How a Wife’s Unwavering Faith Saved Her Marriage to Actor

Published: January 17, 2024

How a Wife’s Unwavering Faith Saved Her Marriage to Actor

By Movieguide® Contributor

After a fairytale start to their relationship, things went south quickly for actor Paul and Amy Hauser’s marriage. However, even when things got tough, Amy remained hopeful because of her faith.

Only two months into their marriage and Amy pregnant, Paul began to have doubts. After a disagreement, he walked out and began to cut Amy from his life.

“I was conflict avoidant. I was cold and cruel. I was definitely addicted to substances. And I definitely had an unhealthy sense of attachment to my former life, rather than honoring the new life God was giving me, both in my wife and in our child,” Paul told I Am Second.

Amy, however, would not give up on their marriage and remained hopeful that they could reconcile – if only Paul would answer one of her calls.

“I would text him every day, ‘Hey. I love you. Here’s some scripture. This is what I’m praying. This is what, you know, I’m thinking, this is what’s on my heart. Like, I want this to work out,’” Amy said.

“[Finally] I get a Facetime from him, and I was excited because I missed him so much,” she continued. “He looked sad, and I was just like, ‘Paul, I’m so excited to see you.’ And he listened, and I was just telling him about the month, and I was like, ‘I really want to see you.’ And he was 15 minutes away, and he said, ‘I filed for divorce. I’ve just decided that we went into this too fast and my family and friends and my colleagues agree that this just isn’t right. We made a mistake.’”

No matter what Amy said, Paul didn’t listen. He cut her out of his life even more than before and allowed his demons to dictate his life, throwing himself deeper into his drug and alcohol addiction.

Amy, however, still had hope and believed everything would eventually be made right.

“I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had brought us together,” Amy said. “And what’s crazy is two days before he called me, I felt like God was telling me this is the beginning of a war and a fight very explicitly.”

“I felt like God said, ‘Write down all the scriptures that I’m going to give you.’ And so I start writing down all these scriptures and post them upon my wall in my bedroom around a picture of us from our engagement shoot,” she continued. “And I prayed those prayers every day while I was going through the pregnancy. It was really hard.”

Throughout the entire pregnancy, Paul and Amy only talked a handful of times, and Paul remained hardened and dismissive no matter the conversation. As the pregnancy came to its completion, Amy began to realize that she would be giving birth alone.

“I avoided Amy like the plague,” Paul recalled. “I didn’t show up for the birth of my first born child… And here I was, this dude who is just like, ‘I’ve cornered the market on this whole Jesus thing.’ Also, I’m going to go get so high I can’t see straight and miss my son’s birth. That’s where I was at.”

Even after their son was born, Paul waited five weeks before he finally visited Amy and saw their child for the first time.

“It was really hard. Like, coming home from the hospital and not having your husband there and doing the middle of the night stuff without your husband there,” Amy said. “You’re exhausted, you’re feeding all the time. My parents would come and help, you know, people would come to bring food, but that all tapers off after a while and so it was just [my son] and me. And I felt so alone and, like, I had to be strong for this baby.”

“I was starting to realize how big I messed up,” Paul added. “I’ll never get that time back. And I robbed my wife of so many moments that she and I should have had.”

The weekend Paul visited to see his son was magical, and things felt normal despite all the turmoil Paul and Amy had been through. However, Satan still had a hold on Paul’s heart, and he was unwilling to change the course he was on.

“Amy and I are getting along, and she’s being very patient with me. And my son, like, this is the greatest joy I’ve ever felt having him in my arms and knowing that Amy and I made him,” Paul said. “But I just got spooked, and I was like, ‘No, I’m not getting sucked back into this.’”

They wouldn’t see each other again for half a year before Paul came back for Thanksgiving. However, that trip did not sway Paul either, and shortly after, he completed their divorce.

“It was a day that I dreaded and I remember my attorney called. She’s like, ‘It’s done.’ She’s like, ‘You’re officially divorced in the state of California.’ And I was like, okay. And I kept my head up, I said, ‘God’s not finished. He is not done. He’s not done with this story,’” Amy said.

“I literally had friends tell me, ‘Amy, it hurts us to see you have so much hope.’ And one thing that I’ve learned is your faith sometimes may make people uncomfortable because they themselves wouldn’t have that faith,” she continued. “It’s up to us to demonstrate that faith. And it’s when we step out into that, that God meets us there.”

Amazingly, Amy was right, and as Paul was sitting in a strip club throwing thousands of dollars away, he realized that he had to turn his life around and return to his wife and child.

Movieguide® previously reported:

“Paul had family conflicts and inner turmoil he had been treating with alcohol and marijuana. And it didn’t take long before those band aides fell off. How long? Two months. Within two months of marrying Amy he separated from her. He cut her off. He didn’t attend the birth of his own son, having dug in his heels and becoming a hardened person,” I Am Second wrote.

Then, one night alone at a strip club—high and drunk—Paul met Jesus, and he and Amy eventually found each other again.

“Our prayer is that it will give hope to those who hear it,” Amy said of sharing their story. “Being this vulnerable to the world about the most difficult part of our story isn’t easy, but we know that it isn’t our story. It’s the story that God wrote with our lives to display His Glory.”

Paul recently won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Or Anthology Series or Movie for his role in BLACKBIRD.

“Only Jesus could write this story. He gives beauty for ashes. Last night was another picture of his redeeming love,” the couple posted on Instagram following his win.