All Things Made New
A Marriage That Looked Perfect
Aaron and Esther Manes grew up in Christian homes, with parents in ministry and faith shaping them. From the outside, their marriage appeared perfect. They had two beautiful daughters, a “thriving” business and everything anyone could want. But beneath the surface, Aaron was crumbling under the invisible weight of living a life that he knew was one big lie.
“I felt like I had to succeed as a husband, as a father, as a homeowner, as a business owner,” he says. “I felt like it was my job to provide for my family in any way I could. And I felt like it was my job to do it all alone without Esther.”
The Silent Drift
For many years their marriage was healthy, fulfilling and felt very solid. But as pressures grew, invisible barriers started to grow between them. There were no heated arguments or slammed doors but in some ways, that silence made the distance even harder to see.
“I made myself the sole decision maker on everything and created an environment where Esther was just along for the ride,” Aaron admits, “but not a partner. I trusted no one but myself, even though Esther had never given me a reason not to trust her. We never fought, but we never truly connected either.”
Eventually, the unspoken strain broke into reality when, after eleven years of marriage, Aaron chose to file for divorce. “I believed the lie that Esther was the reason behind all my problems,” he says quietly. “I pictured a life with just me and the girls, and I convinced myself that if I removed Esther from my day to day life, that it would fix the way I was feeling and I’d be able to survive.”
In his new “life,” Aaron kept attending church and stayed busy but never sought out people who would challenge him. “I thought I had it figured out,” he says. “But none of it satisfied me. I was completely alone.”
“The most meaningful relationships I had were with people who just spent time with me,” Aaron recalls. “They were clear about the fact that they didn’t agree with what I was doing, but they didn’t bombard me with words or try to get me to agree with them. They showed me what it looks like to walk with and love someone, even when you don’t agree with their choices. Looking back, the brokenness and desperation that came was necessary for me to grow in my faith. When family members or friends tried to “fix me” it only pushed me further away.”
Hitting Rock Bottom
“It was devastating and something I never imagined I’d go through,” Esther says. “I never wanted a divorce. I begged God to save our marriage and for Aaron to change his mind, but things only seemed to get worse. For a while I was angry, confused, overwhelmed and deeply sad. I felt helpless. I’d always been a people pleaser and a perfectionist, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t change Aaron or fix our situation. I was gripping so tightly, trying to hold everything together, until I finally realized that God was asking me to let go and trust Him. I became very aware of my dependence on the Lord. But in that place of surrender, I knew God saw me and was intimately with me. I knew He was sovereign and I chose to trust him. Eventually God brought me to a place of real peace and contentment, knowing that even if God didn’t answer my prayers for reconciliation, I still knew He was good and faithful.”
For Aaron, loneliness stripped away the illusion of control. “I now understand how people can spiral down when they don’t have a foundation in God,” he admits. “I wanted to hold on to everything I could. Especially my business. I was so stubborn and prideful that I couldn’t see the obvious answer, which was to let that part of my life go. But the Lord, in His grace and understanding, took away everything I thought made me valuable—and that was the best thing He could have done for me in that moment.”
Aaron started seeing the same problems repeat themselves in multiple areas of his life, so, he began asking himself two hard questions:
What have I done to contribute to this situation?
If I’m so right, and if I’m following God’s will for my life so closely, then why is it going so terribly wrong?
“Those questions broke down my walls,” he says, “and opened my heart to what God was trying to show me.”
Choosing Prayer Over Bitterness
For Esther, the years of waiting were equally transformative. She never stopped praying.
”I trusted that God was at work, even though it was often hard to see. I began to learn what it means to wait on the Lord and I continued to pray for Aaron’s heart.” Over time, her prayers shifted from simply asking for reconciliation to asking God to draw near to Aaron and for the Lord to use their pain for His purposes.
“It’s hard to pray for the person who’s hurting you,” she admits, “but the Lord allowed me to see Aaron’s suffering and have compassion for him. She recalls that “praying for Aaron—not for outcomes, but for his heart—changed me. My dad prayed with me many times and modeled what it looked like to pray with love instead of anger. That allowed me to learn how to love Aaron more genuinely and saved me from bitterness. My desperate attempts to prove my love to Aaron were replaced by learning how to love Aaron through the power of God and not through my own work. That was very freeing and became a pivotal shift in my perspective.”
Her community carried her, too. “The people you surround yourself with matters,” she says. “I had friends and family who pointed me to Jesus and who loved Aaron, even when it was hard.”
The First Steps Back
When Aaron reached out about reconciliation, Esther’s response was cautious.
“People ask me all the time, ‘How did you know it was right to try again?’” she says. “The Lord had been preparing my heart for this and clearly told me to trust Him. I told Aaron I’d be willing to try, but I knew that if nothing had changed, we’d end up in the same place. So I said yes to counseling—and he set it up that same day.”
Little by little, she saw evidence of God’s work in Aaron’s heart. “The exact things I had prayed for, God was showing me in Aaron,” Esther says. “It wasn’t just words. There was true repentance, a real transformation of his heart and mind.”
Aaron remembers that season as one of rebuilding, brick by brick. “I started to understand that partnership isn’t about control,” he says. “We are now a team. We make decisions together. From the small things to the big things. She loved me even when I gave her many reasons not to. She’s the one person that I can be completely honest with, that I can trust, and I know she’ll still love me unconditionally. That kind of love has strengthened our marriage in ways I never imagined.”
The Ongoing Work of Grace
Restoration wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy. It took humility, time, and a lot of surrender.
“If God is telling you something,” Aaron says, “be willing to go where He’s leading. Stop trying so hard to fix it yourself. Go to the Lord instead of overcomplicating everything. His way is better, even when it doesn’t make sense in the moment.”
Esther nods in agreement. “Trust God and His perfect plan, even when it’s scary, and even when you can’t see the outcome. There’s peace that comes with surrendering to His purposes.”
Looking back, both Aaron and Esther see that those slow, difficult steps built a foundation stronger than what they had before—a marriage now rooted, not in performance or control, but in grace, honesty, and a shared dependence on God.
A Marriage Redeemed
After months of hard work, they were remarried on May 21, 2022 in front of their families and close friends.
Today, their marriage is marked by honesty, partnership, and gratitude. “When we were in the thick of it, I asked God that if I had to walk through this pain, He would use it for something,” Esther says. “We don’t want to keep this to ourselves,” Aaron adds. “We want people to see that no situation is beyond God’s reach. We want God to use our story for His glory and to spread His name. Ultimately, that is the most important part. One hundred years from now no one will remember our names, our story or anything about us. What is truly everlasting is the name of Jesus and God’s love, and we want to use our story to spread His name. In our home. In our surrounding community. Around the world.”
“There are so many times we say, ‘Thank you, Lord,’” Esther adds. “The things we get to do now—life, parenting, serving—would be so much harder apart.” But she also notes that “although I’m so grateful for the miracle the Lord did in our relationship, my story of God’s goodness and faithfulness in my life would be the same regardless of the outcome, even if He never answered my prayers for reconciliation”.
Their story is more than a marriage restored; it’s two hearts transformed. It’s living proof that God’s grace is deeper than our failures and that His plans are always trustworthy.
When people ask them if they would change anything that they went through, they both say, “While it was extremely difficult and something we never would have chosen, God used that painful time in our lives for his purposes and for our good, and we are both so grateful for how it changed our lives and our marriage.”
