David and Lauren Kinney
David & Lauren: Hi, my name is David. And I'm Lauren. And we've been married for 13 years.
Lauren: David and I met back in high school, actually. We went to different high schools, and then we ran into each other a couple of years after graduation.
David: My father had passed away unexpectedly in December of 2005 due to his addiction to methamphetamemes . He was literally my best friend. We did everything together, from fishing to hunting, and I thought I knew who he was. I started drinking more heavily. I started abusing opiates, just to mask the pain and hurt of his death.
Lauren: After six long years of dating, David finally proposed in May of 2011, and we got married on December 31st, 2011.
David: Shortly after getting married, We had learned that we were expecting. At the same time, we were getting involved in the church and just various ministries. But little did she know and little did anyone else know that I was really just learning how to hide my sin even better.
Lauren: I decided, and I actually think we decided to get baptized together in May of 2012.
David: I couldn't move forward making this big decision if I was just going to continue to carry this sin with me. So on April 20th, 2013, it was a Friday, I decided to confess to Lauren. So I laid everything out on the counter, ready for her to come home and confess to her.
Lauren: I remember that day so clearly. On my way home, I I called him to let him know I was on my way home, and I walk in the back door and here's all these pill bottles laid out, and David confessed. And it was shocking. I was angry, and I was confused. I very, very naively thought, Okay, it's just a little blip. He's going to go to detox, and he's to go to rehab. And he confessed he didn't get caught. All will be well and we'll pick right back up here in a few short months and move on and get back to marital bliss. It's really naive. When David got out of his detox facility, we both started attending re-Engage just to work through some of the heartaches and the hardships that we had faced.
David: The real reason that I began going with Lauren was to draw the attention away from myself. I left recovery sicker than when I went in because I had learned about heroin and began using daily.
Lauren: We jumped back in at church, and I think we're on the right track right now. He started serving with the facilities team David was still showing up to Re|engage, now round two, and thinking he had everyone fooled, but we all saw right through it. To make matters worse, I get a call from our church, from the team that David had been serving with, and they had video evidence that he had stolen from the church. David went to state prison for nearly seven months. At that time, I thought about filing for divorce, but I knew that it wasn't going to change our circumstances or my circumstances, not for me, not for girls. I really dove into the word of God. My faith was deepened in those moments, and at the At the end of seven months in state prison, David got out, and I welcomed him back into our home to try and give this another shot.
David: It wasn't long before we jumped back into Re|engaged for the third time. It was during this time that I had a renewed heart and a renewed mind to finish this race that not just I had began, but we had began.
Lauren: It was a restorative process to be able to start and finish something that we had started so many times before. It just led to some really hard but intentional conversations that we needed to have so that we didn't just ignore the damage and the hurt that had been done prior to it.
David: I think for me, going through Re|engage, what has been really just helpful is just continuing to just focus on myself. I think going through the bookwork and the curriculum and just answering the questions at the end. There is separate questions at the end of the book that is focused on me. She's going to answer the questions that are focused on her. It's not been easy. It's been really hard and difficult to be able to relive some of these circumstances from years of just trauma and broken trust that I have caused over the time. But at the end of it, when we were done, we were so thankful that we went through it, even if it's the third time.
Lauren: You would think that we have it down as many times as we've been through it, but I think what has been great for me is just being able to slow down and remember that we process things differently and we communicate differently, and we have different ideas and expectations.
David: There was a scripture that came to my mind constantly, and it was just Psalm 46:10. Be still and know that I'm God. Even more incredible about his story in our lives is that the church that I stole from, that church hired me to be on their staff.
Lauren: If you would have told me that in a few short years, all would be well and David would be hired to be on staff at this very church we were at, I would have thought you were doing drugs with him. We are still at a loss for words over his blessings and mercies in our life and the story that he has written for us..