Separation doesn’t have to mean the end of a marriage

Linda Rooks offers real-life answers for couples

in the trenches seeking to repair their marriages

It is estimated that upwards of 80% of separated couples ultimately seek out a divorce. Despite the sobering statistics, it is possible to reconcile and build a stronger, lasting marriage. In Fighting for Your Marriage While Separated: A Practical Guide for the Brokenhearted (New Growth Press/February 25, 2019), Linda W. Rooks offers practical answers to readers’ questions, guiding them to a positive outcome for their marriage.  

As separation and divorce increasingly become what many feel to be the only solutions in many troubled marriages, Rooks encourages couples to continue to fight for restoration and healing. As a survivor of a broken marriage herself, Rooks understands that readers need specific, biblical, and practical help navigating their new, unwanted journey by faith. She and her husband, Marv, were married for over twenty years when then they faced a marriage crisis and separated. After three years of separation, they have now been reunited for twenty years.

“Gleaning from my experience of those I’ve walked beside during separation and brokenness, I have real-life answers from the trenches—answers that have already helped people find healing and restoration,” says Rooks. For the past eleven years, the Rookses have led a successful ministry to marriages in crisis in Central Florida. The many emails and newsletter responses she received also resulted in a thriving online marriage ministry.

“In the emails I get from readers, I hear the heartache. Each story is very different, but the pain bleeds from each sentence and paragraph. My heart grieves for those who write as they tell about suffering through an agony I know all too well because of my own three-year separation a number of years ago,” Rooks writes. “Because my own marriage was restored and I have been able to work with so many others to reconcile their marriages, I can confidently tell you it is possible to fight for your marriage and win—even when your spouse has turned away from you.

Some of the practical topics Rooks covers in Fighting for Your Marriage While Separated include:

• Giving your spouse time and space, 
• Choosing a marriage counselor,
• Knowing when it’s time to reconcile,
• Coping with divorce,
• Learning to live with the same spouse in a new marriage,
• Surrounding yourself with people who support your goals
• Communicating with and protecting the children,
• Deciding on limits,
• Trusting God for what happens next.

Rooks’s aim for Fighting for Your Marriage is to provide hope in the midst of sorrow and in spite of a broken heart, helping men and women not to give up, but to find real-life, concrete answers. Only then, she states, will married couples find strength for the battle ahead.

“When separation breaks a family apart, a spouse willing to fight for the marriage must step back from the fray and take a look,” she says. “Fighting for your marriage means going deeper to appropriate a whole new set of weapons. Change must take place, and it starts with God.”

Linda W. Rooks, the author of Broken Heart on Hold: Surviving Separation and Fighting for Your Marriage While Separated: A Practical Guide for the Brokenhearted, knows what it’s like to fight for your marriage. After being married for more than 20 years, she and her husband were separated for three years before reuniting. They have now been married over 40 years. Today, not only is their marriage thriving, but together they lead a crisis marriage class in Central Florida. 

As a freelance writer, Rooks’ writings have appeared in many national publications, including editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Focus on the Family, Homelife, and Today’s Christian Woman. She has appeared on TV and radio across North America.

The Rooks have two married daughters and five grandchildren.

Learn more about Linda W. Rooks and her ministry at fightingforyourmarriage.net  and follow her on Facebook (Broken Heart on Hold) and Twitter (@linda_rooks). 

To order a copy, visit New Growth Press.