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Born-Again
Marriage
By
Dr. Bonnie Libhart
Copyright 2010, Revised 2011 Dr. Bonnie Libhart,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0182-9
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
During her days as a talk show host in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Bonnie Libhart became the first woman ever to obtain a press pass to the pits of the Indianapolis 500. But just as the race began, the Indy pace car went out of control, skidding through the crew area. It toppled the press box, dumping she and her husband Tony and the other reporters and cameramen onto its hood in a splintering, head-cracking crash...
Bonnie's panic built as the emergency medical helicopter carried Tony in the direction of the hospital. Her eyes lifted heavenward as the whop, whop, whop of the helicopter's rotor blades carried him away.
His body would mend slowly over the next few months. But the damage they had done to each other in their race for happiness and security would have a longer lasting effect. It would nearly destroy their marriage.
When there seemed no hope left for them, Bonnie turned her eyes heavenward again. And this time it was to a source of help and healing more powerful than the surgeon's skillful hands. Her eyes looked to God...
Acknowledgments
I'd like to offer my thanks and appreciation to the following people for their help in editing, advising, typing, and the other various chores it took to get A Survivor’s Secret into your hands:
Sharon Mayhugh
Harry and Sharon Senn
Dr. Loyal could of Baylor University
Kay King
Betty Snyder
Kay Miller
Jeff Hensley
Rocky & Don Pettit
Summer Danielson
Sandra Fitzgerald-Pickens
And especially to my husband Tony and our children Emily Dawn, Deana, and Anthony.
Bonnie Taylor-Libhart
Huntsville, Alabama
Lyrics from the song "Would You?"
by Grace Hawthorne and Buryl Red
appearing on pp. 90 and 91
© Copyright 1972 by Word Music, Inc.
in Sing and Celebrate II
All Rights Reserved
International Copyright Secured
Used by Permission
Materials quoted from Heart Gifts
by Helen Steiner Rice
are used by permission.
Chapter One
I Search for Happiness In my Husband
At KAIT-TV, where I hosted a daily television talk show for years, many companies would send me samples of their new products, hoping that after I'd tried them, I'd tell about them on the air.
I didn't care for many of these, but when one of the cosmetics companies came out with a new line, I thought, "Ah-ha! I’ll try this one."
As I was smearing the heavy gook all over my face one night, my little one who was watching asked in his high-pitched voice, “What're you doing that for, mom?"
Breathlessly and enthusiastically, while continuing to read their enclosed ad, I announced, "Oh! This is going to make me beautiful!"
He watched. . .not taking his eyes off my face for the next thirty minutes. When I wiped the facial treatment off, his bottom lip quivered as he said sadly, "It didn't work, did it, Mom?"
Many things we try in life are just like my facial masque-they just don't work as well as we would like. But marriage doesn't have to be one of those things. It doesn't have to be hit-or-miss: it can -- and will -- work when we decide that is IS going to work.
Just a few years ago, after two marriages, one divorce, and an audition for the second, I felt like an authority on failure. I didn't know a marriage could be born-again. But that's exactly what happened to mine, and I'd like to tell you how.
Born and raised in Paragould, Arkansas, I eloped at the age of sixteen with a basketball player who drove a convertible. But marriage was not what I had expected and thirty months later I had a child and a divorce, but not much more maturity. I blamed "them"- parents, society, my husband -- for my marriage failure.
After modeling for a while in New York, I was forced, due to lack of money, to move back to the South to be near my parents so they could keep my child. Then, despite their objections and my own guilt feelings, I entered a career in radio, fulfilling a childhood dream. With a sultry voice and the introduction, "You're listening to WHER-Radio, the nation's only all-girl station," I was on the air.
In the evenings I taught dancing, and waltzing around the dance studio I met HIM. He was just the kind of man girls dream about-- Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome!
His
