On January 18th 2013 my life changed forever. After 18
years of marriage my husband informed me that he was moving out. As soon as the words left his lips, I knew this
time it wasn’t a threat, it was real. At
that moment God lay before my eyes, every single sin I committed that degraded, emasculated and disrespected my husband. Every time I blamed him, criticized
him, condemned him, withheld intimacy from him and disagreed with him for most
every decision he made. It wasn’t always
blatant and obvious; most times it was subtle undermining. The blinders were ripped off and the ugliness
of my sin was repulsive to me! Here I
was a Christian for 16 years, playing the part, talking the talk, holding the
positions; feeling valued by my Christian “family” as an ambassador for Christ
to the unbelieving world, but my witness to my very own husband was like filthy
rags before God.
James 1:26: “Those who
consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues
deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.”
It was like I hit a brick wall at full speed and couldn't
catch my breath. Uncontrollable fear welled up inside me and I thought I could
somehow persuade him to reconsider. I went off to work that day with
overwhelming panic and prayed he would lose his nerve. I begged and begged him
not to go. I knew my begging was pathetic but I had no tricks up my sleeve to
wake up from this horrible nightmare. I was in a state of shock and spinning
out of control.
Without a doubt this is also the day when God transformed
my heart in such a significant way. Things that bothered me before didn't
matter and just fell away. The persistent nagging inside my being that had to
speak up and criticize my husband was miraculously gone. God had stripped the
blinders and I was beginning to see my husband with new eyes like God did.
Through His eyes I now saw my husband as a precious human being created and
loved by Him infinitely more than I ever could. I experienced the infilling of a
new unconditional love for My husband that was beyond the human realm.
“Behold, I am doing a new
thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the
wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19
We had become strangers in the same house living
separate lives. We hadn't shared a bed for over 8 years. We were more like
roommates than a married couple. Our
lives rarely intersected. With his shiftwork, there were times we didn’t see
each other for over 48 hours. It became
comfortable for me so I really didn’t care.
Intimacy was almost non-existent but I was convinced that he needed to change
and vice versa. It became a blame game where
no one would give in.
Did I not realize over the years that I was not
treating my husband well? I could say
“no”.
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I
could blame it on the media’s depiction of husbands and fathers as being
selfish, lazy and irresponsible.
- ·
I
could blame the family’s generational routine blaming husbands for all family
dysfunction and unhappiness.
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I
could blame other women for drawing me into conversations of man-bashing.
- ·
I
could blame my first husband, other men who hurt me but to be honest, I have to
admit that I knew all along I was wrong.
Deep down on the spiritual level I knew that my
actions were damaging to my husband, to our children, our marriage and our
whole family….but I couldn’t stop. There were times I thought of trying but I
kept justifying in my mind that “I deserved” to be happy, to be content, to feel
important. After all I felt he wasn’t doing anything to make things better so
why should I? I was happy to seek my
validation from other people.
“But if anyone has the world's goods and
sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love
abide in him?” 1 John 3:17.
Was God’s love really in me? I willfully chose
disobedience. Was I truly a Christian?
Was I really saved? Would someone who
habitually sins be a child of the King? I have asked myself those questions
over and over.
Hebrews 10:26: For if we
deliberately sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer
remains a sacrifice for sins.”
I became downcast and consumed with guilt and
condemnation. I spiraled further and further into a pit of depression. I went
through the house and got rid of every Christian book I had except my bible. I
took down any Christian picture hanging on my wall. I was a phoney, a
hypocrite, a Pharisee. James 1:22-24 says
“But don’t just listen to
God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise you are only fooling
yourselves. For if you listen to the
word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in he mirror. You see
yourself, walk away and forget what you look like”
I read all the words but didn’t put them into
practice. It was my fault this was
happening. How was I ever going to face Jessica
and Michael for causing the breakup of our family? What kind of legacy was this for them? I wept
and wept.
One Sunday in church the pastor quoted 1 Corinthians 8:1. "There is no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus". The light went on.
Yes, I had responsibility for the erosion of our marriage, but God did not want
me to consume myself with condemnation. My husband may not forgive me but upon
my confession God had.
This new love for my husband welled up inside me and
overflowed. I wanted him to receive this love from me but was it too late? I had taken control and removed my husband as
the head of our family. This was out of
God’s order and I needed it to be rectified and have him as the rightful head
of our home. Would he think that my
actions were nothing more than a ploy to make him stay? I started to treat him
with love, respect in joyful submission the way I should have from the
beginning. No matter how he responded to my actions I treated him the same. I learned that I didn’t need to interject my
opinion into every conversation. I
didn’t need to automatically say no to every suggestion. I knew He was suspicious and couldn't trust
the way I was acting, but God had a hedge of protection over my heart and his words
didn't bother me at all.
The chasm created between us had eroded deeper and
wider over years of neglect and transgression.
He was still home physically but not “present” but I used this time to
pour on love to him. I was truly not angry with him for wanting to leave or any
of the associated circumstances. I began
to feel hopeful that my husband would change his mind and stay home permanently.
One morning I was lying in bed thinking and praying
and God gave me a picture (I think because I am a visual learner). I knew it
was from the Lord because I would not have “imagined” something like this. I
saw God's hands holding my husband heart and He was pouring gallons of oil over
it. I knew the oil represented that God
was healing my husband’s heart and that gave me peace.
Ezekiel
36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove
from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
The day after this “vision” My husband became very
cool towards me. What I had thought (or
hoped) were steps towards possible healing of our marriage were now manifested
as distancing in body, mind and spirit. Even
though he was cool to me, I knew God had transformed my heart and truly
believed He would not have done this in vain. Deep down I knew there was hope
for our marriage. I believe God gave me that vision because He knew my husband
was going to pull away. He knew I needed hope to cling to.
Joel 2:25 “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten”
Despite this sign from God, my mind diverted to focus
on my husband's contribution to the marriage breakdown. How could this be my entire fault? One quote I read from a Christian counsellor endorsed
the idea that both parties must be at least 50% responsible for marriage. Even
though I still lamented about and acknowledged my role, I somehow felt “less”
at fault and focused on my pain. When he
was away at work I spent most of that time crying and asking friends for
prayer. I even called prayer lines at least half a dozen times. I remember lying on my kitchen floor weeping
and begging Jesus to take me Home. I didn't want to kill myself; I just didn't
want the pain anymore. I felt like my heart was broken and I was in a thousand
pieces. I was unable to eat or work during this time. I believe that my own sin
and lack of “control” in the situation was eating me alive. I took a leave from work because I had
nothing to give. I felt like I was dying inside.
Another morning in March I was in between a “sleep and
awake” state, I heard the words spoken to my heart "Six Months". I
remember waking up feeling disappointed.
I didn't really know what "six months" meant. Was it six months until our marriage was healed? Was it six months until a
change would take place? Or six months and we would be apart? Nonetheless my
feeling of disappointment was from thinking I would be alone for six months. Could I really wait "that long"? I
got to thinking that six months would bring us to October and that would be the
month of our anniversary, so that would be a good time for him to come
home. There I was, trying to "read
God" to manipulate his message to suit my own interest; to predict what He
was trying to tell me. I needed to rest.
Whatever six months meant, I had to leave it at that and trust God.
But I wasn't truthfully trusting God. I fought for control of the situation as much
as I could. I tried to plot, plan and intervene
by intercepting emails or checking bank accounts to track his steps. I was
playing amateur detective but I was trying to save my marriage so I felt justified.
Alas everything I tried to control turned out to be an exercise in futility. God began to convict me of my intrusion and I started
to realize that all of my investigative work was really an invasion of my
husband’s privacy. He was leaving and
there was nothing I could do to manipulate or change the outcome.
It was only through God’s grace that I found a
wonderful Christian counsellor who during that first visit told me that our
marriage was not doomed. He continually
pointed me to Christ as the only true source of healing. I had to take my eyes
off of the people and the situation and place them solely on Jesus. I needed to
hand My husband over to the Lord and surrender my control.
I know people thought I was crazy when I claimed that
I that our separation was “temporary” and that I was going to wait however long
it took for our marriage to be restored. Dear friends who knew me best were
supportive but I was often met with mournful looks and offers of condolence,
like there was a death in the family. To
their defence most separations do not reconcile, so marriage death was a realistic
conclusion. I knew that I couldn’t be
the only one who felt this way so I did a google search on “marriage
restoration” where God led me to a ministry with like-minded women to lift me
up during those difficult months. These women had walked the road I was travelling
and some their marriages had been restored after months and years of painful
separation. Others were still waiting for their “suddenly” (restoration day) to
happen. I became (what’s known as) a “stander”.
I knew that with God’s help, I could stand no matter how long it took. The consistent message from these women was
to take my eyes off of my husband and the situation and give it to the Lord. I
was to always turn my eyes on Jesus. I was to draw closer to Christ and build my
relationship with Him.
I grew stronger physically and emotionally and finally
went back to work shortly before my husband moved out. The morning he left I
reminded him that even though he was leaving, the door was always open for him
to return. When I drove home from work that
day knowing he was gone, I was in tears but genuinely thanking and God for the
pain. Without the pain, I would not have drawn closer to Him or allowed Him to
change in my heart. I knew that this
story was still being written.
The days passed and my intimacy with the Lord grew. I
was waking early for time with Him and the revelations revealed to me during
those months were unmistakably targeted to this journey. How can anyone say
there is no God? One morning I woke up
in tears telling the Lord that I could not go on any longer, I was too
weak. I turned to my devotional and the
scripture verse was from 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10:
“Therefore, in order to keep
me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of
Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from
me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my
weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in
weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For
when I am weak, then I am strong.”
One day driving home from work I felt the Lord say to
me “your husband may never come home. You could lose your job, your family, the
very life you have. But you will NEVER
lose me”. I wept. Even though I dearly loved my husband and desired for our
marriage to be healed, God was really all I ever needed. He wanted a closer relationship with me. I realized
my heart was no longer broken because He had healed my heart.
“He heals the broken-hearted
and binds up their wounds” Psalm 147:3.
“For your Maker is your
husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your
Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.” Isaiah 54:5
I connected with marriage restoration ministries
through bible study that God used to open my eyes wide. In the first lesson I
was convicted about overly sharing my situation with others and speaking about
my husband’s actions. It talked about
how this actually disrespected my husband and arouse self-pity and anger (TRUE
it did!) “These emotions are of the flesh and will wage war with your spirit.”
Galatians 5:17, “For the
flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for
these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that
you please.”
This is what I had done out of my pain and the need to
process my grief, but in that process I took my eyes off God and His Word looking for my own answers to suit my needs. God truly wanted to heal my heart and my life
before He could ever go on to heal our marriage. This journey of reconciliation
was not just about our marriage but truly about my disconnection with the Lord.
I took my eyes off Him and lived life my own way.
Then I read: “Do you have a quarrelsome spirit? Are you
a “know-it-all”? Do you have a contrary comment to the
things your husband says? That was
me. “But refuse foolish and ignorant
speculations, knowing they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s bond-servant must
not be quarrelsome but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged” (2
Tim. 2:23).
The chapter on the “Contentious Woman” was the one that
really slapped me in the face. The NIV
calls her the “Quarrelsome Wife”.
In the message Proverbs 27: 15-16 reads: A nagging spouse is like the drip, drip,
drip of a leaky faucet; You can’t turn it off, and you can’t get away from it.
Proverbs 25:24: “Better
to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.
Proverbs 21:19 “It’s
better to live alone in the desert than with a quarrelsome, complaining wife.”
I cried and cried. I could finally hear God loud and
clear. I’m sure He spoke this to me before but in my pride, I refused to
listen. I was still playing the victim and doing it well. Even though my heart
had been transformed toward my husband I was still holding back. I was
comfortable with the amount of responsibility I had given myself but God
revealed to me that regardless if it was 50:50 or 70:30, I needed to look
within and be accountable for my own actions. I needed to listen to the Holy
Spirit, depend on Christ, renewing my mind and not assigning blame to anyone
else. The hard reality was the “contentious
woman” was staring back at me in the mirror and it needed to change. My
obsession with control destroyed our marriage driving my husband so far away
that he had choices before him that he should have never had to consider.
This goes back to Genesis after the fall where the New
Living Translation says in Genesis 3:16:
Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in
pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he
will rule over you.”
One commentary I read quotes: “What the curse of sin created, believers in
Christ are called to correct by living according to God’s Spirit. Ephesians 5:
says that the wife should willingly submit to her husband’s authority in the
home, in essence, refusing to scratch the curse-fueled itch to seize control”
Learning to be a wife as God intended is counter
cultural. In the world we are taught to be women of independence looking out
for number one. Society tells us to be women who take control in all situations
especially in our marriage and family instead of depending on the Lord. I have new joy embracing the role God has
graced me with as wife and help meet for my husband knowing that after God My
husband is my priority and this is how I honor Him. The underlying resentment I
held on to for so many years has vanished.
One of the many relationship lessons I
learned, is the only control that you really should have is self-control. All
other control goes needs to be surrendered to Jesus Christ.
“Do not conform to the
pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you
will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and
perfect will.” Romans 12:2
I also love how the Message says it: “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your
culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention
on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants
from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always
dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you,
develops well-formed maturity in you.”
One week later, “out of the blue” My husband texted me
and wanted to “get together”. I hadn’t heard a word from him for 2 months. Instead
of calling, pestering and pursuing him I let him to make the decision to
contact me when he was ready. I knew it had to be God’s timing, not mine. Did he want to discuss separation or divorce?
This was something I feared but I knew I could face whatever was ahead. The first meeting started as a casual coffee
between “friends” but then turned into the beginning of our final lap of our
restoration journey. God unfolded this length of the voyage much faster than I
ever expected, but I was letting My husband take the lead and trusting the
timing. Things were happening faster than I had ever anticipated but God reminded
me that He didn’t want me to waste time trying to figure things out, just trust
Him.
My husband was so completely different towards me. There
was a new softness to him and I knew his heart was changed he treated (and
continues to) treat me like a queen. My
husband moved back home in July, which was almost exactly “six months” from when
the journey began in January. Over the past year we have had a completely
different marriage. I tell people I have
the husband I always wanted but never allowed him to be. I am having the
blessing and opportunity to watch my husband grow as the head of our household
and see his confidence develop each day. There are days I still struggle with
wanting control, but being aware of and identifying it helps me to give it to
God, where it needs to be. Supporting my husband is my priority and on the days
he feels he has no one else in his corner, he knows that I am there cheering
him on. God is working in his life and his story is still being written.
I have had well-meaning people worry that I was
assuming most of the blame. If you ask my
husband, he will be the first to say that his role was significant and “it
takes two”. He has had his own journey but that is for him to share when and if
he chooses. Regardless of what anyone
else has done, we are all accountable to God alone for what we do and say.
For so many years I sought to find my identity and
affirmation in education, positions and job and really these pursuits became
gods to me. It gave me a feeling of
superiority over others and especially my husband. I lost focus as to where my
true identity is found. I had built my foundation on sinking sand destined to
wash away. My identity is found only in Jesus Christ and the role he has for me
as His child, a wife to my husband and a mother to my children.
My dear church family was there for me. Even though they were dealing with significant
church issues they were all still able to cry and pray with and for us. God
used them to hold me up when I couldn’t stand up. They were there through the
days and nights, the tears and fears. I don’t know what I would have done
without them and each and every one of them knows who they are. The support of my church family was critical
in those difficult days. They have all been there to celebrate the victory with
us without judgement. I know they all
genuinely love my husband and our family. For that I am deeply grateful.
1 Corinthians 12:24-26: “…God
has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, so that
there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same
concern for each other. So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with
it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”
"The true expression of
Christian character is not in good-doing, but in God-likeness. If the Spirit of
God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your
life, not just good human characteristics. The secret of a Christian's life is
that the supernatural becomes natural in him as a result of the grace of God,
and the experience of this becomes evident in the practical, everyday details
of life." --Oswald Chambers
