My wife and I have been married for 10 years, divorced for 1 year, and remarried for 4 years. This, of course, is to each other. Ours is a marriage that has been put back together after the divorce.
You may ask, how is it the second time around? It’s absolutely marvelous. We never argue, never say the wrong things to each other, and we are always happy. If only it were so! No, we do argue, and we do miscommunicate with each other. We are not always happy. But that’s all part of having a successful marriage.
First Marriage
In our first marriage God was not a part of it. I rejected God and was the most inconsiderate man that any woman could ever have been married to. I was an alcoholic and a drug addict. Eventually I became a gangster. My wife had to live ten years of absolute hell with me.
She, however, loved me. She told me continually that the reason she stayed with me was because she believed the man that she had met 10 years before would return. Despite all the ways I hurt my wife, she did not divorce me. I left her for a younger girl and divorced her.
It was my six year old daughter who was the one who helped to bring us back together. She had never been into a church, nor did she know much about spiritual things. But one day she found out from her teacher that she should pray for God to bring her daddy back. God answered her prayer.
Lastly, I want to say that if you are having marriage problems and want to get divorced, I don’t recommend it. I believe with God any marriage can be successful. To sum it all up, success in marriage depends how much you are prepared to sacrifice. My precious wife was prepared to sacrifice everything to keep our marriage together. I thank God for her.
This is a true testimony given to us from a subscriber from South Africa.
(USA) I as well was married for a very long time, 15 and half years. My husband called me the day after my birthday on my lunch break from work to tell me he did not think we were working out. He said he needed time to find himself and time to become the person he needed to be.
Well I totally lost it, did not know what to do was a basket case. I found out later that same evening he was with his girlfriend. How crushing. I did not know what to do, what to say or how to manage. We have 2 sons together and I could not even tell them where there Daddy was.
So to make a long story short, I filed for divorce –BIGGEST MISTAKE of my life. Our divorce was final on the day we first started dating when we were just teenagers. I prayed EVERYDAY that he would figure out what it was he was looking for and either let me go or make things right with us. The entire time him and I were separated we continued to see one another as much as possible, only his girlfriend who he was now living with did not know.
But I came to a point where I could not be the one on the side and I told the girlfriend about mine and his relationship that we had continued to have since day one of the split up. Well she dumped him, so he moved in with mutual friends of ours and lived with them for 2 months and during that 2 months we started working on our relationship.
Now after 6 months of being apart and a divorce we are 100% back together. We have talked about remarriage, but I want to make sure he is not going to stray and I am really what he wants. So I continue to live on pins and needles and I pray non stop and only want what is best for me and my family.
(USA) It has been a year since I first visited this post, and there are so many stories of pain… and hope. I’m still “standing” and even though the earthly circumstances have not changed, I’m still full of hope for a restored marriage in God’s timing and God’s way. I don’t really feel like I’m in a “waiting room,” but that I’m in a chapter of life that is really going quite well! I’m busy with my job and my church, and just returned from a missions trip.
What does break my heart about many of these posts is the level of information that is shared about spouses. I feel like we should focus on our own sin and leave that of our spouses at the foot of the cross. During these past “chapters” I’ve really been convicted of my ability to gossip, so I hope you’ll take this suggestion in the light of someone who has learned the hard way. It also hurts to read about those who want to divorce or get out of their marriages. Divorce is just another sinful response to sin, and evidence of a hardened heart.
Michael (Feb. 15, 2009), I’ve chosen to wear a band on my wedding ring hand, and not to date, so that is helping me to stay committed to my covenant marriage vows. I do understand the temptation and sometimes I’m lonely too, but God is showing me that He is truly enough. Blessings.
(USA) What an awesome story (the original one)! I’m hoping that this marriage was a covenant marriage (original marriage partners). It is sad to read all the following stories though. So many broken marriages. For those who encourage others to “move on”, please read God’s Word because if they are moving on from the marriages GOD joined as ONE flesh, you are encouraging them to commit adultery. We need to be very careful of doing such.
For those who are committed to wait on the Lord– no matter how long it takes, know you are in the Lord’s Will, walking in a pleasing manner before Him. In the end, brother/sister, you will NOT regret doing things the Lord’s way, including loving His way, instead of following the ways of this world. Many blessings… http://www.cadz.net/mdr.html
(USA) We have been together for 5 1/2 years and married for almost 4 years. We do not have children together but children from our previous marriages. My husband is very jealous and possessive. He checks all my stuff looking for evidence all the time. The reason why he does this is because since we met I keep telling him that he is not handsome enough, or good enough and that I married him to get my green card. I do NOT mean those words, I love him very much.
All this time I have been pushing him away somehow and restricting sex. He suffers in loneliness and his anger towards me grows more and more. He has become obsess and more jealous. We argue all the time and hurt each other with bad words. We always ended up making love and promising each other to change. Our sex is beyond perfection but so little because I always refuse for no reason.
Four months ago the situation became worse and I asked him to sign a Separation Agreement. I asked him to leave and to find a woman. (I have been telling him that for a long time now.) He has tried to get us a matrimonial room but I have refused and forced him to have his own bedroom and I have my own where I sleep with my kids.
At the end of April/09 I stopped talking to him totally not even hi or anything. He was still checking my stuff because he thought for sure this time I had a man :( I did not, never even in my imagination.
He met a woman and became involved with her he brought her to our apartment and had sex with her in his bedroom. He left a used condom and a huge picture of the woman in his bed, the lights on and the door open so I could see it. I was devastated. I wanted to die when I saw that. I always checked his bedroom for evidence too and this time I found the worst. He told me later that it was the only way he found to get my attention back. He said he was trying to forget about me and forcing himself to fall for this woman but she ripped him off and took tons of money for two times of sex and that after that day (last Jul/8) they broke up.
He has asked for forgiveness and promised me to do anything I ask him to. He has also blamed me for treating him this way for so many years. He said they had sex twice and that she was not interested in him but his money. I am confused. I know I have serious issues myself and I know he does too. We made love last night like two lovers who will not see each other ever again. Yet I went to the lawyer last week and filed for divorce. He told me that if divorcing him is what it take to win me back he will agree to anything I want. I DO love him but I will never trust him because of this. Also every time we have problems due to my telling him that I want him out of our apartment and that I will divorce him. I do not trust him but I think we love each other very much.
I called that woman last night in front of him and she said she does not know who he is. I wanted him to talk to her and tell her that he loves me but he told me it was not necessary because he broke up and told her that he is going for his wife.
Should I leave him? I think we shall never be happy.. he is jealous and I have so much anger inside. He always blamed me of cheating and then asks for forgiveness. He hates my ex-husband and feel I can go back to him. We are suffering and are hurting each other. We have lost control and love our sex together. Our children are suffering … he does not want to move out but I told him he must after this. Our life is a mess. :( I wish I could start fresh like he always said but I know how I am … we destroyed our marriage right? I know.
(USA) Wendy, Are you kidding me? Let me see if I understand the facts:
1. You’ve criticized him and told him that you only married him to get your green card. Regardless of what you MEAN, you actually told him these words.
2. You pushed him away and refused sex with him. (Yet he is supposed to believe you loved him as you stated in the first part of your post.)
3. You pressured him to sign a separation agreement.
4. You asked him to leave and find a woman.
5. You stopped talking to him all together.
Now you ask us if you should divorce him? You talk about his asking for forgiveness, what about you? You’ve done some very hurtful things to him, but I don’t see where you are really remorseful. You make love to him and then the next day file for divorce.
If you decide to go forward with your divorce, make sure you don’t deprive him of the children. From what you’ve written, you are a very self absorbed person, focused primarily on your happiness, with little or no expressed concern for your husband, or remorse let alone ownership of your behavior.
You’ve abused your husband with what you’ve done. He finally responded to your abuse with his abuse of cheating. He’s stopped cheating. When will you stop your abuse? When will you stop your selfish behavior?
He did exactly what you wanted him to do, and now you want to say WE destroyed our marriage? In this case, I’m saying you did about 99% of the destruction.
If you are serious about saving your marriage, withdraw your divorce petition, or even better, file a divorce saying YOU are abusive, and that you want to give custody of your children to him. If he doesn’t want that, then let him fight against that in court.
But by no means should you try to take any assets or be the primary custodian of the children based on what you’ve said you’ve done in this marriage.
(USA) This is terrible. As one who made many mistakes in her marriage, and who lost her husband and best friend and companion due to them, and who lives every day of her life feeling regret, reading about someone being so abusive toward their spouse and taking their marriage and home for granted in this way just makes me feel ill.
You do not need to worry about his asking forgiveness from you. You have much, much forgiveness of your own to ask him for. And to ask God for. Fortunately, God is far more willing to forgive even the worst things we do and say than people are. Your husband may never forgive you, that will be a consequence of all the really terrible things you did and said to him. God willing, though. And you have to start there.
Stop even thinking about his part in this, what he may or may not have done or said, whatever way you think, he set out to hurt you. You need to focus on your part in this, and apparently it’s a pretty big part. You need to get your own self right with God and your own path and heart straightened out, long before you can even cast an eye toward your husband’s words or actions.
Maybe you’ll be extremely blessed and it won’t be too late for you. Maybe. But you have a long way to go.
(CANADA) We are separated for a year now… it was not a pretty split up. Believe me, jail is not my kind of place.
My wife is expecting me to change… and I can’t… I have tried for 35 years to be somebody other than who I am, and it just has not ever worked.
I have prayed for hours at a time… sought counselling… even several exorcists!!! Read the Bible, looked for answers in all the nooks and crannies… et,c etc. It just does not work, and every time I do try, the Lord seems to be saying that if He changed me, I would not have to rely daily on His AMAZING and wonderful Grace…
But in the mean time, my wife expects me to change, and I just am who I am… just can’t do it… so what do I do now? Craig
(USA) Craig, to change what you do you must change what you focus on and think about. Christ’s gospel message is about living in the kindgom of God now– meaning, being transformed by God’s power and sustained by his grace to live your life the way Christ would live it if he were you. It is by God’s power that we don’t sin. Breaking free from sin in no way dimishes God’s grace in our life– in fact it is a testimony to God’s sustaining grace.
It sounds as is you have some strongholds of sin in your life. Although grace is opposed to works, it is not opposed to effort. Silence and solitude spent with the Lord (at least a few hours if possible, a whole day is better) in prayer and opening the door for God to speak to you, reveals things to you… Fasting also is wonderful– it is amazing how much the world has power over us– fasting is spiritual practice in learning how to live without getting our way. If you want to develop self control, direct effort won’t be enough. Fasting paired with prayer before the Lord will bring about the development of self control that cannot happen with direct effort. Fasting and solitude and silence are spiritual disciplines that are indirect means to spiritual growth.
Craig, don’t give up. God wants you to experience His abundant life! Jesus wants to restore your life and marriage and make all things new. Nothing is impossible for God, and it is never too late. God loves you more than anything, washes you white as snow, and approves of you. Praying for you…
(UNITED STATES) My wife left me nearly 2 1/2 years ago, divorced me almost two years ago. I still love her so much and want her by me after reading your story. I pray every day and night that God will bring us back together. We are not in communication so please keep us in prayer. God Bless you and keep you.
(USA) ASKING FOR PRAYER. Will you please ask God to restore our 28 year marriage? We are divorced. We were very close and we did everything together. He went into a midlife crisis and “lost his mind.” If you have experienced it, you know what I am talking about. I am still in love with him. Will you please pray for us? Thank you.
(USA) ASKING FOR PRAYER. I divorced my huband after 17 years of marriage. It has been 2 years since I filed. I had low thyroid, hormone and depression. He had low testosterone and there was no intimacy. I was getting suicidal and knew I had to get out or I would do something to myself. I did not get the help I needed until way later, even though we had counseling. I did not want the divorce. I wanted him to fight for me or show some emotion. I love him so much. He has been seeing someone for about 8 months.
I told him 5 weeks ago how sorry I was and how much I loved him and wanted to get back together. Last week I wrote him a 10 page letter telling him all the things I wished I had done and how proud I was of him, and how much I still love him. I would not be the person I am today if I had not gone through this. God has totally changed me. I am listening to God everyday and standing on His Word and praying.
(USA) My husband and I have were divorced on October 1st this year. My husband is engaged to someone else. I am standing for our restoration. On Good Friday, I felt like God said your marriage is dead but I can ressurect it. I still believe that He can ressurect our marriage. I would just like to ask everyone to pray for us,
(USA) Thank you. I’ve been praying because I believe with everything inside of me, that God is going to restore my marriage. Our divorce was finalized in July & my husband has been dating a close friend of mine for 18 months… but God is faithful. And, I’m willing to wait forever.
(USA) I met my husband online. He is from another country. We spent a year and two months getting to know each other very well (I thought). I went to be with him for a month in his country, with his family, and in that month I fell deeply in love with him and his family. Then about a year later he came to me and we married in 2005. He is now us citizen (2009) and had not seen his family since 2005 so he went to visit.
While there visiting, he asked me for a divorce. I asked why and I got so many different stories as to why he wants divorce. One day it’s over no chance to reconcile then the next day there is chance and hope. I try so hard to let him know how all this is affecting me but he acts as if he doesn’t care about my feelings at all. He acts as if he knows what he wants for himself and he doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process to get what he wants.
When I try to talk to him about things he doesn’t want to talk but when he wants to talk about something he expects me to listen ….I am lost … don’t know what to do anymore. All I know is, I gave my heart completely to him and I will never take it back. I will never stop loving him and I will wait for him the rest of my life to come back to me, no matter how bad my heart aches.
Sometimes I panic so much when I think of him leaving and getting a divorce that I feel I cannot breathe and we usually end up arguing or fighting over something so stupid. I feel this is just pushing us more and more apart because he doesn’t understand what this is all doing to me and I can’t find the words to tell him. Pray for me and my mariage please, because when I pray I feel they go unanswered. But I will keep praying these unaswered prayers all my life if that is what it takes…
(USA) My divorce should be”final” any day now. My wife and I were married 16 years and had trouble all along. We both had spiritual issues and problems. I would appreciate prayer for us. I believe we have always loved each other and let that fact get obscured by our mental problems. I believe God wants us to be together, but we don’t seem to be able to work that out right now.
(UNITED STATES) These stories are all very encouraging to me. My husband and I have been married 2 years. The man I fell in love with treated me like a Princess, showed unending love, couldn’t wait to marry me, wanted to seek God with me. After the wedding, things began to change. I am afraid pornography crept in, followed by my husband really distancing himself from me. We were constantly up and down, I kept wondering what happened to the man I married.
2 months ago, he left me, and I found out he has been pursuing a relationship with his ex-girlfriend who has been telling him to leave me. After reading James Dobson’s “Love Must Be Tough” and Michael Clarke’s “I Don’t Love you Anymore” I decided to take a tough love approach. I confronted my husband verbally and in a letter. Before I was begging him not to leave, crying, apologizing, doing all the changing. Now, I have let him go, letting him have the consequences, the “freedom” he desires. We are currently separated, living in different places.
I do not want a divorce. I have also struggled with whether or not to change me name. I have decided to keep my name. I do not plan on signing the divorce papers. I believe deep down that the man I married, the Godly man he could be, is still in there, and I believe deep down he still loves me. This sounds crazy to my family, and even Christian friends. Maybe I just don’t want to let him go, and no he doesn’t deserve me. But none of us deserve God, and he always takes us back. Marriage is binding. I feel that in the core of my being.
I can’t even begin to think of remarriage – is it because I have trust issues with men, or because I know that I am still bound to my husband? I will always be his wife, even though he is running from me, just as God will always be our Father, even though we run from him. I am considering making a pledge to commit to singleness for the rest of my life, or until my husband returns. God’s will is God’s will. I may never share this with my friends, as our society teaches us to move on to another relationship. However, perhaps my commitment to my vows for the remainder of my life are for God’s glory, no matter what the outcome. Thanks for anyone listening out there.
(USA) Oh Alicia, You are truly blessed to give God such importance in your life. Please keep up this good approach to life and all will be well with you. What people forget is that this life is temporary and we are on our way to a bigger thing we can’t even imagine. So it matters very much what value we put on God’s instructions to us. Proverbs 3:13-18
(AS) If I have learned anything from dating, marrying, divorcing and continuing to be involved with the same person for the past six (almost seven) years, it is that nothing is possible without God. And if all is done that is right in His eyes, everything works out for the better for the believer. Persistence, strong faith, and belief no matter what comes your way will help a great deal. I promise that. And sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to, but they are always the way they ought to. You just gotta be open minded. God works according to what he sees fit for us and not how we want things to work.
Anyway, my story starts from 2003. I joined the military and met a man from Louisiana. We were both young and in love, but should’ve given a lot of thought and a lot of the work by God to our relationship and marriage. So we started out wrong in God’s eyes, of course. Premarital sex, partying, drinking. We both knew better because he was once a good Christian and I was raised in church. He came from a broken family and I was raised by both my parents in a conservative well put together home and I should’ve been the stronger Christian, but I wasn’t.
When he proposed though, the first thing he said was that he wanted to be like his grandparents that had been married to each other for a long time and that he believed you’re only supposed to be married to one person for the rest of your life. I still remember what he was wearing, where he was sitting and what exactly his words were that day. “In God’s eyes, you’re only supposed to be married to one person for the rest of your life and I think you are the one.” I thought to myself, “This is who I’m meant to be with.” I mean, he spoke of God. I actually didn’t know that, that was what the Bible said.
Anyway, our marriage was a disaster. From before we tied the knot up to this day, we have been a disaster. I think he really did have high hopes going into our marriage, but because things did not go as he expected, he felt his efforts at making things right were of no use and that’s when he started to just do whatever he felt like. He would talk to other girls. He would not have any regards to my feelings when he would speak to me. He wouldn’t be supportive emotionally and mentally. It was horrible.
Through the years, I prayed to God and begged him to make my husband see how much better our lives and marriage would be if he opened his heart and mind up to making God the center of our lives and you know what?! God would answer my prayers. Sometimes he took a day, sometimes a couple of weeks, sometimes a couple of months… God always answered. But my husband would just continue to be selfish. After being married for a year, I fell into a deep depression and with him having custody of our son, I couldn’t bear life and felt I had to return home to my parents to start over.
Without my son and having going through those problems for the first time, I was so miserable. I blamed myself for my marriage even though he was the one talking to women and it was so much harder that I didn’t have my son. I felt like a bad person because I would let my anger get the best of me. He was the one doing the wrong things to me and I was getting angry because of those things, but I blamed myself. I always believed that no matter how bad a man is, if the woman stays quiet with a calm humble spirit, things can eventually fall back into place. But this man was just so cold hearted that I couldn’t stay content and quiet while he continued to treat me like garbage.
Well, eventually he cheated while we were married and I found out through messages between him and her. I was suspicious because of text messages from her and I questioned him about it, but he would deny everything telling me that I was just looking for reasons to make him a bad person because I needed it to go through our divorce. And yes, he wanted it since six months after we got married. So I finally found proof that he cheated and when I confronted him, his reaction was so cold, it stabbed me in the heart even more. Him and I were already sleeping in separate rooms. He slept in ours and I slept in my son’s.
The night I found out, I did not sleep. I could not sit still. I layed there with my eyes up at the ceiling thinking to myself, “He really does not love me anymore.” When the sun came up, I just couldn’t hold it anymore and I went and woke him up. He turned his head over to look at me and I said, “I know you slept with her. I read your messages.” He just said, “Oh” and turned his head back the other way. I spent that whole day in my son’s room crying and trying to keep myself from lashing out.
A few months later, we got divorced. I didn’t sign the papers. He paid extra to have it without my signature. On top of that, he sued me for child support and had me pay him 155/mth because he said, “the lawyer said if he didn’t sue me, he’d have to pay me $500/mth..” I knew he was lying. He was a cruel man. He never once talked to me about child support. He never once talked to me about how we could’ve worked through our son’s custody. He went and got everything done out of the selfishness of his heart, if he has one.
After the divorce, I moved out and got my own place, but I still loved him and hoped we’d some day get back together. I still believed and even to this day, that marriage is forever and that with prayer and God at the center of everything, all will work out some how.
So after our divorce, he still couldn’t leave me alone and we continued to see each other. I wound up getting pregnant with our second child and he wanted me to have an abortion. He only wanted to do the right thing the first day I told him, but he flipped and decided he didn’t want to raise another baby with me. He tried everything to get me to have the baby terminated. I thought about it, but I also knew that God hated abortion so I couldn’t go through with it. He would send me horrible messages telling he didn’t want anything to do with me, that I was dumb for keeping the baby and I wasn’t going to budge just because he refused to take care of his responsibility. He even started to deny the baby and started calling me a whore and said it was someone else’s baby.
I knew he wasn’t going to make my pregnancy smooth so I came home to my parents again. This time I brought my son. I returned home five months pregnant and for a month, I did not speak to him about a thing. He would call to ask about my son and I would just update him about everything and then I wouldn’t ask about him and I wouldn’t speak to him about myself or the pregnancy. After a month of being home, he finally started to ask about the prenatal appointments and then one day he said he did believe it was his baby, that he was just so angry because of the fighting between us that he felt he wanted to make things difficult for me. Things were still rough, but he wanted to see if things could work. But he continued to party and go about his selfish ways as if he didn’t have responsibilities here.
One night during an argument, he flat out said he still didn’t believe my baby was his and wanted a paternity test. I was crushed like the time he told me he didn’t believe it was his in the beginning of my pregnancy. But after I was done being angry, I felt, “Well, we were divorced and living in separate homes so I’ll be understanding and I see where he’s coming from.” He promised to be here for my daughter’s birth and September 16 came. He never showed. He said he had financial issues, but I later found out he bought a bike and that’s what kept him from being here.
A few months after my daughter’s birth, I was telling him about something that had happened while I was out and he flipped out on me and said that it was my fault that we got divorced and he ended things with me. I told him that he would regret his decision and one day he would feel the heart ache he put me through for so long and he would cry as much as I did. He blew me off, said I was talking jibberish and said he didn’t care. That was March of last year.
In April, I got an unexpected text late at night from him. It said he just wanted to see if I would receive it. I live in the Pacific. I knew he sent it because he was thinking of me. Then he continued to text me in the weeks that followed and asked how things were because we hadn’t talked for so long. I was happy. I was working, raising my children. We were worry free. Then the next month I received two emails from his grandparents. They are very good Godly people who of course, put God first in everything. I thought it was strange that they sent me a photo of them with my ex-husband in it, but I also thought, “Oh it’s just how they are.” I didn’t know that my ex-husband had been visiting them a lot and asking them to help him win me back.
My ex-husband had planned to come visit us and show me how much he had changed, but I had just started seeing someone else. So in a panic, he threw all of his plans at me. And he said that he was talking to God again. He wrote me love letters, made me a play list, blew up my phone. I think he even cried a couple times before calling me. All I could think of was the heart ache and misery he put me through for six years and I couldn’t risk going back to that. So I turned him down, plus I had another man who was making me happy.
I was glad that he had turned to God again, but I was sad for him that I hurt him because he hurt me like that so many times before. I called him to comfort him. I didn’t want to be someone who would hurt someone that way. I knew, firsthand, what that felt like. It was almost as if I was sad with him. I called him for a couple of days to comfort him. I mean, after all, he was once my husband and I cared about him for so long. He was my friend as well.
Well, about a month later he said he had met someone else and I was happy for him. I was glad I could speak to him without anything clouding his judgment. We were both with other people and we were happy, without each other. Well, my relationship ended and he was the one I would call to cry to. I had no feelings for him anymore so I felt like he was a good friend since he was also lending his shoulder to me.
About a month later, his relationship came to an end. A month after that we started to work on our relationship because supposedly, his words, “he was waiting for an opportunity if it came up at the right time and things were going to be good to stay that way..” Well, that was September of last year. We had been working on things so far, they weren’t great, but all was out on the table and since we had learned from being involved with each other for six years, we both knew what to do. Then since I hadn’t seen him for almost two years, I insisted he needed to plan a trip to visit us and finally meet his daughter so he came in November. Since in September, he was still speaking of his faith in God, I felt that maybe he had changed for the good and we did have a chance.
He visited in November and brought clothes for my children. Everything was perfect when he left. I found out at the end of December that I am pregnant with our third child. He made plans to move here within the year. After his visit, I found some emails he had written the woman he had been seeing prior to our reconciliation. His excuse was that he didn’t know what to do because I was telling him that I didn’t know what was going to happen until he visited. So I gave him one more chance after I found those emails and he promised to come back within a month to prove his loyalty and faithfulness as my man.
A couple of weeks later, an email came from this woman. It was an innocent email that had a photo attached to it and there were no words signs of “a love” between them, but what made it odd was that he was telling me they weren’t speaking anymore, at all. I gave it a day or two and replied to this email as him. And there it came. An email that said they had been in a relationship the entire time. After that, a lot more horrible things have come out and he even blamed me for his actions. That was exactly three weeks ago.
Today I am without anger and with a little sadness, but I am great. I know that he has to be miserable without the children and I know that it will only be a matter of time until his actions come crashing down to his head… conscience that is. The last time I spoke to him was last Monday and he just sounded like he was moping, almost as if he doesn’t know what to say to make things right which probably is the case. He was still with this woman, but I doubt they’ll last. My ex-husband denied our daughter (our second child) in front of this woman. He even denied knowing I was pregnant when he was the first person I told when I found out. I also found out from this woman that the clothes he brought for my children were bought with her money and that he had a paternity test ready to bring to do on my daughter, but he forgot to put it in his bag while he was packing.
There are many more things to tell, but you all get the picture. He’s just an impossible person. He begged me to take him back and let him move here to be with us, but I couldn’t do it. So I ended things with him and cried to God to bring me through this. I had given this man another chance, the millionth one, thinking that he was living to please God and he changed his ways along the way or just never really committed himself to the Lord. Now that I’m not angry anymore, I realize I still care about him and wish things could’ve turned out different, but they didn’t this time.
I still have a little hope, but there has been so much wrong done that it clouds my judgment. My ex-husband did not just lie to me either. He lied to his grandparents who tell him all the time to come back and get me and pray for us everyday. He also lied to my parents. My father knew about all the things he had done to me through out the years including this woman and my father asked him if he was still seeing her and if he wanted his family back. My ex-husband lied to my father. He also lied to my children.
To understand the actions of this man, I just believe that the devil has gotten the best of him. If he lived to put God first, he wouldn’t have done the wrong things he had done to me or this woman, not to mention our children. But some believers are stronger than others. Even after everything, I still believe God answered my prayers and sometimes I didn’t realize it. Like the time my ex-husband said he was talking to God again and wanted the family back together to make things right. I think that was my prayer being answered, but I didn’t realize it cause I had turned away from God. And a few months later, God answered my ex-husband’s prayers and brought me back to him, but he didn’t realize it or he just didn’t care. Because when I asked him if he thought God was happy that I gave him a chance, yet he wasn’t being right, he said he knew God wasn’t happy because he answered his prayers and he wasn’t being the man God wants him to be.
I am not cynical or bitter, nor do I doubt anything or question why I am going through heart ache again. I just take this as another opportunity for me to turn to God and it is another chance to rethink the things I’ve gone through to get here. God does, in fact, answer prayers if you conduct yourself in a manner that is pleasing to him. If someone is prospering in their sinful, worldly ways, don’t let it discourage you because the wicked always fall. Their ways don’t ever and have never led to lasting happiness. If you observe people around you, you’ll notice that about people who do not live their lives with God first. It was only when I would put God first, that I would be content and it was only Him who pulled me out of dark times. He pulled me out of this one in just three weeks and I still have faith in Him and hope for my marriage.
Sometimes people need to fall many times to get up and live right. If you live for God everyday, he will make you happy. Read your Bible, pray and be persistent in the Lord. You will never be unhappy again. If you know that God does not approve of something, don’t do it. Well, I read everyone’s posts about their issues so I felt the need to share mine. I hope that I have helped shine some light on someone who feels they’re going through their wits end. I am proof that things get better and if you just hold on to hope, you will be fine and you will be whole again. God bless you all and good luck.
(USA) I cannot understand why we are so willing, often eager, to share so many details about our situations and spouses, especially details about our spouses that should remain private. God’s words says love covers a multitude of sins. Period. It doesn’t go on to justify uncovering that multitude, or to list the reasons why we should, or to say laying out all those private details can help us in this way or that way. It stops with “love covers a multitude of sins”.
I’ve been through a lot – A LOT over the past few years. My husband did and said a lot of things that’d be considered VERY gossip-worthy. I’m sure I could find many justifications and excuses to share all these details with the entire internet world, or my family, or my friends, and maybe it’d make me feel just a little bit GOOD to dish about it all. But why would I? Does God anywhere in His word tell me it’s okay to do this? Would my own conscience allow me to uncover my spouse in that way and still sleep well at night? Why do we do this? You seem to go back and forth between whether you “want” to stand for your marriage or not – how does posting all this personal information about your spouse help you decide?
True love protects. Defends. Covers. It does not cause our spouses to be vulnerable, sitting ducks, exposed because of our words.
As for the number of posts on here that spend so much time talking about whether or not we “love” our spouses, whether or not we “want” to stay married or stand for our marriage, whether or not we’re “happy” with our marriage or our spouses – we are forgetting one crucial, major fact. God does not call us according to what makes us feel happy or warm and fuzzy inside. Not everything in our lives will flow in accordance to what makes us smile. God is far more interested in our being HOLY than our being HAPPY. We make vows… God expects us to keep them. Period. We marry, have children into these marriages, we makes vows before our spouse and before God – God still holds those vows upright even when we don’t. Doing the right thing is not always going to make us feel happy and carefree.
The reason so many of our children today are growing up without any example of committment or faithfulness or faith in God is illustrated clearly here in some of these posts. Marriage becomes not fun, downright difficult and painful at times, love becomes more of a concious decision than a free-flowing happy emotion, and every day life becomes more of a struggle – and what do we want to do? Run. Tell ourselves God doesn’t want us unhappy, thereby excusing divorce and/or separation. God only wants us to be happy, so why not get rid of the spouse who’s making you unhappy, and maybe even find another one who is somehow “better”? That’s how so many children are growing up today.
I’ve stood for my marriage, without any even smallest external sign of hope, for over 6 years. It’s been painful. It’s been lonely. I’ve had to battle almost daily anger toward my husband for choices he made. My children have gone through so much heartbreak over their father leaving. No one has agreed with my stand -not even ministers. It’s basically just been me and God. In the face of extreme, strong discouragement and hopelessness I’ve had to pick myself up, find a way to somehow hang onto the words God spoke to me in 2004. I have no need to share private details, I have no need to justify why I’m standing, I’ve never had a need to justify NOT standing, I’ve gotten past the point where I expect God to care more about my happiness than my holiness, and I’ve learned huge huge lessons in forgiveness. We need to stay true to our vows, to our promises made to God, we need to grow up in many ways, and we need to STOP sharing private information that is nobody elses’ business… and we just need to stay strong and get on with the business of doing what God has called us to do.