Dale and Jena Forehand were just like many other Christian couples, navigating through their marriage with children, jobs and ministry responsibilities. But somewhere along the way, as they both share openly with Birmingham Christian Family, their relationship began to take a backseat to life. While a portion of their story certainly doesn’t read like a fairytale, their path of brokenness has a happy ending – one that continues to touch the lives of married couples across the nation.
The Forehands’ Story
Dale Forehand first spotted his future bride in the choir loft of First Baptist Trussville. Dale was a college student at the University of Alabama at the time, and Jena, a native of Albany, Ga., was attending Samford University. A common friend of the two had invited Jena to attend the church. After a courtship that extended through the remainder of their college days, the couple was married when Jena graduated.
Dale worked for a billboard company out of college where he remained for nine years. The Forehands, who were both led to the Lord in childhood, were extremely active in the local church where they taught Sunday School and served in various ministry positions – Dale a deacon and Jena a soloist. But while everything appeared rosy from an outsider’s perspective, their marriage was in the midst of deteriorating. Dale recalls, “We were just kind of ‘doing life’ like so many people do life – kids, careers [and] church.” He adds, “We found ourselves in an eight and a half year marriage that was beginning to crumble.” When stress and anxiety began to affect their relationship, they tried to “fix” the other person. “We never even began to look at, ‘Where’s Christ in this?’” he explains.
When Dale made the decision to permanently end the marriage, he packed Jena’s bags in front of their son and daughter and told her that when he returned, she needed to be out of the house. That event sparked the beginning of a long and difficult 15-month process of divorce. Because both Dale and Jena wanted custody of their children, they remained under the same roof for that year and a half pending the divorce trial so that neither could be accused of abandoning their children.
Jena began Christian counseling to help her emotionally and spiritually through the brokenness of her marriage. She explains that the counseling helped her think through things and ultimately caused her to come face-to-face with what she believed the Bible said and what she understood about her own faith and walk with the Lord. “He [God] kind of pulled me away…just like He did Elijah up on the mountain with the gentle whisper…and said, ‘I’ve missed you. Our relationship isn’t how it has been.’” Through counseling and the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit, Jena began to feel God working in her life. She recalls, “These questions started coming, ‘Could God really work our marriage out?’ ‘Could God fix this?’”
And Jena was unaware that during this same time period, God was also doing a similar work in Dale. “Dale was going through that same process, on those weekends where I had the kids and he was by himself, those same kind of evaluations…were going on in his life as well,” she explains.
When Dale and Jena received a court order that determined who chose which activities for their children – Jena received sports and Dale wound up with health – it was one more point of contention they had to deal with together but in retrospect they now believe was divine intervention. After an argument one day about whether or not to enroll their daughter in gymnastics, Jena found herself asking Dale to come home so they could attempt to fix the marriage. While at the time neither knew where to start in order to put the pieces of their relationship back together, they both knew it was the right choice to make that initial step.
The slow but sure process of reconciliation was set in motion – the couple attended counseling and began a tough journey of working through the ramifications that were left on their children. The family moved to Inverness for a fresh start and began attending The Church at Brook Hills, where Dale and Jena were remarried on Dec. 21, 1997.
Stained Glass Ministries
On Valentine’s Day of 1998, Dale was asked to share the couple’s testimony of marital rebirth at Brook Hills. Soon after, the couple was receiving requests to share their story pretty much everywhere – from church cookouts to Valentine’s banquets. As a result of their willingness to be transparent about their journey, their first weekend marriage conference eventually led into three or four a year, and in 2000 they were featured in LifeWay’s HomeLife magazine. Then in 2003, they released their first book, Stained Glass Marriage. “God just began to…slowly grow the opportunities for us to share the principles of marriage to couples,” Dale says.
Fast-forward to today where the Forehands now have a full-time, 501(c)(3) non-profit known as Stained Glass Ministries with a mission to “shed the Light of Christ on all of life’s relationships.” They travel across the country for speaking events, and their “Let’s Get Real” conference has impacted many Christians – whether married or not – with lifechanging principles for relationships.
A few years ago, their heart for ministry prompted them to also begin focusing time right here in Birmingham. “We just really felt like we needed to minister in our own community,” Jena explains, adding they were reaching people across the country with the truths of marriage but had not devoted the same amount of time to their own city. That passion for serving on the local mission field has grown from ministering to a few couples to preparing to launch a marriage initiative for the Birmingham area. The opportunity is one they are thrilled about, and they are currently in discussions with Focus on the Family to be a potential partner to help launch the initiative.
Trusting God with Relentless Resolve
Dale shares that when he and Jena were in the midst of their divorce, he received a letter from a man that made a lasting impact on him. Dale says, “I don’t remember everything he said, but I remember this one line…‘Dale, the miracle of a restored marriage is the one miracle that God wants you to take an active part in.’”
That message resounded deeply with Dale. “So many times we pray for God to do a miracle – we pray for God to do something miraculous and just beyond our wildest imagination,” he remarks. “And we sit back and do nothing and just wait for God to act…Most of the time, the miracles that He performs, we play a part in that. It might be surrender, it might be obedience, it might be relentless faith, but there’s a response to us. I think that’s what we get to tell people. We could not have put this family back together without the grace of God and God’s help. But the one thing that we did – if we could take any credit for anything at all – is that we just, by faith, trusted Him with relentless resolve…He was who He was, He does what He does and we can trust Him.”
— Julie Moore