Two of the great unsung heroes of the modern church are a couple programs designed to help marriages: Marriage Encounter and Retrouvaille.

My wife and I made a Marriage Encounter weekend several years ago, and found it immensely enriching. But you hear less about the Retrouvaille program, which is designed specifically for marriages in trouble.

Now, thanks to this piece in Faith magazine, that’s changed:

Like most young couples who fall in love, for Frank and Debbie Kruise it all started out well. They met at Mount Aloysius Junior College in Cresson, Pa. Frank was from Coalport, Debbie was from Warren. They got to know each other in an English lit class, where they discovered they both liked the same kind of poetry. “Deb has this bubbly personality,” Frank says. “She is so outgoing, fun-loving and compassionate. I was attracted to that because I consider myself straight-lined.” They became good friends, going for long walks, solving the problems of the world. It wasn’t long before Frank says he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Debbie. “She was everything I wanted in a wife and friend for the rest of my life,” he says. “I never expected to meet someone in college,” Deb says. “I thought I was going to get a degree in fashion merchandising and travel the world. But I met this sweet guy and everything changed.” Everything.

“It didn’t rain on our wedding day, but you can see the dark clouds overhead in all the pictures,” Deb says with a laugh. The Monday after their wedding, Frank’s father was diagnosed with cancer. His funeral was held just two months later, the day before Frank graduated from mortuary school. “Things didn’t start off the way I thought they would,” Deb admits. “I had envisioned his dad coming over for Sunday dinners.” Frank, who had lost both his mom and grandmother at a very young age, threw himself into his work.

They decided to send Deb to mortuary school as well, in order to secure the second license required for their funeral home. That meant Deb had to move to Pittsburgh while Frank stayed in Madera to run the funeral home. Still young and in love, the Kruises made it work. “I loved Pittsburgh,” Deb says, “and I saw it as a chance to find myself.” As good as her intentions were, in some ways this decision contributed to the difficulties Frank and Debbie would later experience. “It just didn’t really hit me that I’d actually be working as a funeral director,” Deb says, although her studies gave her new insights into their daily experience as a couple.

“I began to appreciate why our dinners were always interrupted during the first three years of marriage, why family plans were always cancelled at the last minute, why other families always came first,” she observes. “I had a much better understanding of how that played on our marriage.” (Frank and Deb took turns answering more than half a dozen phone calls during this interview.) Upon her return to Madera, the couple became a solid professional team.

At this point, as in so many marriages, things changed again when the Kruises, having been married for five years, welcomed their first child, Christina. Three years later, Anthony was born. Deb has always been certain of her desire to be a wife and mother. She is deeply grateful that working from home allowed her to remain actively involved in her children’s lives. Today, Frank feels a certain sadness about this period in their lives. “I regret that I missed a lot of that growing up time,” he says, acknowledging he often gave his career greater priority. “There were many times when she took the kids somewhere and I stayed back.”

Another well-intentioned series of decisions that weakened the foundation of the Kruises’ family life. That’s the thing about this story. Their marriage crumbled so slowly it was almost imperceptible. There was no abuse, no complicating factor such as alcoholism or gambling. But as Deb grew increasingly dissatisfied, having denied some of her own goals and dreams, Frank grew complacent and tensions rose. They rarely acknowledged it, even to each other.

Read the rest. It’s worth it.

And share it to someone you love for Valentine’s Day.