Rekindled Marriage Found After Prayer

“One day I just came to the realization that I've become a slave to a couple of liquid.”


Liliana and Shane Stewart had been dating a year when they married in 2014. Theirs was a long-distance relationship --- Shane, a divorced father of two teenagers, was an Alaska-based commercial pilot, while Liliana was an independent single woman living in Dallas. About a year into their marriage, Liliana noticed a pattern with her new husband’s habits. She said, “I realized that his drinking was a lot more than a normal social drinker.”

Though Shane always was able to abstain from drinking to not threaten his pilot’s license, he often spent most of his time at home binge drinking, to his wife’s dismay. According to Shane, his drinking habit began in high school, and was a vehicle for him to manage his frustration with his parents. “I had a lot of resentment toward my parents from childhood, and then the anger just kind of progressed too --- the alcohol was somewhat of the way I managed it," Shane recalled. 
   

As Shane’s drinking progressed, he and Liliana drifted further away from one another. Then in 2017, after three years of marriage, the couple realized they barely knew each other. In Shane’s words, “It was, pretty much like roommates. Like we were kind of both...had our separate little lives even though we were residing in the same house," said Shane. 

Liliana elaborated, saying how despite Shane's physical presence in the home, the feelings of isolation and loneliness were deafening.
 When Shane eventually began to see that he may have a problem, he told Liliana that he was leaving her and their family, thinking they would be better off without him. Liliana began to lean into her faith by attending a local church and nurturing her prayer journey back to God. Despite packing his truck and heading out to a remote part of Anchorage, God drew Shane back to his family, and after six years of marriage and addiction, Shane and Liliana both experienced a breakthrough. Not only was the breakthrough in Shane’s battle with alcohol addiction, but their marriage was revitalized and rebuilt in the process.

Today, Liliana is a Campus Pastor at Faith Christian Community in Anchorage, Alaska, Shane continues to pilot on a commercial airline, and they raise their blended family together, giving God thanks for the road that brought them here today.


If you or anyone you know is battling alcohol addiction, Celebrate Recovery is the program that changed Shane and Liliana’s life and marriage. Find yours at www.celebraterecovery.com. If you are in the Anchorage, Alaska area, you can visit Liliana’s church, Faith Christian Community here, www.faithak.com.