Beauty in Brokenness: A Couple that Rebuilt their Marriage… and Cities

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Speaker 1: And we continue here with our American Stories, and we love telling stories of redemption, stories to give you hope amidst your own daily struggles and the noise that’s out there each and every.

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Speaker 2: day in the news.

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Speaker 1: And now our own Joey Cortez brings us one of these stories: the story of John and Ashley Marsh.

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Speaker 3: I was on a trail and a track that I couldn’t get off of. I was just in this. I felt I was in a tug of war, and I was the rope. This pain and suffering just got so great, I started fantasizing about killing myself. So, I figured out where you got this old house with a huge attic fan. I’m gonna pull the attic fan out, set up a huge pulley up in the attic, set up where I could have it where I knew it wouldn’t break, and I got it all set up where I could hang myself out of that hole. Our single knights were fourteen foot, so I’d never hit the floor. It’s gonna work. And I went up there to hang myself and had no reservations.

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Speaker 4: John was born in Albany, Georgia.

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Speaker 5: The parents that were fourteen and seventeen years old, he was put up for adoption and taken in by an incredibly loving family. As a kid, he made good grades and listened to his parents until I rebelled.

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Speaker 3: And rebellion’s interesting. It takes you further than you want to go and cost you more than you want to pay. And so, I stepped across the line and sat with a little girl. I was thirteen; she was twelve; rode my bicycle to her house and changed her life. Now, in hindsight, I was longing for acceptance. I was looking to matter, to be valuable. Two things I found pretty quickly. You didn’t have to guess whether you were accepted or not. And that was with girls. And then, right after that, at about fourteen years old, I started working and making money, and those two things, when you were accepted, you knew it. So, I started to high-end car audio business. I was mentored for a year, and then sixteen years old, I was making one thousand dollars a week after school doing high-end audio. And I stepped across the line and tried drugs for the first time, and then I proceeded to go with that and be a drug addict for probably the next, for many years of my life, five, seven years of my life. It’s something I realized now, looking back on rebellion. When you have rules and regulations without a relationship, that always equals rebellion. And so, my parents loved me, but they didn’t know how to reach me. I left home by seventeen years old so as I could graduate, and I barely graduated. I was no longer interested. It’s interested in making money. I said, “Why should I listen to y’all?” I make more than you do teaching. I said, “This is, I don’t get it. You don’t get the world y’all trying to put me in.” I didn’t want to take and come into my dad’s business. I wanted to do my own thing. And so, I moved to Atlanta for just a short period of time doing high-end audio, helping them launch a shout there, and then ended up in a place called Auburn, Alabama, and working for a guy named Big Jimmy, Jimmy’s Car Stereo, who’s a big, old, blonde-hair, blue-eyed Jew that loved me, and we became quick friends. He said, “You’re gonna make more money than you ever made in your whole life. It’s gonna be awesome.” I said, “Well, I liked the sign of that, so I come here.” First year I was here, I made almost one hundred thousand dollars in cash as an eighteen-year-old boy. You know, he didn’t like the girl, though, that moved here. That was my girlfriend at the time, and moved here.

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Speaker 6: I grew up in Pepol, Alabama. I grew up in a very simple life. Looking back now into it, I would say in a poor family.

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Speaker 3: I grew up in a very hard home.

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Speaker 6: I had a lot of different types of conflicts in my home, from alcoholism to abuse. And first job was at KFC, and then I started working at different places in the mall. So I bought a car that, my first car, bought for myself. I was so proud of it. I didn’t have any music, and I love music. I’ve always either got music in my ears as playing in the house. It’s always in my car. It’s my one thing. I’d rather have a radio than air conditioner. I don’t care. So I just love to feel the beat in the rhythm, and I love to move. And so, anyway, here I am in my car, my first car, no radio, and he’s like, “I take it to Big Jimmy, he’ll take care of you.” It’s like, “Okay.” So we get down there, and John is who Jimmy calls up front and to check out my speakers because he says they’re just not connected. And John’s like, “You don’t have any speakers.” “She has no speakers, Jimmy.” So Jimmy’s like, “Okay, I’m gonna get her some speakers.” Gets John installed.

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Speaker 3: I remember the first time I saw her. I really did. It’s some of those things you know in life, where, and I thought she was beautiful, but I recognize something more than beauty. I told her. I said, “First time I ever saw you, there was a royalty in a class about you that you were like a queen without the crown.” There was something so special and so unique. And I said, “I saw it the very first time I saw you.”

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Speaker 6: Jimmy, it’s like, “You know what, I’m like you and I think you’re a smart girl.” I wants you to come work for me part of his plans. So he decided this girl is no more for John, but this one’s the one. So he’s like, you know, “Matchmaker in heaven” going on. And so, anyhow, I start working for him, and the next thing. You know, he has me and John doing everything together, and I’m just—I think he’s just the most amazing thing I’d ever met. You know, he wasn’t from here—thank goodness—because all the dudes from here are just idiots, is what I thought. He was like Jamestein to me, a little bit rebellious, which turned out to me a lot rebellious, drove a G, you know, just all the things. He just had the looks and the act and everything else about him. So I was guy guy her. But he had a girlfriend, and she was not too keen, obviously, on other girls being around. So Jimmy finally hells me, “I don’t like this girl that he’s with, but I like you.” And I was like, “Well, that’s all good and great, but he has a girlfriend, and I don’t date guys with girlfriends.” And he’s like, “Well, so you don’t think he can get them?” I was like, “Oh no, I do not even get them.” “That’s not a problem.” Like, “Well, I bet you five hundred dollars you can’t.” So I took his bet, I won his bet, and I got the guy. So that’s where we left off, was Jimmy matchmaking us.

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Speaker 3: She said, “She said, ‘You’re on, Fatman.'”

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Speaker 6: I said, “You’re on, Fatman.”

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Speaker 3: We start dating. Of course, I don’t want to be alone much because I’m not that good of taking care of myself. I needed someone because I’m bit like an Indy car. Lots of maintenance; required heavy team and lots of people to keep all the support systems going because these cars are expensive and they break down a lot, but they’re high performance. So I felt like that’s the way I was when it came to it. So Ash came into our life, and we began to live together. We were dating for a couple of years, and then this guy came into the car stereo shop, and he’d bring in these cars that have been wrecked that he was repairing, and the wiring wouldn’t work right on him. He like, “Can you fix this?” “Oh yeah, no problem, I’d fix it pretty soon.” “I’m fixing quite a few of these.” Like, “Oh man, me and you need to do something together.” So he’s getting wrecked cars fixed up in North Alabama, taking them and getting the metal work, the framework, and body work done, sending them down here. We get them painted, and then I’d put them back together and make them work. And we’re making ten thousand dollars a car doing this. We’re starting going, “Man, we ought to be doing more this stuff.” And so, and it really felt like the first time I’d really left somebody I love deep. And I told Jimmy, I said, “I want to go out on my own and do this.” It was really heartbreaking because he was super close to me, and loved me, and a great mentor. And so, we went out and started. I started my first business in the automobile business. I think I was twenty years old when we started this business. And Ash and I living together. Her dad really hated me, really hated me. His daughter comes in there at eighteen, says, “I’m moving out. I’m moving in with this guy.” And she had never rebelled. She had listened to everything her parents had told her to do and done everything they said all the way up until then. And so, she moved in with us. And so, quite a few nights, her mama call say, “He’s on the way, y’all, watch out, he’s drunk and he’s got his shotgun.” So he’d come and tap on all the windows of the apartment so that we would know that he was serious about it. So he did not want her living with me, did not want us together, which made it a little more volatile.

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Speaker 6: When I moved into the apartment with him, my life changed completely. I did find out that he was doing drugs. None of us are who we peacock ourselves to be. The moments of sitting and listening to Kenny G and looking into my eyes and “you’re the most important thing in the world,” and was true only until I moved in.

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Speaker 3: I didn’t know how to love a lady. And that’s one of the things I’ve realized: it’s not intuitive. I mean, you’ve got more preparation to get a license or learner’s permit for your card and to get married. And so, when we came into this relationship together, I began to immediately dominate her instead of love her and tell her what I wasn’t gonna do and who she couldn’t be, and she was trapped again. And so, within a short period of time of us living together, looking back now, I realized she was trapped. I just said, “I gotta move forward,” and I said, “I love this girl, I’m gonna marry her, and we’re gonna keep moving forward.” I was in business. We’re running two or three businesses at that time. By twenty-one years old, I was a million and a half dollars in debt, ninety-nine thousand dollars overdrawn. I was a drug addict. We’re running multiple businesses, and we were in serious trouble.

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Speaker 1: And you’re listening to the story of John and Ashley Marsh. And do any of the characters sound familiar? Because if they don’t, you haven’t lived much of a life. When we come back, we’re going to continue with the remarkable story on Our American Stories. And we continue here with our American Stories. And we left off with Ashley discovering that John was a drug addict and in serious debt, and the two obviously were not getting along, but despite the turmoil, the two got married.

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Speaker 2: Let’s return to the story.

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Speaker 3: Ash and I find out approparaders. But there’s just so many problems, and so I’ve got a partner. I’m in this business where in lots of debt. I’m doing the work myself because I’m gifted with my hands. He’s running the money. He comes to me one day, and he said, “I got to tell you something. Ash has been running around on you for a while. She’s seeing one of our employees pation tactic.” But I felt like, well, my whole life fell apart. Everything I ever wanted, he can’t trust it. And I said, “Okay, I know what you do. You get a new wife, a new life, get a new vehicle, reboot, get the best lawyer you can and fight.” Started going to the lawyers; were setting up the things, and ashing our fighting. I’m doing all I can to try to find a way to win, to hurt her and win. The pressure was incredible, and I started hearing something in my mind, and it kept going, “Why don’t you kill yourself? Why don’t you kill yourself? Why don’t you kill yourself?” And it became louder and louder, louder. I felt I was in a tug of war, and I was the rope, and this pain and suffering of this just got so great. I started fantasizing about killing myself. So, I figured out, when you got this old house with this huge attic fan, I’m gonna pull the attic fan out, set up a huge pulley up in the attic, and set up where I could have it where I knew it wouldn’t break. And I got it all set up where I could hang myself out of that hole. Our single knights were fourteen foot, so I’d never hit the floor. It’s gonna work. And I went up there to hang myself and had no reservations. But I got down on that old plywood floor and started crying out to God I never met before, and it got reframed. Instead of killed myself, he said, “Why don’t you die to yourself?” Now? It was so similar, yet so different, and there was light and life in that. And I cried out to a God I never knew, like lightning struck me. Every hair on my body stood up; time stood still; and for about two solid hours, every care, her pains, suffering, regret, mistake I made, like a syringe, got pushed out of the bottom of my feet, to the top of my head and out in tears. And I said, “This one always went. This is what I’ve always been looking for right here.” “Nothing has ever filled me like this, nothing’s ever felt by this.” I told myself, “All you, all the days of my life, no matter what, you have me without any conditions.” And so, it began the journey of me beginning to find out what God had for me. And I didn’t quit drugs; they quit me. I walked out of place, for every change, got struck by lightning.

00:12:59
Speaker 6: I was still sick. The gentleman that I had committed adultery with and found out that I was pregnant. And I didn’t know if I was pregnant with John’s child or his child. And that’s what broke me, not finding out I was pregnant, but I ended up losing the child. And at that moment was when I had nothing left. There was nothing left. I had no more ideas, no more solutions, no more energy, nothing to try to figure out life for myself or why I wanted to be in and everything else. I never thought about suicide. I just felt so desperately alone.

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Speaker 4: By the skin of their teeth, John and Nash evaded divorce. They met a few mentors that taught them how to love and how to be loved, how to forgive and how to heal, and so their life together began anew.

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Speaker 6: That we met selling the car to, that started a relationship. He actually counseled us. He’s liked, “Got to get out of living in the basement of this house.” “You know, you’ve got it fixed upstairs.” “You’ve got, you know, this is something that’s important as your home.” We lived in the basement of our house for six and a half years in a one-bedroom apartment. That’s what he’s talking about. All Crampton there. It was me, John, Nelson, our oldest, a dog, and a friend. It took us a while to work on that house, and it was in the middle of that same neighborhood that had all the prostitutes and the drug addicts and just destitution, no hope. I mean, when you looked around, every house was broken, everything looked abandoned, and so ours fit in the neighborhood up until we worked on it, and then we turned the lights on. The next thing, you know, we were like a beacon in the neighborhood. But it honestly was just a reflection, literally, of what was happening in us. And so, we were working together trying to work on that house and everything. That’s when he transitioned from going from doing the cars, and and he’s like, “I really like this.” And we got through that.

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Speaker 3: I was like, “What do you want to do?”

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Speaker 6: He’s like, “I like this.”

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Speaker 3: I like doing this. So, we started doing houses, and we did two things. We’re renovating houses there in our town. And then I got this idea. I Ash fell in love with the house in Albany. She said, “Baby, its beautiful house I loved to buy.” And so, I started thinking. I said, “What if I unbuilt it backwards? What if I just disassembled it? Took the last thing they put in, took that out, and just unbuilt it backwards.” So that’s the first house we ever disassembled. We took it apart in ninety days, driving one hundred and twenty miles one way after work, and unbuilt it backward to the boards. We put our thirty-three hundred dollars tax returning that baby, sold it, made fifteen thousand dollars. That’s what we rolled into. Doing everything we did. I started architectural salvage business. Next thing you know, we’re doing houses like crazy. She would do the design work, I’d run the crews, and next thing you know, we had done seventy-five houses in that one neighborhood with no money. Our guys started saying, “Well, John, you need to keep some of this, because if not, why don’t you keep do ten houses for others, keep one for yourself?” Well, next thing I know, we got a pile of property going and I got we had to come up with the rental business. So we’re running construction business, architectural salvage in a rental business. And we almost finished everything in our neighborhood over there. We’ve done like seventy years sol houses, and I was like, “What we’re gonna do next?” She’s liked, “Well, downtown Oblaca was super Turkey. In fact, right before we started buying our first houses down there, two ladies were executed by a gang member downtown Opelaika.” It was just, it was broken, and she said, “I can’t walk by this one more time and see it this one.” “We got to do something.” I said, “Well, let’s buy the whole place.” She’s liked, “We ain’t got any money.” I said, “Doesn’t matter. If it’s something we’re supposed to do, the provision is going to be there. Provision is down the road. We just got to keep stepping. I only need enough call and paint for today, so I have a number today; tomorrow’s going to be there.” So now, looking back, we’ve done two hundred and ten structures in ten blocks, and we’ve helped start over forty businesses to the saving of our city. And see, God loves cities. It was his idea from the start. I think God invented cities, but we’re interested in seeing them redeemed—the restoration and redemption for cities—just like people. And what we began to realize is we don’t just make structures.