He Did The Unthinkable, But God Still Restored Their Marriage

“…he ended up putting a gun to my head and he told me that he was gonna kill me, um, and then kill himself.”

Brandon and Terra Chism were only fifteen and sixteen when their lives collided in 1997— by the time they were nineteen, they were married, had two children, a mortgage, and a storm brewing in their home. According to Terra, there was a lot of infidelity in our relationship, um, on both parts. Neither one of us were good.”

Brandon was often in jail, while Terra was clinging to hope that he would change. Brandon says, “I started getting locked up at 12 --- I would drink, I would snort, I would smoke. It didn't matter. I just partied. My brain was just wired that way from a young age considering the home that I grew up in.”

Though Brandon desired better for his home, he found himself a slave to his destructive lifestyle. At this time, Brandon had been locked away for several months. It was when infidelity was discovered that Terra finally ended the marriage. However, the couple reconnected after Brandon was released a year later. They rebuilt their home together, and for a season, he sobered up and became the man she had always wanted him to be. They remarried in 2011. But soon after, temptation came knocking in the form of an old coworker who introduced Brandon to heroin. 

Terra shares, “I was like, how you be this person who was everything i have ever dreamed of, and in an instant, my whole world was turned upside down.”

Over the next two years, their home became a battlefield --- hoping to keep any kind of connection between them at all, terra resorted to using drugs herself. Brandon says, “we smoked meth together and did all these things together, but like she tells people, she was never addicted to the drugs, she was addicted to me.” Terra also says, “now I’m changing as a person too. So it's not just him that's being crazy, now I’m joining the craziness. So I’m like, this is it. We're done. We can't keep doing this.”

By 2013, their second marriage ended in more chaos. Terra took the kids, Brandon spiraled deeper. The chaos continued to escalate, and one night, it almost turned deadly. Terra describes: 

“I’ve got a restraining order on him and all these things while he comes over to the house. I'm holding destiny, our youngest, and he's just, he's drunk, he's high. I don't even know what all he was on yelling at me, cussing at me, and he ended up putting a gun to my head and he told me that he was gonna kill me, um, and then kill himself ---- I’m like, my world's broken. It's been broken. I look at him and I said, do it, do it.”

That night didn’t end in death— it ended in surrender. Years of brokenness finally brought Brandon to the end of himself, and he encountered god while in jail. Brandon, who had heard about Jesus in jail in the past, now accepted Jesus as his savior. Then God began to mend Brandon and Terra’s relationship after his release by delivering them from the years of abuse, infidelity, and toxicity. Their torment was becoming their testimony. Today, Brandon & Terra are on their third marriage together and they stand sober, healed, and free. They are living proof that even three marriages, decades of addiction & chaos, can all be transformed by the power of God’s grace. In Brandon’s words: “when I look at her, I see Jesus… I see love.”

If you are in the Marion, Indiana area, you can visit Brandon & Terra’s ministry called God’s Goons, www.godsgoons.com.