Schwarzenegger’s Love Child Bombshell

Maria Shriver Asks – How Do You Handle Transitions in Your Life?

Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to his wife several months ago that he had fathered a child about 10 years ago with a member of their household staff. Maria moved out, but has not filed for divorce. In the you tube clip above she comments:

“Like a lot of you I’m in transition: people come up to me all the time, asking, what are you doing next?” she said, adding: “It’s so stressful to not know what you are doing next when people ask what you are doing and they can’t believe you don’t know what you are doing.”

“I’d like to hear from other people who are in transition,” she said. “How did you find your transition: Personal, professional, emotional, spiritual, financial? How did you get through it?”

Mrs. Shriver has asked for spiritual input and I personally think that unless she gets the spiritual help that she needs then she will end up in the divorce court. I am starting a series on how a marriage can survive an infidelity. My first suggestion would be to attend a “Weekend to Remember” put on by the organization “Family Life” out of Little Rock, Arkansas. I actually posted this as a response to Mrs. Shriver’s request on you tube.

I got a lot out of this article and I wanted to share it with you and here is the first portion below:

Her Husband Wouldn’t Speak to Her—for Three Years

Even in the silence, June Sims continued serving her husband as she waited for God to answer her prayers.Mary May Larmoyeux.

For 20 years, their marriage and family seemed solid. June and Lamar Sims raised their children in church and attended a parenting seminar. But the good life began to change when their engaged daughter revealed she was expecting a child.

“That really threw Lamar for a loop,” June recalls. “He thought none of that would happen with our kids.”

June and Lamar Sims, shortly after June’s graduation from high school in 1963.

Lamar became angry at God. He stopped going to church, didn’t want blessings at meals, and removed pictures of missionaries from the family refrigerator.

The unexpected pregnancy began a series of crises in Lamar’s life. Over the next several years, he had back surgery, two hip replacements, lost his job, and was forced to go on disability. In addition, a child ran away from home, and another daughter went through several years of rebellion. 

Lamar’s anger and bitterness increased, and it became more and more difficult for June to be around her husband. Nothing she said or did would please him.

After 34 years of marriage, Lamar said he wanted a divorce. “I don’t love you. I don’t need you. I don’t want you,” he told his wife.

But June still loved Lamar, and she didn’t want to end their marriage. When she refused to divorce Lamar he said, “Well, just leave me alone.”

And so Lamar and June continued living in the same house, but they didn’t speak.

For three years.

“June, why are you doing this?”

During these years of silence, Lamar and June communicated by writing notes to one another and leaving them on the refrigerator door. Even though Lamar did not want a relationship with his wife, he asked her to continue cooking for him. So, after coming home from work, June prepared dinner for him and then ate her meal in her bedroom. This arrangement went on for about two years when Lamar said that he didn’t want June cooking for him anymore.

June continued to wash Lamar’s clothes, cut the yard, and serve him in other ways to prevent herself from becoming bitter. “My poor daddy would come out and he’d just cry, ‘June, why are you doing this?’” Her parents and children (who were now adults) begged her to divorce Lamar. They feared she was in danger and envisioned her living in misery. 

“They thought I was just being foolish.” June says. “They’d say things like, ‘God doesn’t want you to suffer like this,’ or ‘God doesn’t work that way,’ or ‘God gives you common sense.’” Although June realized her loved ones meant well, their comments put a lot of pressure on her. She knew she had to please God and believed He wanted her to remain in the marriage.

As June confined herself to her bedroom, she was alone with God and the Word. “I was in His classroom,” she says, “and I had ears to hear. God was in the pruning process in my life.”

In the beginning she thought that her marriage problems were all Lamar’s fault, but as she turned to God she saw ways that she had failed her husband. “I had not put him first,” June says. “I put the kids before him … and church, too.” She also says she didn’t show him proper respect. June realized that she had looked to Lamar to make her happy when true happiness comes from God.  

“Keep me in the fire … ”

As weeks turned into months, June focused less on earning Lamar’s love and respect and more on allowing the Lord to shape her into His image. She kept a journal, and one of her entries read:

I’m not going to ask You to shorten the days of my adversity if these days mean knowing You better. If these days mean You’re changing me, keep me in the fire until Your work in me is complete … Just give me the grace and the strength to remain faithful and true in You to glorify You. I want to learn all You want me to learn. I don’t want this to be wasted time.

On another day she wrote: Lord, I cannot change this man but You can change me.

When June found herself dwelling on the things that Lamar had done that upset her she would immediately start praising the Lord out loud. She eventually accepted the fact that Lamar might never be a part of her life and was satisfied with just the Lord.

After three years, God had a final lesson for June: dealing with unforgiveness.  In her mind she imagined telling Lamar how he had hurt her. “I forgave him,” she says, “and released him from it.”

Shortly after that, she actually spoke to Lamar and asked him if they could get some emergency lights that burned on gas. He simply answered, “No.”  But since they were talking, she told Lamar that she still loved him and had not meant things that she had said in anger.

Lamar sternly replied, “June, you think things are going to get better, but they are not.”

But June also recalls that there was something different after this short conversation. She sensed a softness in her husband.

“June, if you’ve got time, come here a minute”

A few days after their brief conversation, Lamar spoke again to June. In a soft voice he asked if she and her father would clear off a hillside on their property where he wanted to plant grass for the deer. “I knew he wasn’t going to thank me,” she says, “but I did it as unto the Lord.”  Sure enough, after June and her father cleared the hillside, Lamar showed no appreciation.

About six weeks later, she was stunned to hear Lamar say, “June, if you’ve got time come here a minute.”

He continued, “I’ve been thinking. I know that I said things to hurt you and you said things to hurt me but if you want to we’ll try to make a go of it.” June said she wanted to try to make the marriage work, even though Lamar said he didn’t know if he would ever love her again.   “And it wasn’t two weeks before he was calling me darling and telling me he loved me,” she says.

June purposefully focused on his good qualities and says doing this revolutionized their marriage. “It was almost like we were in a contest,” she says, “to see who was going to outdo the other.” The more she showed respect to Lamar, the more he wanted to show his love to her. She also made sure Lamar knew how much she appreciated him.

Weekend To Remember Conference Testimony

Here’s a couple who went to a FamilyLife Conference and how it made a difference in their marriage.

Chip Ingram – Three Ways to Improve your Conflict Resolution Skills (pt 2)

Why is conflict so hard to resolve? Whether in your marriage or other relationships – conflict can be a huge barrier that most of us would rather avoid. I want to share with you some common mistakes in conflict resolution and three important realizations that will bring fresh perspective to even the most difficult conversations. If you want to learn more, you can listen to the full message on conflict resolution from our guest speaker Tim Lundy here: http://www.venturechristian.org/files/sermons2/t032011.mp3

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The clip above has some material that originally came from a video from Family Life. I have mentioned this organization several times in this post. Contacting them would be a great place for Arnold and Maria to begin their recovering. I am hoping that Maria realizes that this family is worth saving. It will take a lot of forgiveness and she will have to turn to Christ for his supernatural help to make it happen