn’t feel good. And like just even looking at Job. I think Job is a perfect example of the theology of suffering. Satan was the immediate cause. Satan is the one who actually chose to because of what God said, “You can do anything.” Satan did that, but God is the one that permitted it and God is the one that used it to sanctify Job.

(11:44):

And we see that in Genesis 50:20 when Joseph’s brothers come to him and ask for forgiveness and Joseph says, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” And so that’s my theology of suffering is God means everything for our good. So yeah, some of it I may not understand. I mean, there’s a little story if I could just tell it. When I was two years old, my mom says that I was in the hospital, my first surgery and when I came out of surgery, I was so angry at my parents. I would not look at them, I would not. Like my mom came in the room and I just kept turning my head like, “No, I’m not going to look at you.” And finally she just sat down beside my bed, and she put her hands over her face and started crying and I softened and I was like, I said to my mom, “Take away the pajamas.

(12:38):

I won’t be naughty again.” And my mom realized I thought suffering, my pain, was to punish me. And then I told her I was going to eat my peas and my mom said she was heartbroken. And so she said to me, “No, no, no, this is for your good. You’re going to be able to walk one day.” And I was like, “I don’t want to walk. My dad carries me everywhere. I’m taller than everybody else who’s two. Of course, I don’t want to walk. This is painful and I don’t want it,” but now I know that I wouldn’t be able to walk if I hadn’t had that surgery and if my parents hadn’t put me through that time and time again when I didn’t understand it and I didn’t even see the good of walking and I think that’s kind of a picture of suffering for us.

(13:23):

It just feels like pain and maybe we cannot understand it. My two-year-old mind could not understand what was good about that, but I trusted my mom and a lot of it is, do we trust that God is good? And if we do, then suffering in the hands of a good God will be good for us.

Ann (13:47):

As a mom, have you ever lost your temper and thought, “Wow, how did that escalate so fast?” Because mom anger usually isn’t just about the spilled milk or sibling arguments and that gets you angry, but there’s often something deeper going on.

Dave (14:04):

We have been there and guess what? We’ve got a five session video series from author and mom of four, Janelle Breitenstein. And let me tell you, she gets real. She gets real about her life and her anger and her own struggles with anger and what God has taught her through them. And let me tell you, you’re going to discover practical tools, biblical encouragement, and you’ll get insight into the fears and triggers fueling your reactions.

Ann (14:28):

It’s so good. So you can sign up today at FamilyLife.com/MomAnger. Again, that’s FamilyLife.com/MomAnger.

Dave (14:43):

I look at the man I am today and it comes through suffering. You grow in adversity, not prosperity. I mean, you can grow in prosperity, but you usually don’t. Growth comes, characters built, in the valley.

Ann (14:55):

Do you think people that have gone through a divorce can say that. I mean, you’ve written this whole book about this.

Vaneetha (15:00):

I think if you turn to God in suffering, you will learn to love God even more. Your faith will deepen; your character will change. If you turn away in bitterness, like suffering can make people super bitter and I feel like divorce is one that sometimes somebody might say, “I’m divorced.” And the second thing they want to tell you, even years later, is all their ex-spouse did to them.

Ann (15:26):

It’s like a crossroads, like you have a choice to go toward God or the—

Dave (15:30):

Well, I’m looking at your opening chapter, you say, “Divorce is the great undoing that leaves believers standing in the wreckage of a life they never planned.”

Vaneetha (15:41):

Yeah.

Dave (15:42):

Whoa. So when your husband says, “I’m leaving you,” what happened? What’d you think? Were you mad at God then, too? Mad at him?

Vaneetha (15:51):

I was mad at him more than God. I mean, I was just so bewildered. I remember the ground was shaking. It took me a long time to—like days—to even think clearly. I felt like I was pushing through a fog even trying to make sense of things because it was so disorienting. I was so shocked by it.

Ann (16:14):

I thought it was so descriptive of you sitting in the doctor’s office. Share that because I think every person that’s walked through a divorce that they never wanted, nobody ever wants to get a divorce, but you’re in the doctor’s office.

Vaneetha (16:26):

Yeah. So new doctor, I had back pain and so you’re filling out the forms, and the thing is, check the box, single, married, divorced. And I was like, “I don’t feel divorced. I’m just divorced.” And then I’m like, “Why is this any of their business?” I just have a ton of questions, but then, finally I check the box. I move on, but then I’m thinking, “I wonder what they’re going to think.” So I turn it in and then I go in and the doctor walks in—who I’ve never seen before—and he’s staring at my chart. I’m thinking he sees I’m divorced. He’s wondering, why did she get divorced? Yeah. And so I said, “Hey, I just want you to know I’m not the kind of person that wanted to get divorced.”

Ann:

You said this to your doctor?

Vaneetha:

I said it to him, and he looked up at me and he’s like, “I’m just checking your chart to see where your back hurts exactly.” I’m like, “Yeah, right.” Okay.

(17:22):

He didn’t really need to know that, but it was like, I thought he was taking a little too long and in my mind that needed to be his first question because I had agonized over it.

Dave (17:32):

Well, isn’t there a sense though, in the church anyway, you walk in as a divorced person and you feel like you got a scarlet letter on your forehead because so many are married and it looks like their marriages are perfect, at least at church, and you feel like an outcast.

Vaneetha:

You do.

Dave:

So you felt the same thing at the doctor’s office. I got to explain this.

Vaneetha (17:51):

Yeah. I felt like I needed to explain it to everyone. I might be a little of an over-explainer. I felt a lot of shame, but I couldn’t really explain all the reasons because they were complicated and I had young kids. They were 10 and 13 at the time, but I do feel like shame plays a big part, especially if it’s something that you didn’t see coming, didn’t want, you feel like, “Ah, wow, I’m being judged.” And I think the church and that doesn’t do a great job of that. I feel like my church was wonderful, but there are people in the church that were still like, “Oh, should she be teaching Bible study? Shouldn’t we be questioning her more?” And I remember one of my daughters was in the bathroom when she heard two people walk in and they were talking about our family and we had been really involved in the church and kind of like questioning us like, “Oh, did we all know what was going on?”

(18:48):

And our pastor was super supportive and when they said, “Should I be teaching Bible study?” He’s like, “Absolutely she should. I know the situation, but there’s lots of people that don’t come to you, lots of questions you don’t hear, and you feel conspicuous sitting alone, especially with these families, with these kids who are highlighting in their Bible and my kids are making paper airplanes with the bulletin.

Ann (19:14):

Well, I’m thinking even of you coming into that situation with all these people that know you, that know your spouse, your ex-spouse, I would want to overexplain and say “He cheated on me” so that they know it’s not me.

Dave (19:29):

You didn’t have to point at me when you said that. You see that?

Ann (19:32):

But I would want to, just knowing me, I’d be like, “It’s not me.” Did you have that feeling?

Vaneetha (19:38):

I wanted to so much.

Ann (19:41):

But you had young girls.

Vaneetha (19:42):

Yes. So I had a sign that I would literally read every day on my bulletin board, which was faith is trusting God to set the record straight. And I just had to do that because you can’t tell it all. And you don’t want everybody knowing about the situation when you have young girls that once you tell one piece of it, then everybody wants to add to it kind of like the game of telephone. You have no idea where that’s going. And I felt like I needed to keep it pretty close. And for my girls and for the Lord, like I am telling about it now, but it’s been a long, long time.

Ann (20:18):

But even for the way they perceive their dad.

Vaneetha (20:21):

Yes. And that was really important to me was not trash talking him or I wanted him to tell them what they needed to know. So at the very beginning when he moved out, they didn’t know why and that was gut wrenching for me. There was a lot of details I kept from them, and they were really angry at me and I was like, I would have to read that every day. Faith is trusting God to set the record straight because you can’t say everything.

Ann (20:50):

If you’re a listener, you might need to make that sign and hang it and read it every day. Put it on the mirror.

Dave (20:56):

What’s it say again? Faith is—

Vaneetha (20:57):

Faith is trusting God to set the record straight—because your kids, eventually, will grow up and get to know the situation differently and get to know their father and mother themselves. But I knew that it was really important for me, for my kids to have a good relationship with their dad. Their dad loved them and I did not want to make that any harder. But that was hard for me because I was often kind of the bad guy and they didn’t know all the situation and it was like, “Okay, am I willing to let it go and not overexplain?”

Ann (21:32):

I love your chapter titles, like even the chapter that says “Tears, Fears, and the Tenderness of God.” Like that’s very descriptive.

Dave (21:40):

How did you experience the tenderness of God?

Vaneetha (21:44):

I feel like I grew more than I ever have in my life through the—

Ann (21:49):

You’ve gone through a lot of tragedy; but this one was different.

Vaneetha (21:53):

This was different because I was alone and I had two kids who were at the time really angry; and then I still had the disability. We’re six years down the road. I couldn’t drive my kids everywhere I needed to. My husband at the time was doing a lot of that. So all of a sudden, everything fell on me. So I felt this weight that I can’t even describe how hard it was. I mean, every game, my daughter played basketball in college, but at that age it was lots of basketball games and practices, and it was a lot. And so I remember just getting up in the morning and just crying out to God in ways that I don’t think I had before because the Bible had been like, “Okay, I’m going to do my quiet time, check that, let’s move on with my day.” Not always.

(22:51):

I taught the Bible, but it wasn’t life always to me. It was sometimes duty. But then I remember saying to God, “This can’t be duty. I mean, I need You to meet me.” And the verse that I would say every day is Psalm 119: 25, “My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to Your word.”

Ann:

So good.

Vaneetha:

And I would open the Bible and I’d say, “God, you have to show up. I can’t make it through this day. My girls are going to be in here soon and I’m going to be in tears, so I need you.” And I realize we all need to do that, whether we’re in crisis or not, but in crisis—

Dave (23:31):

I was going to say that’s where we need to be every day.

Vaneetha (23:32):

Yeah. We need to be an expectation, but I didn’t even know I could be an expectation until then. But I was like, “God, I’m taking it to You. You’ve got to show up. You’ve got to be real. You’ve got to make this Bible real because this is all I got.”

Ann (23:48):

I’m just going to say I always love being with Vaneetha Risner.

Dave (23:53):

She can come back anytime.

Ann (23:53):

Anytime.

Dave (23:55):

By the way, again, her book is called This Was Never The Plan. You can get it at FamilyLifeToday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes. We’ve got her back tomorrow again, so you don’t want to miss tomorrow. Before we’re done today, let me just say this. At FamilyLife we really believe strong families can change the world and when you become a FamilyLife Partner, you help make that happen.

Ann (24:15):

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Dave (24:24):

Now that’s a pretty good deal. And we also want to send you exclusive updates, behind the scenes access, and an invitation to our private partner community, which is pretty cool. So join us and let’s reach families and marriages together.

Ann (24:36):

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Dave (24:45):

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