God, Sex and Your Marriage for Couples Facilitators – Ivan and Loie

Get to Know Ivan and Loie

From the outside, we seemed happily married, but internally we were facing challenging personal battles. After 24 years of marriage, it felt like we still didn’t really know and understand each other. Loie was struggling so much with fear and stress that it was manifesting itself in her body.

In 2018, we were listening to the FamilyLife podcast and heard Juli being interviewed about her book “Rethinking Sexuality”. As we went through podcasts and books, God began to reveal areas in our lives He wanted to heal. Loie had deep childhood trauma she needed to revisit. We had no community. Our marriage was suffering.

Encouraged by Juli on the podcast, we sought healing through marriage intensives and trauma therapy. Loie participated in an Online Coaching Intensive with Jennifer Degler, found community with an Online Book Study, and then attended last year’s Reclaim Conference. Today, after 29 years of marriage, our marriage is thriving, and we finally feel that we are getting to know and understand one another, something even our adult kids have benefitted from. Loie says her faith has deepened, her body has started to heal, and that she and Ivan are committed to building community.

God, Sex, and your Marriage is full of information that we wished we would have had when we were
first married. Although we can’t change the past, we can make ourselves available to help equip
younger marriages. This book helps to lay a solid foundation of intimacy in marriage.

My favorite thing about the group was the honesty. We’ve managed to become quite vulnerable and honest as a group and this really helps. It enables God to touch us all where we are. Loie makes this possible! She doesn’t dominate at all, she lets the discussion go where it goes, but at times brings us back to a quote from the book or a bible verse. And I really like her personal reflection emails each week. I’m so pleased to be part of this group!

What others are saying about God, Sex and Your Marriage:

The group created a place for connecting with other couples who are learning to think the same way about God’s design for sex within marriage. We loved seeing how much our journey is like the journey of others.

The best part of this group was connecting with other married couples who are navigating the same issues. It’s good to know that we are not alone in our struggles. We also appreciated the accountability to read and engage with the material. This group helped my husband and I talk about our issues as we learned from others, especially during break out groups. Finally, we appreciated Julie and Mike coming along and sharing their wisdom.

We joined this study together as the AI site and material has hugely blessed us. We got involved because we saw truth and wisdom there, and we had issues. I get the feeling that most people doing the courses have issues. There is so much hurt and confusion out there and we so appreciate you fighting the battle for healing and reclamation of our marriages and our sexuality, and our intimacy with God.

We loved the community of people in the group. We aren’t alone. I wish we could keep meeting. It was nice to have like minded people give wisdom and insight. The group became a place where couples could have honest and transparent conversations about marriage and sexuality every single week!