Surviving the Most Difficult Circumstances in Marriage | Justin and Trisha Davis Help Couples Rebuild Trust

Feb 20

One day you wake up and realize your spouse has been hiding a terrible secret. It might be an affair or irresponsible spending. Your marriage isn’t what you thought it was, you feel betrayed, and you have decisions to make. Can a marriage be restored when trust is broken?

Marriage leaders Justin and Trisha Davis have been in your shoes. They share their personal journey overcoming betrayal, an affair and the redemption of their relationship through their RefineUs ministry. Pastors, podcasters and coaches, the Davises lead online courses and marriage retreats based on their book, Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Isn’t Good Enough. They also coach couples personally how to restore hope and renew purpose in their marriage.

The Davises ministry grew out of the overflow of their story. Early in their marriage, the eager young couple dove headfirst into student ministry. In 2002, they planted a church in the Indianapolis area that grew from 12 to 700 people in a few short years.

But, as Justin confessed, he didn’t develop his character as much as depend on his giftedness. His affair with a church staff member imploded not just their marriage but their entire life. Ten days after the couple separated, God began to break Justin’s heart for what he had lost. The Davises went to counseling four days a week for two months and began to peel back the layers of resentment and brokenness between them. They reconciled and moved to the other side of the city to start life over in a different direction, believing themselves disqualified for ministry ever again. However, the God of redemption had other plans.

In 2009 their pastor asked them to share their story in front of a large group at church. Their first thought, “absolutely no!” Trisha said. “We are the poster children for how not to be married.” After praying about the request, they eventually agreed, “this one time,” but found their story resonated. They had placed their contact information in the bulletin and were swamped with people reaching out to seek their counsel.

“This was the first time we realized redemption is a gift for all people,” Trisha said. “We had this story as 30-year-olds. People who had been married 25 years still couldn’t figure it out.” Their conversations turned into a blog, the blog attracted the attention of a book publisher, which opened doors to more opportunities to speak, eventually leading them back into full-time ministry, a big step for both of them. “God healed an aspect of our heart we didn’t even ask for,” Trisha said.

When the pandemic shuttered the doors of the church Justin was pastoring, the Davises felt the time was right to focus their attention on their RefineUs ministry, coaching couples individually and offering online courses in addition to leading two in-person marriage intensive weekends in Nashville annually. They also created an online devotional called MentorUs, where couples receive a weekly email from the Davises with scripture, practical application and discussion questions.

Their niche is serving couples in crisis. The Davises realized after their first time speaking how many people recovering from broken trust are in desperate need. “We can speak to that from both sides – the male and the female perspective of those who have journeyed through that process of forgiveness and have been restored,” Trisha said.

They help couples believe that trust can be rebuilt, forgiveness can be re-given. Couples ask, "How long is the pain going to be there?” “How do you forgive when trust has been broken?” “Is there any hope for our broken relationship?”

They often hear, “I don’t want to be duped again.” We tell them, “You don’t have to live in your old marriage with that old baggage. You can have a new marriage. The affair is what got the attention, but it was a symptom of greater issues. We help them with the ‘how’ piece. How do you discover the issues and give the wounds a name to find a journey and a path to start a process of healing,” Justin said. The first thing they advise, “Be honest with yourself and with others about the wound. You can’t heal a wound you don’t give a name to,” Trisha said.

“There’s a need for people to experience heart transformation, not behavior modification,” Justin said. “To experience real change, you need to be honest with yourself, each other and with God.”

The couple stress making a choice to forgive is a journey. That includes honoring their grief by processing it, which includes righteous anger. “We can get embarrassed by anger, but anger can be good because it shows us something is wrong that needs to change,” Trisha said.

They also address forgiveness. “Most of us have enough information about forgiveness —it’s more about giving people permission to forgive in a way that they don’t feel like they are getting taken advantage of,” Trisha said. “We feel that if we forgive, we are excusing a person’s behavior. But forgiveness doesn’t excuse the behavior, forgiveness prevents that behavior from destroying our hearts. Bitterness is destroying my heart, but forgiveness resurrects and brings back to life what bitterness tries to destroy.”

“There’s a need for people to experience heart transformation, not behavior modification. To experience real change, you need to be honest with yourself, each other and with God.”

— Justin Davis

Another point: forgiveness is free, but trust is earned. Those are two separate places of healing. “We can’t rebuild trust until forgiveness is offered. The process is messy and emotionally changed. We have to honor the complicated factors that go along with it,” Justin said.

They shared an example of one of the couples they coached recently. The husband had broken trust, and they’d spent six months healing. The wife was feeling the tension of being vulnerable and trusting him. He asked her, how long would it take?

“She was struggling with trusting not just him, but herself again, because she felt stupid for not seeing what he was doing. I met her in that struggle,” Trisha said. Both spouses desired the same things, but they didn’t know how to find their way together. “That’s where we come in. We help a couple get to the same place they both want to be. We provide an example that you are not stupid to offer forgiveness,” she said.

“We help broken and hurting married couples get honest with themselves, rebuild trust, and create deeply connected marriages through Christ-centered support.”

An excerpt from the blog series, The Eight Things that Destroyed our Marriage, that kicked off the Davises ministry:

#1- We rarely prayed together, and the way we prayed for each other was selfish.

#2-We consistently gave each other the leftovers from our day and not the best.

#3-Our marriage put us in the same house, but we were not always on the same team. What you and your spouse need is a rock solid belief that no matter what, “We are in this together.” Identifying little things that put distance between us and our spouse, that over time lead to bigger and more destructive patterns.

#4-We failed to dream big dreams for our marriage and our family.

#5-When we argued with one another, our objective was to be right (Trisha) or to be at peace (me), rather than to grow closer through our conflict.

#6 Forgiveness – forfeiting our future by not forgiving the past - Maybe like me you struggle to forgive the small things … and now those small things have turned into big things.

#7- We forgot to focus on all of the reasons why we loved each other.

#8- I bought into the lie that by withholding truth from my wife I was saving her and my marriage from needless pain.

“When we withhold TRUTH from our spouse, as hurtful as we think that truth might be, we forfeit intimacy and oneness. As we come to the close of our blog series, I want to encourage you to trust in the power of God in this area and allow him to restore a level of oneness and intimacy to your relationship that you both crave. It will cost you something now, but what you will gain in the end will be more than you could ask or imagine.”

Truth and authenticity are the watchwords of their latest book published in 2023. Being Real is Greater than Being Perfect answers the questions most often asked about how Justin and Trisha were able to change and learn to be authentic.

“Everyone wants to change,” Justin said. “They are going to church, praying prayers, but they are not experiencing the heart transformation they thought Christianity would bring. People either pretend to be better than they are, or they give up and stop trying to change. We want to help people go on a path to admit their weakness and vulnerability and allow Jesus to work the change through them. It’s more of a Christian living book than a marriage book.”

“What I love about this book is it is something Justin has been living out in our marriage and family for the past 13 years,” Trisha commented.

“Often the first places we are conditioned to be fake are in the church and in our family,” Justin said. How many people have experienced a family fight on the way to church, but wiped the tears from their eyes and plastered on a smile as they went in? “If you didn’t feel like you could be the real version of you, it creates barriers between you and Jesus,” Justin said.

“Jesus doesn’t force himself into our transformation, he only heals the parts of our heart we give him,” Trisha said. “The people closest to Jesus had the most honest conversations with him,” Justin added.

The authenticity of their journey was tested in 2021 when secrets in their extended family revealed life-changing generational brokenness. Because Justin and Trisha have done the work of healing and live in the practice of authenticity and truth, the devastating news brought them closer together rather than caused division.

“Jesus doesn’t force himself into our transformation, he only heals the parts of our heart we give him.”

— Trisha Davis

“We had so much to hold on to because we’ve lived the past 18 years practicing the things we teach to couples. We honored our wounds, processed our grief and anger. In the end, rock bottom is still a solid place to stand. There is transformation that is long-lasting when you choose to live in authenticity. We chose to walk the path of brokenness, not bitterness,” Trisha said.

If the Davises’ story resonates with you, and you are looking for hope and restoration, find them at Refineus.org.