She was desperate.

It was just after 6 p.m. on Feb. 18 last year.

Her husband, Al, had been taken to the hospital the day before. Now, he was being rushed into surgery. Doctors had found a deadly infection in his leg.

The infection, what amounted to a flesh-eating bacteria, had a complicated name, necrotizing fasciitis. But the doctors told Al that his choice was simple: They would perform surgery and probably amputate his leg — or he would die.

So Al, who had just been given holy Communion from one priest, and received a blessing from another, thanked God for a good life, and went into surgery.

And Sally prayed.

She wasn't alone. She prayed the rosary with a handful of friends in front of a replica tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe. News of Al's surgery had spread fast, and the friends had met Sally in the hospital.

The waiting room became a shrine, Sally said.

"I just finished saying a decade of the sorrowful mysteries when a surgeon came out of surgery and told me they were going to amputate his leg," Sally recalled.

"I felt sucker punched because I thought the answer to prayer would be that they would save his leg."

She thought for a moment.

"But in fact, it saved his life."

Their testimony

Last week, Al and Sally Kresta sat in the simple-yet-cozy living room of their rural Ann Arbor Township home, recalling Al's bout with necrotizing fasciitis. His left leg claimed by the disease, Al sat in a wheelchair. He was handy with it by now. David, 2, sat on his mother's lap, running a fever.

On Feb. 8 the Krestas will share their stories of suffering and their testimony to Christ with married couples from across the archdiocese. They'll be speaking at a World Marriage Day celebration in Troy.

"We feel that there are a lot of people who struggle with illnesses in their marriage," said Fran Walden, who works with National Marriage Encounter and is an organizer of the World Marriage Day celebration. "God is saying, 'You're not alone.'

"Al and Sally are just a wonderful role model (showing) that you can get along, and you can't despair, and you can't lose faith."

Sitting in their living room, the Krestas talked about their 26 years of marriage.

They talked about the number of hardships they'd overcome. Their struggles were many, though their faces wouldn't give the impression of repeated hardship. There are few gray hairs between them, aside from the tufts of gray on Al's temples.

"I didn't bank on the amount of tragedy we would have in our own lives," Al said. "A lot of tough things have happened to us."

The Krestas talked about Al's bouts with depression, which hospitalized him twice between 1982 and 1985. Through the months of treatments and therapies Al had, Sally was there.

"I just assumed," she said, "that, when someone goes through this, we would go through it together."

The doctors, she said, thought her steadfast dedication was unusual.

The couple talked about their two miscarriages, too.

They talked about Al's brother, Michael, who had lived with them. Michael had won the hearts of the Kresta home, but suffered from substance abuse.

It killed him in July 1997.

Later, Al's sister died, too.

So, in the Kresta household, tragedy was a frequent visitor, and one they had learned to live with.

United in Christ

But the Krestas talked about their experiences for a reason – they know how to overcome the hardships.

They keep Christ in their marriage.

Amid the struggles, they had received their greatest blessings – their five children.

They also received a sense of mission about their marriage, they said.

Suffering, no doubt, is a part of what they endure together. But they look at suffering as something valuable

It has "redemptive value," Al explained. And one need only to look at the crucifix for a reminder of the redemptive value of suffering, he said.

"When we were both united in marriage, we were united in suffering," Al said. "And we were united in the conviction that we would not waste any of that suffering."

Indeed, from the beginning, they had put Christ foremost in their lives.

Early on, Al and Sally formed crisis pregnancy centers in Detroit to help save babies from abortion. Al had become pastor of a Christian church in Livonia.

Then, the Church

In 1992, Al returned to the Catholic Church, and brought his family with him. Only then, the couple said, did they fully realize the grace that had always come through their marriage.

"It was glorious to me to see that God provided grace through (marriage)," Sally said.

Spiritually, they have prospered even more since their conversion – or, in Al's case, return – to the Catholic Church.

Al opened a series of Catholic book stores around Detroit. They moved to Ann Arbor Township. Al was hired by businessman and Catholic philanthropist Tom Monaghan to manage the Catholic newspaper Credo, and offered a Catholic talk show through which he says he's been blessed with "spiritual children," his listeners. The talk show, Kresta in the Afternoon, is broadcast from 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays on WDEO (990 AM) Ann Arbor.

Meanwhile, Sally stayed at home to raise the children, and the oldest, Alexis and Nicholas, grew into young adults. Jason, 14, and Evan, 11, continue on the path.

In September, the Kresta's marriage came full-circle. With a walker and much effort, Al walked 22-year-old Alexis down the aisle in her own wedding. Family and friends watched, crying.

Having grown up with her parents, Alexis was not at a loss for advice about marriage – in sickness and in health.

"Suffering is actually a part of what you commit to when you commit to being married," said Alexis Love, who now lives with her husband, John, in a suburb of Rome, Italy.

And if there's any piece of marital advice she could take away from her parents?

"To never quit, basically," she said. "Once you have a relationship with someone, no matter what comes up – if it's financial difficulties or health issues or anything – you never give up on that relationship."

Through everything her parents had endured, Alexis said she never had to worry about them parting ways, because she knew that love was there.

And where there's love, anything is possible.

"It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things," wrote St. Paul nearly two centuries ago. "Love never fails." (1 Corinth 13: 7-8)