By Katie Ginn
The day after Heather Bryant told Rusty, her husband of 15 years, that she’d had an affair, a couples’ counselor asked them, “What was the best year of your marriage?”
With a bitter laugh, Rusty replied, “I thought it was year number 15.”
Nearly 15 more years have passed since Heather’s revelation. Through prayer, repentance, forgiveness, and Christian community, God has transformed the Bryants’ marriage – and the Bryants have redone the bonus room. It’s now home to The Redeemed Marriage, their couples’ coaching ministry and podcast.
“I know that’s just God’s grace in both our lives,” Heather says now, sitting with Rusty in the same plush chairs where they encourage couples who are struggling. “Even when the enemy (brings up the affair to either of us), it’s just (about) quieting that voice and reminding ourselves of what God did.”
Crawdad fishing and pin-rolled jeans
Rusty and Heather grew up down the street from each other in Clinton. “We did a lot of crawdad fishing together and rode to school together,” Heather says.
“(But there were) times she didn’t want to ride to school with us,” Rusty adds.
“I was a cheerleader and thought that I was way too cool,” she says. “We (pin rolled) our jeans (back then), and he did it for a little too long.” (laughs)
She wasn’t allowed to date until 10th grade anyway. But when Rusty asked her out, her folks made an exception. She was a freshman.
“Over the years, it became very obvious (to me) that he was the type of man that I would want to spend the rest of my life with,” Heather says. “There was never any doubt.”
After dating through all of high school and most of college, the Bryants got married. He founded a soccer ministry, and she was a stay-home mom.
“From the outside looking in, we just had the perfect marriage,” Rusty says. “Even from our perspective, we thought everything was great.”
Heather agrees: “He was a wonderful husband, a wonderful dad, we did a lot of traveling together … The first 15 years, they were real. Until it got closer to things going bad, it was great.”
‘You have 24 hours to tell Rusty’
In May 2011, Heather embarked on what would eventually become a three-month affair. The burning question is, why?
“There was nothing that Rusty specifically did,” Heather says. “It was all inside of me. I was seeking affirmation from anybody else that would give that to me, instead of our Lord and Savior, which is the only place that that validation should come from.
“Not even Rusty was designed to do that for me … There’s that line that Tom Cruise says (in ‘Jerry Maguire’), ‘You complete me,’ and all the women (love it, but) I was setting Rusty up constantly for failure, because that’s not what he was designed to do.
“(I was basically saying) ‘I don’t feel complete with (Rusty), so maybe with this other guy … ’ I thought I was a very confident person. (But) I didn’t know who I was in Christ.”
Then on the morning of August 23, 2011, Heather got a phone call. “(The man’s wife) said, ‘I know what you’re doing with my husband. You have 24 hours to tell Rusty, or I will tell him.’”
So when Rusty came home that night, Heather said, “I’ve messed up. I’ve messed up really bad. I’ve been unfaithful.”
Two words she did not say were, “I’m sorry.” She was only sorry she’d been caught. The affair was over, but her heart had not changed.
Late that night, Rusty drove to the home of a trustworthy friend to talk and get some advice. “(Then) I came back and (bunked with) one of the boys, because I wasn’t going to get in the bed with her,” he recalls.
“And I heard God say to me: He was giving me permission to leave, but He was asking me to stay. I’m so grateful I heard that voice, because three days later (when the affair blew up publicly), I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
The next morning, Rusty decided to tell Heather’s dad.
“We were scheduled to sing a duet that Sunday in church, and her dad was the music minister,” Rusty explains. “I wasn’t going to get up there and sing with her and pretend.” I said, ” You can come with me, or I’ll just go tell him. And she went with me. He got us set up with a counselor that afternoon.” Still, “I was not even sure if we would survive.”
Rusty told Heather to leave the house. For a few days, she stayed at her parents’ home but came back in the mornings and evenings to get their sons ready for school and for bed. “They knew something had happened, but they didn’t know what,” Rusty says. (The boys were 9 and 5 at the time.)
As the days passed, Heather continued feeling not convicted but embarrassed. Seemingly, all of Clinton knew what she had done. “I had ruined my reputation and my family’s reputation. My dad was six months from retirement.”
At the end of the Bryants’ second counseling appointment, the therapist said, “Before y’all leave the parking lot today, I want you each to get a mentor.”
‘You’re going to want to see this’
For her mentor, Heather chose Pennye Dees, an older woman from church. When Heather called her, Pennye didn’t bother saying hi. She just said, “Heather – I’ve been waiting on you to call.”
Heather gets a little emotional when talking about Pennye. “Besides the Lord and Rusty, (she) was the most influential person in that time of my life. My experience with her and two college friends, a few days later, is what changed me.”
The ladies brought Heather to one of their homes to pray and speak truth over her. “I wasn’t in a place then that I wanted to hear it. I was still mad that I got caught,” Heather recalls.
But then Pennye told the story of the sinful woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears in Luke 7. As Jesus explains to the offended Pharisees, anybody who is forgiven much – like that sinful woman – loves much.
The weight of sin hit Heather before the love.
“I quite literally couldn’t pick my head up off the floor. People say Jesus carried the sin of the world on the cross – all I had was mine, and I couldn’t lift my head up. It was a very, very dark moment. And Pennye put her hand on me. And she said, ‘God, please don’t let her see her sin without catching a glimpse of her Savior.’
“And I can just remember the Lord saying so sweetly to me in that moment that He loved me no matter what. That I was still treasured by Him,” Heather says. “And then I was able to lift my head and know that He loved me … And that’s the moment my life changed forever.”
Meanwhile, Rusty was having lunch with his own mentor. “Pennye called me and said, ‘You need to get over here,’” Rusty recalls.
“I said, ‘If you have more to tell me, I don’t even want to know.’ And she said, ‘No, you’re going to want to see this.’”
Rusty drove to the house, and one of Heather’s other friends met him at the door. “She had come a few days earlier (and had told me), ‘Don’t trust anything Heather says to you.’ That same friend came to the door and said, ‘You can trust her (now).’’
Befuddled, Rusty walked in and saw Heather sitting on the couch. Her heart was so transformed, “she looked like a totally different person,” he recalls.
“They left us alone, and we sat on the couch, and it was the first time I heard Heather apologize. And I knew that she meant it. And not really knowing what it meant or what I was doing, I offered forgiveness.”
After that, “we didn’t want to go back to the way we were,” he says.
‘We have to go there’
Years earlier, the Bryants had gone to a wedding at Berry College near Rome, Georgia. “Bubba and Cindy Cathy (of the Chick-fil-A family) were there and took some of us on a tour of an old dairy farm that they were going to turn into a marriage retreat center,” Rusty recalls.
After his own marriage blew up, Rusty remembered the Cathys’ plans and looked up WinShape Marriage Intensives online. “I was like, ‘We have to go there.’ When we called, they said it had already been paid for (by someone who knew we were planning to go).”
The intensive took place about six weeks after Heather confessed. She and Rusty gained a lot of resources, help, and the hope that their marriage could thrive again.
So what did they do differently after that?
“We started putting boundaries in our marriage that we hadn’t had before. We had more openness, not hiding anything of any kind,” Heather says. “We also began to talk about everything, even with our boys (though not the details of our story). They’re 24 and 19 now, and they can come to us for anything.”
Over time, Heather found the surrounding community not as quick to forgive as her husband, she says. “For months, if not years, I felt like I walked around with a scarlet ‘A’ on my chest. Some of the looks I got, the church hurt, the anonymous letters … ”
Still, the Bryants pressed on. They moved to a new church, went to counseling, went on retreats, stayed close to their mentors – and clung to Christ above all.
“We were learning how to treat people that have gone through really hard and public things,” Heather says.
Five years after Heather’s confession, she and Rusty shared their story in a written testimony to be shared at their new church. Before that publication, the Bryants talked to their sons to make sure they weren’t caught off guard.
“We didn’t necessarily use the word ‘affair,’ but we reassured them that our marriage was strong and things were good,” Rusty says.
The boys’ response? “They wanted more s’mores,” Heather says.
Several years later, their youngest son asked more questions. When he learned that his mom had cheated, he said, “‘I knew there was an affair, but I didn’t know who (had done it).”
By that time, something had happened that was never part of Rusty and Heather’s plan: They’d started a marriage ministry.
‘Don’t get your counseling degree’
The Bryants urge couples to share their struggles with close, trustworthy Christian friends – not to air their dirty laundry publicly unless God calls them to. However, their own story spread quickly in the days after Heather’s confession. Looking back, “we consider it to be God’s grace,” Rusty says.
“Several years into our healing journey, we were doing really well, and there were four different couples from four different churches who came to us and said, ‘Teach us what you learned.’
“So we got these four couples together, and we wrote a curriculum (for them).” That led to a website, an informal podcast on Facebook Live, and finally a weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
“And God started sending people to us,” Rusty says. He and Heather turned their bonus room into a podcast studio and seating area, where they could encourage couples both digitally and in person.
To be clear, the Bryants are not counselors but coaches. Most couples benefit from both. “(Like a counselor) we do get to the root of things, but our goal is … how do we move forward? How are we going to improve?” Rusty explains.
After four coaching sessions, “we move (the couple) into group mentoring,” Rusty says. “We meet with them (on a group video call with other couples) twice a month.”
So, how long until a couple “graduates”? Short answer: It’s up to them. Even the group mentoring is optional, though the Bryants highly encourage it.
“Couples can stay in that (group mentoring setting) as long as they want,” Rusty says. “It’s more about staying connected, continuing to grow, and having ongoing support.”
It sounds almost too simple. But the Bryants don’t offer any “secret” patented tips for saving a marriage. They just offer themselves and the gospel.
“Heather struggled with, should I get a counseling degree?” Rusty says. “(But) people have literally said, ‘Don’t get your counseling degree. We just want somebody with a story.’”
The Bryants’ biggest piece of advice: “Don’t try to journey through this alone,” Rusty says. “The people who try to journey alone, they never truly heal. They just try to move on. If you don’t deal with the pain, it comes back.”
Over the last six years, the Bryants have met with hundreds of couples. They also host out-of-town retreats, as well as intensives for one couple at a time. Now clients are wanting to pass on the hope to others.
“We tell them to pray about it,” Rusty says. “Somebody’s going to come to you one day and say, ‘I’ve got a problem.’ You don’t have to give details, but your experience will help. You now have a capacity to love in another way.”
That certainly applies to Rusty – but he isn’t interested in congratulations. “The person who has done the betraying is the catalyst (for change in a marriage),” he says. “You can pat me on the back, but if (Heather) hadn’t changed, we would’ve just been roommates.”
Heather gives Rusty credit for offering full forgiveness – with no takebacks. “He has never held (what I did) over my head,” she says. (Exhibit A: Their son having no idea which parent had cheated till they told him!)
Above all, the glue that holds the Bryants together is Christ and His Word.
“Heather has actually gone through breast cancer too, because it was like, we need one more thing to deal with,” Rusty says with a laugh. “(At that time) she had a jar of ‘truth and lie’ cards. On one side, she wrote the lie that the enemy was telling her, and on the other side she wrote what scripture says.”
We know from 2 Corinthians 10:5 to “take every thought captive,” he notes – whether it’s the opening of an old wound caused by our spouse, the fear of the future caused by a diagnosis, or anything in between. But what do we do with that thought once we’ve captured it?
“(We make) it obedient to Christ,” he finishes. “What’s so important is that you’re replacing a lie with the truth.”
And the truth – according to scripture and the Bryants’ lived experience – is that every marriage can be a picture of Jesus and His bride.
