On November 2, 2006, Gayle Haggard’s life changed forever when her husband, Ted Haggard, founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was publicly exposed in a scandal. In the days and months ahead, everything in Gayle’s life was at stake—her beliefs, her marriage, and her relationship with the church community she had been a part of for more than 20 years. In Why I Stayed, Gayle walks us through the choices she made in her darkest hour and shares her renewed passion for the central message of the Bible—the liberating message of forgiveness and love. Why I Stayed reminds us of what less-than-perfect people desperately need—a community of family and faith that offers healing love and a path to restoration.
Why I Stayed
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Editorial Reviews
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Gayle’s ‘risk of love’ reveals a healing path that few would have ever predicted. You won’t be able to put this book down. (Drs. Les & Leslie Parrott Founders of RealRelationships.com )
From the Inside Flap
“I kept asking myself the crucial question: Who am I going to be in our story? Will I be the woman who washes her hands of the situation and walks away from Ted, or will I be the woman who loves him and shows forgiveness? . . . The choice was mine. A mountain stood in front of me, a difficult climb, and I didn’t know what lay on the other side.” — Gayle Haggard
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
81 of 92 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Story For Our Time--Much To Think About,
This review is from: Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour (Hardcover)
I watched Gayle and Ted Haggard on Oprah yesterday and immediately bought this book, because I was so impressed with what appeared to be Gayle's strength and authenticity as she shared about her choice to stay in her marriage. I was intrigued by Oprah's reaction to her as well; she seemed incredulous that anyone could make this choice under the circumstances. I had to know more. I am so very glad now that I read this book because it is an important one. No matter how you might feel about the Haggard scandal, your opinion is formed based upon media reports and second-hand information. Reading this book allows you to have firsthand information, but more importantly, to think critically about issues such as the role of the church in restoration, how we judge each other, marriage commitment, denial, forgiveness, grace, punishment, the nature of repentance, and more. No matter what your feelings about the scandal, this book will give you much to think about.
The book is written with Angela Hunt, a seasoned Christian writer. This was a great choice, as the book is well-written and riveting, hard to put down. I began the book intrigued about how Gayle Haggard recovered from seemingly insurmountable betrayal. And I thought that perhaps I could learn something about love and forgiveness that could help me in my own marriage. Gayle's choice to stay could indeed have been written off to denial and weakness, but I suspected something different. And I found it. Gayle describes the scandal from her point of view in detail. She then walks the reader through the steps she took to choose love and forgiveness for Ted, and why she made this choice; of course, the decision itself was a process, not a one time event. She describes how they submitted themselves to God to both suffer the consequences of Ted's sin, which were many. (By choosing to stay with Ted, Gayle suffered, unfairly, as well.) She writes candidly of their painful isolation from their church family and the reasons behind it. Through it all, she writes how she wanted to be an example of Christ's love and forgiveness. She asked herself, "Who are you going to be in this story? How are you going to be honorable?" She writes that "love isn't a feeling, it's a choice--a choice we make ever day, sometimes every hour" and she shares how she did this. This is the true beauty and value of the book, not the details of a scandal, but the unusual choice that Gayle made, how she took control and made a counter-cultural choice that empowered both her and her family. She discusses the many problems with the restoration process--what worked and what didn't--and how changes can be made in the Christian church so that restoration can be more healing rather than strictly punitive. The book will be of greatest interest to those who are Christians or who are interested in Christianity. It may offend some who see the church as only for the righteous and perhaps self-righteous rather than as welcoming place for all, as "a community of sinners who are grateful they've met the Savior". There are Scripture verses throughout. However, I think that the book would also be very worthwhile for those who are not Christians but who are interested in psychology and marriage and human nature. Before reading the book I was astounded that someone who had a clear Biblical reason to leave, a built-in permission to escape the shame and pain and rebuilding process, would actually choose--choose--to stay. Gayle's reward was a sought after intimacy with her husband that she had never had before, plus a family that was stronger than before. She did indeed choose an alternative path, one which was and is terribly difficult, but a valid choice nevertheless. She is not saying (nor am I) that every woman should choose this path, but merely that divorce is not the only option, and that staying in a marriage should be up to the individual woman. I learned much from her story about love, forgiveness, and commitment that I can apply to my own marriage. It's easy to write her story off and minimize her experience by calling it denial; however, I think that's a mistake that closes the door to understanding the power of what actually happened and to the potential power of the Gospel. Highly recommended. *****
22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A call to improving church discipline,
By
This review is from: Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour (Hardcover)
I found the book fascinating for two reasons--(1) because of Gayle's counterintuitive decision to stay committed to Ted, and (2) because of the light she sheds on the church discipline and restoration process she and Ted went through. As an elder in my church, I came away with a renewed commitment to make sure that our church does church discipline well and biblically. Granted, we're reading the Haggards' story only from Gayle's perspective, and the New Life Church leaders would probably tell a different story. But I was appalled by the lack of true restoration and care for Gayle and Ted by the church leadership. May all Christian churches learn a lesson here and do it better in the future.
31 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
An Infuriatingly Selfish Spin on a Serious Sinner's Story,
By
This review is from: Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour (Hardcover)
This story, by the wife of exposed liar, hypocrite and drug-user Ted Haggard, is a frustrating view of how well-meaning Christians see everything in life selfishly, even when they commit terrible sin.
She jumps right into the problems of the marriage, not wasting a couple hundred pages telling readers about her upbringing. Instead she starts with meeting her husband and quickly goes through their years of building their Colorado ministry into a mega-church. She fills these early pages with self-centered emotion, never stopping to ask obvious questions like why she broke up an engagement with another guy for this man she didn't like at first. Or why a man who had never led a church decides to pick up and move far away and start a church from scratch. Or why they sent away their mentally disabled son to Kentucky when they had been told it was best for him to live at home. So early on she exposes a lack of self-perception that becomes even more clear once the scandal is exposed. Most shocking is her writing about the days when Haggard revealed he had done drugs (it's confirmed here even though he continued to claim publicly it wasn't true) and had a homosexual affair. She again goes inside her emotions and immediately starts to try to save her marriage, her family and her job (she was getting paid to be a women's leader at the church her husband pastured). Instead of realizing that what her husband did was a lengthy breech of rust with her or his gigantic church, she callously responds that she thinks the people in the church should sympathize with him since he has now proven that he's not perfect and is a sinner, just like his followers. Then, after she claims complete devastation, they get the family on a plane for a lengthy stay at a Florida beach home--and on the plane she claims her husband tells her "everything." This is on a commercial flight--with hundreds of people around her, including her kids. Why would she talk about private things in public just a few days after being held to national ridicule? And how could she believe him as he tells her that he slept with other men but "didn't have sex" with them and only masturbated himself while in bed with another guy? Some of this is hard to swallow. To make it even worse, after she begs us and their followers for compassion, she then admits that she had known for 20 years about his same-sex impulses but chose to ignore them. Early in their marriage he confessed to going to an adult bookstore and having a "physical relationship" with a man, to the point that Haggard feared when their son was born handicapped that it may have been caused by a sexual disease Ted acquired. How could this woman just pretend like this didn't happen and for years believe the guy? This really is a story of how dumb a spouse can be--instead of trusting him she should have been skeptical from that moment on. Faith without works is dead. It isn't until half way into the book that she reveals he suddenly recalled in post-crisis counseling that he was physically abused at age seven, and that he "experimented" with other boys in sixth and seventh grade. And that he looked at gay porn early in their marriage. This was a much more serious issue than they have claimed publicly and she never seems to have been concerned with any of his past. Much of her acceptance of her husband is due to her constant hunger for connection with him. Since she was a military child that moved around a lot, she lacked many relationships. She says that even her connection with her husband during their marriage was less than what she needed. So when he sinned and began pouring out his insides to her, she loved it because it was finally the connection she needed! His sins resulted in her needs being fulfilled, so she doesn't take his sins as being that bad. Gayle even has the gall to condemn and blame the church for not being more forgiving of her husband, preaching about how a true church family would help restore him so he could lead them again. It's all me-me-me and few thoughts about how her husband destroyed the faith of many, as well as made Christianity a joke due to his many faults. The book ends up being about how she thinks the church should be more forgiving of fallen leaders. She actually writes, after they were told to stay away from their church, "our exile didn't make sense in light of New Testament teachings." Huh? The post-resurrection believers who publicly sinned were very publicly punished (like the couple that lied to the apostles about selling land for the community and were struck dead for lying). The New Testament says you shouldn't even eat with a so-called brother who sins. She keeps repeating the verse about restoring a brother who sins--yet this guy didn't just simply commit a sin, he repeatedly for years deceived tens of thousands of people as the leader of the national evangelical group. He should have repented and used his failure to help others, as Chuck Colson has so brilliantly done in starting a prison ministry after going to jail for Watergate. This family lived a well-off lifestyle paid for by churchgoers, which Ted must have expected since she admits he grew up in a wealthy family. They lived in a wooded home with a pool and private gate. The church paid for their expenses for over a year--include car, cell phone and insurance. They got a nice severance package and their son's private education was continued to be paid for. They got to stay for free in the beach house. The church even paid for their private lawyer after the scandal was exposed! After the church paid for their expensive three weeks of counseling in Phoenix, the professionals point blank say that she is the one with major problems and that the couple was acting "like royalty." Even one of her three best friends abandons her after hearing the truth--and yet Gayle never accept responsibility and instead focuses on how terribly people are treating her. Then she complains that they have to start to pay for things themselves and friends abandoned them. For instance, Ted admitted privately to her that he also had relations with a guy in the church, then she complains that the church leaders are on a "witch hunt" to find if there are others who were abused in the church. The church's logical reaction to his confessions are slammed by her as being "unbiblical." She also condemns virtually every person Ted had personally put in authority over them to keep them accountable--when the church board and the restoration team lay the resolutions on the line after reviewing the evidence, Gayle point blank rejects every bit of it. There is virtually no person in this book who comes away unscathed by her attacks other than her family. She gets to the point where she is whining that they aren't being treated respectfully--so instead of her worrying about the damage her husband has done to the thousands of followers, she complains that their pictures and books have been removed from the church! This woman's ego is so huge--like other fallen preacher couples (Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker, Jimmy & Frances Swaggart, etc.), she sees she and her husband as the victims instead of focusing on the tragedy they both contributed to. This should have been a story that begged forgiveness and wallowed in humble sadness. Instead it's defiant, rebellious to any spiritual authority, naive and reflects a distorted gospel. She wants sympathy and wants everyone to believe she and her husband are something they're not. She still has not learned the lesson she needs to learn and the book will only infuriate those looking for a peaceful resolution to this tragedy.
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