Linda Raya – From Brokenness to Purpose in Marriage

Life doesn’t always look the way it seems on the outside. Sometimes what appears strong, beautiful, and put together can be hiding years of pain, disconnection, and silent struggle. But even in the deepest brokenness, God is still at work—restoring, healing, and writing a new story.

In this powerful conversation, Valerie Peterson sits down with Linda Raya to share a testimony of redemption that spans decades. Linda opens up about her early life, her marriage to Ray, and the journey they walked together—one filled with love, but also deep wounds, insecurity, and disconnection.

From the outside, everything looked perfect. A large home, a growing family, leadership in church, and a life many would admire. But behind closed doors, their marriage was struggling in ways few could see. There was emotional distance, pain, and a sense of rejection that lingered for years. Linda shares how that brokenness led her into one of the darkest seasons of her life—where hopelessness, shame, and despair nearly took everything from her. 

But God didn’t leave her there.

In the middle of that darkness, Linda encountered the truth that changed everything: her identity was not found in how others treated her—but in who God said she was. As she began to seek Him deeply, spending time in His presence and in His Word, something shifted. Her worth was no longer tied to her circumstances. She was a daughter of God—and that truth became her foundation.

Instead of trying to change her husband, Linda made a different choice—she surrendered. She allowed God to work in her first. And as her heart began to heal and transform, something powerful happened. Ray began to change too.

Through time, prayer, and a willingness to trust God daily—even moment by moment—their marriage was restored. What once felt hopeless became a testimony of grace. What once brought pain became the very platform God would use for purpose.

Today, Linda and Ray lead a marriage ministry, helping others walk through the same struggles they once faced. Their story is proof that no relationship is too far gone, no situation too broken for God to redeem.

This conversation is filled with real, practical wisdom:
 Stay in God’s Word.
 Build a consistent “secret place” with Him.
 Release control and trust Him with what you cannot fix.
 And surround yourself with a godly community and accountability.

If your marriage feels strained, if you’re carrying wounds, or if you’ve lost hope—this message is for you. God can restore what feels impossible. He can bring beauty from ashes and purpose from pain.

You’re not too far gone. Your story isn’t over.

What’s one area in your life where God might be asking you to surrender control and trust Him today?

For more information or to connect:
 OnePurposeMarriage.com

For more information contact us at
rtrdestiny@gmail.com

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Well, welcome. This is Road to Redemption. My name is Valerie Peterson, and I'm the host for today. Thrilled that you've joined in because we have an amazing woman in the studio. And I'm going to introduce her. Her name is Linda Rea. And Linda, thank you for coming. Oh, thank you so much for having me, Val. I am so excited to be here. Well, John and I have been talking, John Martin and I have been talking for a bit about having you on, and just um you have an amazing testimony of the goodness of God. So if you could start with a little bit about maybe your growing up years, and then, well, first of all, you're married to Ray. I am married to Ray. And how many years have you been married? 37, almost 38 years now.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yes. I think our audience needs to know how many kids do you have? I have seven. We have seven. Yes, seven. They're all married, and we have our 12th grandchild on the way. Tell me that's not cool.

Childhood Faith And Meeting Ray

SPEAKER_01 1:02

So cool. Yes. I think I'm busy with six. You must be really busy. Well, I want you to start by just maybe telling a little bit about your upbringing and then how you met Ray. All right.

Living With Intimacy Anorexia

SPEAKER_00 1:16

So yes, I was raised in a Christian home. Um, I was a quiet, shy girl. And so when you're insecure already, you tend to try to find things in areas where maybe God doesn't want you to find your happiness and your joy and your confidence. And so when I met my husband, Ray, I was 15. When I met him, it was like, wow, this is so different. He was not saved. Um, very much raised in a different way than me. He always says he was raised on the other side of the tracks. That's how he words it, you know, so we joke about that. But it was, um, he was so different. And yet I I was drawn to that. And um at the same time, he was he had brokenness too. So we both had some brokenness. I had a lot of insecurities. He had some, he covered his up better than I did um by being just the life of the party, the boisterous one. Yeah. Um seemed like the fun one. And so I was drawn to that. Um, but then as we went along in life and we got married, so I was 19 when we got married, he was 21, went along in life, and there was a lot of disconnection. It felt like um rejection. Um people just push me away. And we came to find out it was it had a name, intimacy anorexia, um, which anybody can look that up and and discover what that is. But it's really the withholding of intimacy, whether it's emotional, physical, spiritual, it's pushing away. It's there's many, many aspects to it. Those were our major ones with with those what I'd listed, and um, and so that just caused me to feel worthless and feel as if I didn't have um any I I was I just wasn't worthy.

unknown 3:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

And and it caused a a lot of hurt and doubting. And at one point I was even doubting that the Lord really loved me. Because when you're looking at a person who's supposed to love you and give his life to you, your spouse, and he's not, like you can start kind of seeing him as well. That must be how God thinks of me then. And I would ask God, like, why? Why? And it was many years. We went through decades of this, even though we had our children, there's still I think our listeners really need to hear this.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yes, decades. It was, it was decades, and and can I I you said to me when we were talking on the phone, you said we looked like the perfect couple.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

We did. We looked good, we smelled good, we had the house, you know, we had the 6,500 square foot house, we had the big pool, we had the acreage, we had all the things. We we went to church together, his arm would be around me, and we were leaders, we were leading things, and yet we were so incredibly broken and disconnected, but we knew how to fake it. I guess that's the best way to put it. And I like to say it like our pastor says it now. He says, The anointing could be on you, but not in you. Yeah, and I would say at that point in our life the anointing was on us, but certainly not in us. Yes, so we serve people well, but we're not serving one another well. And um and yeah, that was that was really what people saw. They saw what looked beautiful and and perfect, and they wanted that.

The Affair And Suicidal Despair

SPEAKER_01 4:44

And I really believe, you know, in in Hebrews 6 it talks about hope. I think there's some people here that need to hear there's hope. Even they may have been going through really difficulty in their marriage for years, but you're giving them hope. Yes, and it says hope is an anchor, what it keeps us firm and secure, right? Talk about those years of difficulty and how you got through.

Identity In Christ Restores Hope

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Right. So I was, I did not have hope for years, right? I didn't have hope for quite a few years. In fact, I felt so hopeless and so rejected that at one time um when I was had been talking to an associate pastor at a church in another state, he could see the rejection. He could see the pain. And rather than ministering to me, he took advantage of that. I was weak and I gave in, so I should not have, but it it ended up in an affair. So that was like my most deepest, darkest hole of my entire marriage. Was like, I can't believe that I I did that. And at that point, I just really wanted to die. I I didn't want to live anymore. I was planning it, I was trying to figure out how I could just take my life. And I had these precious seven, seven precious children, and I mean, I just I had it all planned out. The Lord would always intervene, and I could see that after a while. He would intervene and he would just I plan on okay, I'm gonna go do this in the I'm it's gonna be in the car. And I'd have a kid in the car. Well, I'm not gonna, you know, now I can't. And so the Lord was so faithful to always intervene. And after I got out of that hump, after I got over that hump and out of that dark hole, I was coming out of it still. I mean, at one point the the psychiatrist's like, you need to be in a hospital. Um, and I didn't go, but the Lord just really showed up. I finally just really got in my secret place and dug into the word and asked him to show me who I was and whose I was. And once I understood who I truly was in him, like the light bulb came on and the light came back, and I was able to pull myself out of that dark, deep hole. I didn't do it, the Lord did it.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

So your identity wasn't uh in how your husband treated you or didn't, it was more this you were a daughter.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I was a daughter, and I understood that then. Wow, but I did not understand it before because when you keep looking across here for your worth and your value and your acceptance and not there, you will never be satisfied in this world. You will not be, you've got to go there. Yeah, and so when I got my secret place and I dug in and he began to speak to me, and he gave me this phrase, he said, My daughter, it's not your worth, it's his wounds. And that say that again. My daughter, it's not your worth, it's his wounds. And when he said that to me, it was like just like, oh my goodness. I could see that I I was his child, and it didn't matter how any man talked uh treated me, how any man talked to me, spoke to me, or didn't speak to me. We could we we could just walk in our house forever and not talk, you know. It was just very disconnected. I had him, and it was only what he said. I'd let him become my mirror rather than letting my husband be my mirror, and and it was transformed.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

That's so awesome. So tell us more, like what happened? How did how did God draw Ray?

SPEAKER_00 8:34

So I had to stop. I had to stop trying to change him because I wanted to tell him how he needed to be. I wanted to tell him what he needed to do, how he needed to act, and that's not gonna work. It just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

I hear you. It's kind of like that control, the person what goes the opposite way. You know, the distancer pursuer theory.

Surrendering Control Day By Day

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yes, yes, and that's that was us, and so I had to start just saying, you know, God, you've you've got him. Change me, heal me, transform me. And as that happened, and Ray saw it, and he saw that the confidence was coming back in me, and that I wasn't gonna, I wasn't begging anymore for crumbs because I was getting all I needed about someone else from him, the only one that matters.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

You notice what you I just am sitting here thinking, wow, there was a shifting, you know, in Psalm 139 where it says, I know when you sit, I know when you stand, I know your thoughts from far, then goes on to say, Search me, O Lord. Doesn't say search my husband, search Ray. Search me. You got that, right? Because you were focused on you and what needed to happen in you, yes. Lord, you tend to write, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

And he did. And so a men's um study had started at our church, and that's kind of where everything just shifted. Um, he got in this discipleship study, and he knew the word, but he hadn't applied it. But that study helped him to apply it, and so he became transformed over a two-year period, and we still had some bumps in the road because you know, you you peel off some part of the onion, and there's still some onion that needs to come off later. And I, same with me, I would go up and down, but that was where the transformation really began. So he had to do his part, but it was because I took my hands off and gave him to the Lord. I surrendered him to the Lord, and the Lord transformed me.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

And and I want to say, sometimes looking at surrendering for the rest of your life is hard. Did you ever have to do it like five minutes by five minutes, Lord? I hand them back to you. Absolutely. And I think people need to hear that. That, you know, like the verse in Matthew 6, don't look at tomorrow. Stay in today. Tomorrow will have enough issues of its own. So, how did you stay in the day and just really, Father, take him, work in him?

SPEAKER_00 11:00

That's that's literally what I did. I would have to day by day, it could be hour by hour, it could be every 10 minutes, whatever. It was just when I would see something come back up, I would just choose to pray about it. I wouldn't pray out loud and like preach it at him. I would quietly just pray. And that really did make a difference. It was me taking my hands off the situation and guess giving it all to him. But it was, it was daily, hourly, by the minute, whatever was needed. And I had to continue. Like, if I did not get in my secret place, I was not gonna be the woman of God that I was called to be. So I had to get in my secret place with him because he was he was the one that needed to be my mirror. The Lord needed to be my mirror. So good.

Ray’s Discipleship And Marriage Renewal

SPEAKER_01 11:49

You know, I would love for you to share how the two of you got to the point to now having a marriage ministry. Yes. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Yes. So we had been told we were in the middle of some of this mess. Like we had just come out of it, it was just shortly after the affair. And um, I mean, Ray had every right to divorce me at that time too. So, and he chose he he sent he's got the papers ready, but he called the attorney, cut them off. So that was a blessing. But after that, we had had somebody come to the church we were at. This was in Kansas, and they spoke a word over us about ministering to marriages, right? You know, we were at Aquila and Priscilla, I believe. Yes, that's who they say, you know, and and then it went on to be marriage ministry, you know, it's just all these all these words. Well, the words give you hope. You know, when someone speaks over you and it becomes it's life. Words are, you know, it's the power of life, life and death are in our tongue, right? And those words spoken over us gave us more hope. And so we hung on to that, and we would write out our declarations based on that, and then we'd get many more words throughout the years, and it was always marriage ministry was in it, and a father and mother, and and all just so many, but marriage ministry just kept being like the at the top there, and so we held on to that, and then we just we noticed that we were getting the crisis couples sent to us oftentimes, like um, they've been through all these people, brain Linda, give them to Brain Linda, and we had seen a lot of transformation, you know, because I think when you've been through your your own struggles, you can relate so well.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

And isn't it? It's amazing how God takes our pain and He makes it our platform or our purpose, and that's what He exactly did in your in Ray's life. It's now your platform, it is our platform, and I believe that that's giving some people hope today to hear, you know, they may be at the point that you and Ray were just like, let's just let's be done.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Yes, and you would say to them I would say if he can do it for us, he can do it for you too. You are not too far, your marriage, your relationships, whatever it is, are not too far. They are not out of God's reach. God can do anything because it felt hopeless to me. I mean, and originally I probably hung on because we had seven kids, right? I'm sure that was probably why. But then I hung on beyond that because you know, there were still some bumps in the road as the kids were getting older. But the Lord, man, and no, if He did it for us, He'll do it for you. Because nobody believed when we got married, people said we weren't gonna stay together. And we this was, I mean, it was probably two and a half decades that we went through this. That's that's a while. I know people that are like, oh, this happened, we are done, you know, and then they're on their third or fourth marriage and they're still running into the same things. Ray and I have a resolute mindset with marriage. We took this assessment and discovered that recently, and it's like that makes sense why we stayed together. But even if you didn't come up with a resolute mindset, the Lord can do anything, He can transform anything just like that.

unknown 15:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

You know, there's verses in Psalm 66 where it says, I laid burdens on your back, I let men ride over your head, but but I brought you through fire and water, but I'm bringing you to a place of rich fulfillment. Yes. Another translation is abundance. Think about you two could have opted out in the fire and water, but they chose, they chose to stay in it and work through it.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yes.

Marriage Ministry Resources And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Can you tell the name of your ministry and how even how people could get in touch with you concerning your ministry?

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Thank you. So we're one purpose marriage, and we are on Facebook. We have a website, onepurposemarriage.com. Uh, it's O-N-E, not the number one. So some people will write on a book. Onepurposemarriage.com. And but you can find us on socials, you can find our website, and just reach out to us, leave us a message, private message us, whatever. But we would love to help because if you are feeling like you see yourself in our story right now, then I want to hear from you, even if it's just to pray with you, but I want to give you hope. I want to show you guys how you can reconnect and have purpose in your marriage.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Linda, we have so we're just so appreciative that you've been willing to come on. We would love to have both her and her husband on at some point. That's gonna be a powerful show. But just thank you and and I look forward to having you back. I look forward to coming back. Thank you, I appreciate you. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a wonderful interview with Linda. Listen, three things that we like to reinforce on Road to Redemption is to find a good Bible-believing church, get in the Word, and to have accountability. Often you can find accountability in the small groups in churches. So check it out. Lastly, I would love to close out in prayer with Linda. So, Father God, thank you that you've been here. Thank you for our listeners and viewers, and thank you, Lord God, that you're drawing them to you through Linda's testimony.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Lord, we just ask you to bless every listener here, Lord. We ask you, Lord, to touch their hearts, Lord, and give them hope, encouragement. If this stirred something in them, Lord, just help them find the right, the right person to reach out to, Lord. If they're feeling that loneliness or discouragement, Lord, that they they find that right person to reach out to, Father God. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, and we love you, Lord. In Jesus' mighty name we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen. Sorry, I'm almost