Old Ladies Know Stuff | Marriage Mentor Rhonda Stoppe Helps People Live Life with No Regrets

Aug 14

Where do you look for answers when married life gets tough? You may not know anyone whose marriage has stood the test of time. And even if you did, would you feel comfortable asking them to share intimate details of their lives?

People can easily find themselves adrift without role models and end up regretting decisions or behavior. That’s where Rhonda Stoppe steps in. She’s an author, speaker, and podcast host who offers wisdom she’s gleaned during the quarter century she’s worked with couples alongside her pastor husband of four decades, Steve. The couple has addressed everything from pre-marital counseling for those they once discipled in youth ministry to stepping in when marriages are in crisis.

While she can’t personally mentor everyone, Rhonda feels called to follow the directive in Titus 2 to “Teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live… Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children…” Her popular podcast, Old Ladies Know Stuff, offers practical advice for women about everything from 7 Ways to Homeschool Without Regrets to 10 Reasons to Go to Church. In addition to podcasts, Rhonda offers blogs, ebooks, and other free resources (as well as inspiring pictures of her 15 grandchildren) on her website: https://www.rhondastoppe.com/.

“No regrets” is Rhonda’s signature tagline, a moniker inspired by her own realization early in her marriage that she was not living up to the ideal of the wife she wanted to be. Little hurts and disappointments (like Steve’s daily habit of leaving crumbs clinging to the kitchen counter after making a peanut butter sandwich) had been growing into resentment. She had seen in her family of origin how resentment was a step on a slippery slope to lack of communication, isolation, disconnection and ultimately, divorce. A pattern she did not want to repeat.

Rhonda resolved to change her attitude. She looked to older women in her church to provide a godly perspective and joined a Precepts study that required five hours of Bible homework a week to keep her grounded in God’s Word. She learned a principle that would shape her character and become foundational to the practices she espouses: The secret to loving others is to learn to love God deeply. When your love for the Lord is genuine and pre-eminent, He will give you the supernatural ability to love others selflessly. All the other tools and techniques she and Steve offer hinge on this core belief – Loving God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength empowers a person to love the others in their lives.

As she writes in her 2018 book, The Marriage Mentor: Becoming the Couple You Long to Be,

“The only way to guard against having a distorted sense of love and self-worth is to have a healthy personal relationship with Jesus. Again, that involves growing your love for Him through prayer, spending time in Bible study, and fellowshipping with other Christians who are truly seeking a more intimate walk with Christ. When you determine to find your joy in Christ, you will be set free from looking to others to fill the void only God can satisfy.”

She cautions wives to break free from the myths the world wants them to believe – myths that cause people to look for happiness in all the wrong places. “We believe our happily-ever-after lies with Prince Charming - how he treats us, if he makes us feel loved and adored. We ache to be validated by someone,” Rhonda said. “We start to believe the lie that we'd be happier with someone else.

The devil knows that if he can get you to dream about a happier life with another man, he will have gained a foothold toward destroying your marriage. Don’t give him that chance.

“The grass is not greener elsewhere; The grass is greener where you water it. We are looking to find our value and worth from our spouse, and he was not meant to provide that. We were meant to be adored and share fellowship with our Lord and Savior, but when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they broke that fellowship,” Rhonda explained. “We are basically expecting our spouse to fill that void and be our savior.”

Rhonda describes The Marriage Mentor as a biblically based but very practical resource to help “become the couple you long to be.” The format is easy to read and flows like a conversation. The Stoppes encourage those who say they “aren’t readers” that if they read social media, they can read The Marriage Mentor. Each short chapter introduces a concept and includes a man-to-man section written by Steve that’s short enough so a husband can take a picture of it with his phone and read it at work.

Steve also writes a section for wives “from a husband’s perspective.” One man wrote this endorsement: “This is exactly how I felt, I just didn’t know how to put it in words.”

Rhonda answers with a few paragraphs for husbands from a wife’s point of view. Each chapter’s conclusion includes discussion questions and a link to free online marriage mentor videos and conversation prompts to help couples think through the concept and live it out.

A list in the last chapter summarizes the book’s contents.

Ten Keys to a More Fulfilling Marriage

1. Your Husband Was Never Meant to Be Your Happily-Ever-After

2. Respecting Your Husband Will Inspire Him to Love You More

3. Staying in Love Is All About Your Love for God

4. Parenting as One Brings Unity into Your Marriage and Security to Your Kids.

5. The Grass Is Not Greener on the Other Side of the Fence

6. The Secret to Keeping Your Husband’s Attention is Finding Your Worth in Christ

7. Pursuing Your Husband Sexually Will Fill Him with a Sense of Well-Being

8. Be a Peacemaker in Your Marriage Relationship

9. The Joy of the Lord Is Your Strength

10. Live with a Missional Perspective

The Stoppes exhort couples to prioritize their marriage and say No to divorce, adding “Your kids’ security lies in the health of your marriage relationship.”

“Marriage is spiritual,” Rhonda said. “God takes two people and knits their lives, hearts and minds together as one. We aren’t wrestling against flesh and blood when we wrestle with our spouse. Satan wants to ruin our testimony before our kids when we treat our spouses like they have no value.”

Even secular research points out that divorce hurts children. Don’t deceive yourself into believing your broken marriage won’t have any effect on your children. “When my parents divorced after 30 years of marriage, I was well into my twenties and happily married with two children of my own,” Rhonda wrote. “Even though I was an adult, their divorce shook my security in ways I never would have dreamed.”

Steve cautions men against leaving their wives. “Let me walk you down the path of what I’ve seen happen when a husband forsakes the wife of his youth. Very few women who are left by their husbands remain single. Most often they marry again. Can you imagine another man tucking your children into bed? And how would you feel if your kids came to see you on your weekend of visitation crying over how harsh or neglectful their stepfather was to them? Or maybe your kids won’t want to come see you at all, because their stepdad is amazing and they prefer him over you as they wrestle with resentment toward you for abandoning them. … God says He hates divorce for a reason. It leaves a generation of children who feel rejected, forgotten, and passed over as they become the casualties of their parent’s selfish actions.”

“Steve was in youth ministry for a very long time,” Rhonda said. “We watched families that unraveled and kids that came out of a divorce situation of those who called themselves believers. Their parents said they loved Jesus, yet they couldn’t love each other. Many kids were so wounded it will take them a lifetime to recover from the hypocrisy.”

“If I love my spouse in a Christlike manner (even if my spouse doesn’t measure up to my expectations) my testimony will shine more brightly to our kids and draw them to our Savior,” Rhonda added. “What will you do with what you think you are entitled to for your kids? Happiness is fleeting. Joy comes when you press in and ask God to help you love like he does.”

Other areas of particular note: Rhonda advises wives to be peacemakers. Not peacekeepers – sweeping problems under the rug and keeping everyone in line. Peacemakers. Those who “Determine now before the Lord that fighting and arguing will not be the characteristic that defines your home environment, and then make every effort with God’s help to keep this commitment for a peaceful home life.”

She offers ways to stop fighting, reminding, “bad habits do not end by merely wanting to stop them.”

1. Admit you have a Problem

2. Acknowledge Your Sinful Bent

3. Refuse to Be Argumentative

4. Make Peace a Priority

5. Pray Without Ceasing

6. Forgive Your Husband as Many Times as Necessary

7. Seek Godly Counselors

8. Learn to Be a Peacemaker

The section on forgiveness also applies to the chapters addressing sex and romance, topics Rhonda covers in her e/audio books A Christian Woman's Guide To Great Sex In Marriage (The Marriage Mentor Additional Resources Series) and Real-Life Romance: Inspiring Stories to Help You Believe in True Love. Both include examples of occasions where a wife learned to forgive her husband’s struggles with pornography. One woman shared she felt extremely resentful and unable to forgive her husband’s repeated lapses until the Holy Spirit convicted her of her own sin of resentment. When she asked God to purify her heart and help her cover her husband’s sin with grace in the same way she’d want him to extend grace to her, he was able to overcome his addiction.

“Women may think they can shame their husbands into stopping looking at pornography,” Rhonda said. “Shaming doesn’t make you want to stop, it just drives you into the closet.” A Christian Woman’s Guide To Great Sex in Marriage builds on content the Stoppes’ discuss with the pre-marrieds they counsel.

“Sometimes when we’ve been married for a while, we don’t take time to enjoy the marriage bed,” Rhonda added, noting some women have told her, “I’m tired, he gets that.” “We don’t do it right now.” “Women sometimes think it’s fine to avoid sex with their husband, but it is not fine,” Rhonda said. “We are God’s gift to them.” Her wise advice: “When you make it a point to prioritize your day so you’re not too tired to be with your man, he will see that as a selfless act. Choosing to consider your husband’s need for sex over your own desire to get a ton of stuff done by the end of the day is truly selfless.”

Another “ah-ha” statement: “Men learn from their mistakes,” which applies to sons as well as husbands. Rhonda expounds upon this theme in her bestselling book, Moms Raising Sons to Be Men: Guiding Them Toward Their Purpose and Passion updated and re-released in 2023 a decade after its first publication. “We all make bad decisions and have to recover,” she said. “We learn, repent and grow. I help wives understand that husbands are going to dream. If you harp on things, shame him and undermine his integrity before others he may never venture to try the things God intends for him.”

She encourages marriage champions to make sure they are getting support for their own marriages as they seek to minister to others.

“Happiness is fleeting. Joy comes when you press in and ask God to help you love like he does.”

— Rhonda Stoppe

“If you are in a ministry marriage facing difficulty, don’t be tempted to believe getting help shows weakness. Satan loves to isolate godly leaders and make them believe getting help for their marriage would somehow hurt their ministry. On the contrary, a ministry couple who is willing to seek out godly counsel shows signs of maturity and wisdom.”

One of the concluding lines of The Marriage Mentor applies equally well to the entirety of Rhonda’s No Regrets Woman ministry.

“Resolve to finish well by loving God with all of your being, loving your spouse with His selfless love, and keeping your eyes on Jesus. Trust Christ to complete the work He has begun in you and your relationship, and you will enjoy a no-regrets marriage.”

She recalls a Christian woman who followed Jesus despite having a difficult, unbelieving spouse. The woman attended women’s Bible studies, served in church, and didn’t undermine her husband. “Her children saw her light shining, and they all chose to follow Christ. She had no regrets.”

“Let it begin with you.”