1 of 2
Melody and Randy Hemphill
After overcoming challenging obstacles in their own relationship, Melody and Randy Hemphill now counsel other couples. Photo by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
2 of 2
Melody and Randy Hemphill
The antique keys symbolize the journey Melody and Randy traveled in order to overcome infidelity and create a stronger foundation in their marriage. Photo by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
When everything fell apart, Randy Hemphill still knew one thing — he wanted his wife’s heart.
So at dinner one night, Randy presented her with two antique keys.
“Melody, you have the key to my heart,” Randy said, handing her one of the keys. “I don’t know the outcome of all this, but I want to give you the key.”
Randy then gave her the second key.
“This represents the key to your heart,” he said. “If at some point you would give this to me, I would love to have it, but that is totally up to you.”
More than just love for one another, the keys symbolized the journey Melody and Randy would have to travel in order to overcome infidelity and create a stronger foundation than before. Years of hard work and healing lay before them as Randy offered his own heart.
Four months later, Melody gave Randy the key to her heart, and nine years later, the couple still has those keys as a reminder of their love.
Tremors
In hindsight, Randy said that couples who reach the six- to 10-year mark often find that every issue surfaces, whether it’s how they deal with conflict or how they communicate. The newness of the marriage has worn off, Melody said, and the realities of life settle in.
The Chelsea residents met their freshman year of college at Campbell University in 1993, and the young couple married in 1995 before moving to Birmingham two years later. The move was the first major adjustment Randy and Melody said they encountered in their relationship. They were in their 20s, facing the realities of life for the first time, and they were in a completely foreign place.
“I think, at that point, we were very naïve because we thought, ‘Well, we’re fine. We are a strong couple,’” Melody said.
“We were above facing major hurdles,” Randy added.
“Yeah, or if we did then we would get through them. I think we were very naïve to think we wouldn’t go through what other people we knew were going to go through,” Melody said.
Randy used the metaphor of tremors before an earthquake. He said that there were tremors in how they communicated, how they dealt with conflict or how they didn’t deal with it. Everything was happening below the surface, but neither Randy nor Melody knew how to verbalize what was happening.
Earthquake
In 2001, Melody began getting close to a male co-worker. At first, she said a lot of red flags went up in her head and she knew she was having feelings that she shouldn’t have, so she backed away. After some time had passed, she decided that she could be friends.
“All the guards I’d put up I kind of let down,” Melody said. “So the friendship grew, and it was evident that there were feelings going both ways. The relationship just continued and progressed, and what had been a public friendship became a very secretive relationship.”
The affair continued, on and off, for about two and a half years until December 2003 when Randy found out. Their entire world blew up, and Melody said neither of them knew what was going to happen or what they really wanted to happen.
“It all collapsed,” Randy said. “The trigger event was this relationship Melody was in, but it also revealed, at that point, all the junk I brought in the marriage. We both realized the relationship we thought we had died, in a sense.”
They considered divorce. For Melody, it was very hard to picture a future where they could be happily married again or where Randy wouldn’t think about the affair every time he looked at her. She had a lot of fear that they would still be stuck in the same place 10 years down the road.
Although it was difficult for them both to take the initial step toward healing, they decided it was worth trying for their young son.
“That was a big hurdle for me to just go, ‘OK, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but I can make these decisions for today and trust God today. [I’ll] take the next step tomorrow,’” Melody said.
Restoration
The restoration of a relationship is based on the work the individuals put in to it, according to Randy. They both brought hurt into the relationship, and the affair forced them to deal with it.
“It’s almost like when hardship happens, hardship forces you to take steps you wouldn’t normally take,” Randy said. “That’s what it did for us. Life was spiraling, so we said let’s begin to take some steps. Slowly those steps started mending our own relationship.”
Randy presented the antique keys to Melody in March of 2004. He said the first year was filled with intense work, but through their healing process, a new marriage was birthed.
Looking back now, the couple said they can see so many good things that happened to them that first year, but it was harder to see in the midst of it. They dealt with all the hurt and baggage they carried, and they came out with new skills for communicating.
“Before all this happened, I didn’t think this kind of marriage was possible,” Randy said. “Through the restoration side of it and what we have been able to build, it’s a marriage where you need each other without being needy with each other.”
They still fight, but it’s not about having a conflict-free marriage, Randy said. They have a whole new way of relating to each other, and both of their hearts are much fuller.
Reversal
As a way to get away from all of the hardship, they moved to Florida in 2005. No one would know what had happened, they wouldn’t have to revisit it, and they didn’t have to live in the past, but Randy said God had a different plan for them.
“During that time is when we started to feel like, ‘OK, we are supposed to do something with what we went through,’” Melody said. “We needed to share our story, and that was not what my plan had been.”
But it wasn’t until a friend visited them in Florida that Melody felt she might want to share her story. The friend was in Florida dealing with a personal issue, and she was surprised when he very openly expressed his problem.
“The whole time I was listening to him I thought, ‘He has a freedom that I don’t have,’” Melody said. “I still felt ashamed. I didn’t want people to know. I just didn’t feel like it was OK for anyone else to know, but when I heard him share I thought, ‘I want whatever he has.’”
It started as talking with friends and family, and the love and encouragement Melody received helped her take baby steps to sharing more. People seemed to appreciate the honesty Randy and Melody expressed, and the couple moved back to Birmingham in 2007 to begin counseling and ministering to others.
In 2010, the couple started LIFE Ministries, a nonprofit organization committed to restoring the hearts of men and women, and they published the book Every Marriage Needs a Divorce. The book conveys all of the Hemphills’ experiences and explores the idea that parts of every marriage fade, which then births something new.
“We got counseling and all of that, but talking to somebody who had actually been through what we had been through would have been huge,” Melody said. “We want somebody to know you are not alone, and you can make it.”
Together they spend time meeting with individuals and couples to help them get through dark times, and Randy said they have witnessed many miracles. Couples have come in ready to sign divorce papers and left LIFE Ministries with newfound hope and love for each other. Randy and Melody will sometimes speak at retreats and conferences, but the bulk of the time they help others on the path to healing.
“At the end of your life, if people are standing in a line to thank you, what do you want them to thank you for?” Randy said. “For us it would be a couple or a person saying, ‘[In] my darkest hour you were there for me.’”
For more information about LIFE Ministries, visit lifeministriesnow.com. The Hemphills’ book, Every Marriage Needs a Divorce, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
