The story of their marriage is shocking and they wanted to tell their testimony without cold cloths and with the utmost respect. Máximo Doval and Lourdes Bellido are married and are lay members of Regnum Christi in Spain. They are 42 years old and have 5 children ranging from 16 to 8 years old. Since they got married 25 years ago, they have been managing hotels and restaurants. Now they have their own: the Aguas de Villaharta Spa, located in the heart of the Sierra Morena in the municipality of Villaharta. “Máximo relied for years on artificial friends and substances such as alcohol or cocaine that took him away from his being. Alcohol, drugs and prostitution. That was the scenario of my husband's life,” recalls Lourdes. “Faced with the seriousness of the situation, Lourdes gave me the option of choosing the life I was leading or our love project,” Máximo explains. After meeting Christ again, the couple recognizes that their desire is to show the joy of feeling loved by Christ and to witness with their lives that God is capable of making all things new. “We want to be apostles, making available to our brothers and sisters the gifts God has given us,” they explained in an interview with the website RegnumChristi.es.
Your story is one of family, conflict, forgiveness and now building together. Can you tell us a little bit about your life? Does love always triumph, or is that only in the movies?
[Máximo Doval] Love combined with perseverance and willpower always triumphs.
Lourdes, what does “yes for better or worse” mean?
[Lourdes Bellido] A few days ago, before you proposed this interview to us, I was trying to put our marriage testimony on paper and I asked myself the same question you asked me: Why did I keep saying “Yes” every day, even though there were days when I would have preferred not to wake up? Because I said that “Yes” also to God. As His Son said it to Him even though He suffered to the point of dying on the Cross.
It may be difficult to understand for someone who has not known Jesus Christ, but today I can say with immense joy and gratitude that without Him my “Yes” would not have endured. He was my support and made it possible for me to have Him very present in my husband's heart. Seeing Christ in Maximo's heart made me love him and trust in our “Yes”, which was nothing but the “Yes” to God's plan for us.
How would you define your marriage? And your family?
[LB] Well, it didn't start off on the right foot... the year before we got married, while I was studying a master's degree outside Córdoba, Máximo started to say goodbye to bachelorhood and the dishonesties and infidelities began... It was a hard year in which I even decided to stop the wedding, but he was still betting on our love in spite of everything. We got married and our love project began to take shape. Our married and family life was interwoven with the working life of a freelancer. And what does that mean? Well, it boils down to 10 years in which I practically dedicated myself to raising my children and in the meantime, Máximo struggled to get the business off the ground. But that drive to have more and more, to be recognized and valued made him create a mask that gradually took him away from his family and left his marriage in last place.
The night once again became the refuge of a lost person, unknown to himself and living in his loneliness. Máximo relied for years on artificial friends and substances such as alcohol or cocaine that took him away from his being. Alcohol, drugs and prostitution. That was the scenario of my husband's life. Meanwhile, in those long nights when I was breastfeeding one of my children every 3 hours, I could not stop crying and praying. I asked the Lord not to let anything happen to him, to protect him.
At that time we were not very close to the Lord, we did not dedicate much time to Him, but He was the one who, without recognizing it, gave us strength and prepared us for what was awaiting us.
Without having slept all night I had to bite my head off, paint a smile on my face and tell the kids that daddy was sick and to give him lots of kisses because he was the best father in the world. And so he was, he was the best father and husband in the world, and that thought was what saved us.
Máximo, what do you see when you look at your wife?
[MD] Phew, I feel like the luckiest man in the world. The Lord could not have chosen a better one for me. I see and understand that she is the one who will truly lead me to sanctification. Lourdes is a very special person: sensitive, profound, simple, humble, fighter, brave, and I love it when I play the fool and she dies laughing... nothing better than to make her laugh. Complicity. But above all she is the best mother in the world. A mother who carries her children like her chicks, all as one, who sets an example and goes out of her way for our home.
Lourdes, what do you see when you look at your husband?
[LB] I see the mercy and the great embrace and love of God. He is a great example to me of will, perseverance and the struggle to overcome difficulties. I love his great creativity, a talent that has been “in crescendo” as he has grown closer to Christ.
To this day, if I look at my husband, I see all that is true, good and beautiful in God's creation.
You have experienced firsthand that work success is not necessarily personal success, nor family success...
[LB] During one stage of our life, work became our central focus. We let ourselves be swept along in a wave of stress. Days went by, just like that.
For Máximo it became a problem and the more notoriety and success he craved and yearned for socially, the more he drifted away from his essential part, from his connection with God and from those values that had been transmitted to him, leading his life adrift and dragging down the lives of Lourdes and his children.
How do you deal with the fact that the solution to family problems is to give up job success? Is it to give up job success? Or is it to discover a new way of understanding and measuring success?
[MD] The solution to family problems begins when we renounce ourselves. To renounce oneself is to renounce all our personal successes and that is only possible when you discover that success is measured in love. Lourdes and I have always said that our success has been to fail and fail, because thanks to our great failures our family has been opened to Christ.
Maximo, how did Christ meet you and help you return to your family?
Christ came to meet me in the persons of my mother and my wife. They both lovingly showed me the way to the truth. My mother's death was a new opportunity. I feel that my mother died to give life to me, for it was her death that made me recognize the true value of family and remember what the Lord had called me to.
Lourdes, faced with the seriousness of the situation, gave me the option of choosing the life I was leading or our love project, but the choice of our family and marriage project would mean knocking on the door of Proyecto Hombre to deal with all those human weaknesses that brought out the worst in me.
And not only did you return to your family: you also returned to God's embrace, like the prodigal son.
[MD] And I chose well. I felt the merciful embrace of the Father and that made me discover that, above choosing my family project, I chose Christ in my life. After 2 years in Proyecto Hombre, God knocked on my door again and offered me to meet Him in the Eucharist, in a Cursillos of Christianity retreat, in which my mother was also very present because she prayed a lot for me to do it. Then it was Emmaus, Project Married Love and since December 12 we decided to commit ourselves to Regnum Christi, because it is a movement that has brought us closer to the heart of Christ and therefore helps us to see Him in the heart of our spouse. It also encourages us to be apostles, to live our faith in community and brings us closer to the Church.
And how do you live this dedication to others, your being an apostle?
[MD] We have begun to become aware of how great and wonderful it is to be or to try to be an “apostle” since it is the best way to imitate Jesus Christ. We are convinced that our personal experiences, our spiritual and personal growth has been a “gift”. We would be very foolish if we did not share our experience with others whom we can help. Our testimony has gone through many phases and today it is a testimony of hope. Above all, we want to be apostles by making available to our brothers and sisters the gifts that God has given us.
On this journey you met Regnum Christi. What was that encounter like, and what attracted you to this community in the Church? Was it at the same time? How do you live this step of commitment in faith as a married couple?
[MD] We came to know Regnum Christi through some relatives to whom a Legionary of Christ priest enthroned the Sacred Heart in their home and family. It was something providential that made us do the same in ours. Years later we met that same priest on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje and when we told him what Our Lady had placed in our hearts, we clearly felt that our place in the great puzzle that is the Church was in Regnum Christi. By taking this step, Lourdes and I commit ourselves to live our marriage as faithful apostles of Christ. We want to show the joy of feeling loved by Christ and to witness with our lives that God is able to make all things new and thus turn the despondency of other couples into hope.
And now, what are your plans for the future?
[MD] Plans? If we are honest with you, throughout our marriage we have walked without plans. We are not one of those people who plan everything, we have a specific day to go shopping or to the hairdresser, we have planned our summer vacations a year in advance... Rather, if one day we felt like going to the beach, we packed a suitcase with a change of clothes for each of us, we put the children in the car and we left. Perhaps this improvisation that guided our lives helped us to accept every plan God had for us.
So now we are concerned with living in the present, but with our eyes, the heart's eyes, set on eternity, leaving our future and God's plans for us to the Lord's will.
