What a day yes­ter­day. Talk about an emo­tion­al roller coast­er. I wake up in sor­row, remem­ber­ing what his finan­cials reveal to me about his heart and char­ac­ter. He’s not only cheat­ing on me with oth­er peo­ple. He’s been hid­ing mon­ey from me, and he’s cheat­ing the gov­ern­ment. He’s being unshady in his busi­ness prac­tices, not sep­a­rat­ing busi­ness from per­son­al expens­es he doesn’t want me to see. The more I find out, the more I real­ize I real­ly have no clue to whom I was married. 

I real­ly believe he’s torn between two iden­ti­ties, but ask­ing which is the real him is irrel­e­vant at this point. Light and dark­ness can­not co-exist. If there is dark­ness, and such dark­ness as this… to con­tin­ue in sin shows you prob­a­bly nev­er real­ly made Him Lord of your life. You may know Him, but so do the demons (James 2:19). You’ll be known by your fruits, and He’ll say, “Depart from Me, I nev­er knew you” (Matthew 7:16–23).

I stayed in bed for a few hours this morn­ing, lis­ten­ing to wor­ship music and read­ing the Bible. And of all things, what’s the verse of the day? 2 Corinthi­ans 5:17 – There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

That verse keeps pop­ping up. It’s the verse God gave me at the start of this divorce ordeal. It’s the verse that keeps com­ing up in so many mes­sages and books. I decid­ed to final­ly tack­le the divorce devo­tion­al I had saved (Sea­sons of Divorce — Vol­ume One). It was so incred­i­bly help­ful, so thank you to whomev­er wrote it. I have lived each of those days, and the sev­enth is what con­cerns me most. How do I pro­tect the chil­dren, and how can I lim­it and heal their hurt? Hon­est­ly, when I think of my son, that’s when my long­ing for our rec­on­cil­i­a­tion (not a remote pos­si­bil­i­ty with­out my husband’s repen­tance and redemp­tion) becomes strongest.

My son is keep­ing every­thing inside. He still seems like a hap­py 10-year-old, but I know it’s eat­ing him with­in because every once in a while, some­thing erupts. 

• Read­ing 2 Corinthi­ans 5 (entire chap­ter) and writ­ing about verse 17 in our Christ­mas devo­tion­al.
• Mark 10 is open in his Bible at all times. He’s read­ing it dai­ly and mak­ing com­ments about remar­riage. One night before bed, he told me he had a verse he real­ly want­ed to show his dad. And then he added, “Oh, and you, too, Mama. It says if a man divorces, he can’t mar­ry some­one else. Women, too.” 
• Over Christ­mas, he walked down­stairs and announced to no one in par­tic­u­lar, “Well you know, the Bible says if you get divorced and remar­ry some­one else, you’re com­mit­ting adultery.”
• And today, I saw it all in his Bible app bookmarks. 

This sweet lit­tle boy is search­ing God’s Word for answers, and what he finds isn’t lin­ing up with what he sees hap­pen­ing in his par­ents’ lives. And it makes me won­der what he real­ly knows about the sit­u­a­tion. Nev­er once have I inti­mat­ed the divorce was because of adul­tery, or that his dad plans on mar­ry­ing some­one else. But it’s like some­how, he knows. His first response when I told him his dad want­ed to divorce me was to point to com­mand­ment #7.

I’ve bought 2 books on griev­ing after divorce, one for myself and one aimed at kids. I’m doing a devo­tion­al with him, read­ing through the whole Bible this year. And I’ve bought a cou­ple kids devo­tion­als. All I can do with them is the same thing I am doing for myself – point­ing them to wor­ship, since the hard­est praise is the high­est praise, and wor­ship sets the cap­tives free and breaks strong­holds – and immers­ing them in the Word, which has amaz­ing trans­for­ma­tive pow­er (Hebrews 4:12, anoth­er verse that keeps com­ing up).

I also start­ed a divorce devo­tion­al for men, think­ing it would give me some insight I could apply to myself while help­ing me under­stand the oth­er side. And it led me to what I was already read­ing in Gen­e­sis about Abra­ham, Isaac, and Jacob (maybe I’ll post my book­marks and notes here later).

After spend­ing 4 hours in wor­ship and the Word, I was put back on the roller coast­er by a series of calls: my lawyer, my broth­er, and my insur­ance company.

The lawyer call was hard, as we were going over the few finan­cial records he’s released. The call with my broth­er was hard, as it was a kinder, soft­er ver­sion of the con­ver­sa­tion my par­ents had with me the pre­vi­ous night.

As the days go by, more things come to my mem­o­ry. I’m real­iz­ing that in being a “sup­port­ive” wife and staunch ally, I took him at his word ALWAYS, and being sequestered in such iso­la­tion, I kept every­thing inside like a vault. Now that I’m open­ing the vault to my fam­i­ly, they are shocked at what I nev­er told them. 

The one that stood out to my broth­er is this: the fact that a few years ago, my SIL accused my hus­band of molest­ing her when they were younger. I remem­ber when he came home one night utter­ly dis­traught. I’ve seen him com­plete­ly bro­ken a few times. This was one. (Anoth­er was when he came home from work and said he can’t do this any­more and needs to be with his fam­i­ly more. Turns out, it was the same night he cheat­ed with his employee.)

He and his sis­ter were both sex­u­al­ly abused by their moth­er’s broth­ers, the younger broth­er in par­tic­u­lar. He said hav­ing lived it, he could nev­er do any­thing like that to his sis­ter or any­one, and he didn’t under­stand why she always lashed out at him when she got caught by the fam­i­ly in her own sins. He said he has no mem­o­ry of hav­ing ever done such a thing, and won­dered if he had repressed some­thing, because why would she make such a hor­ri­ble accusation? 

The two of them had a late-night con­ver­sa­tion I wasn’t allowed to be a part of. Our pas­tor had talked to the sis­ter, and con­vinced she was lying (because she had lied about so many oth­er peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions before, includ­ing our pas­tor, typ­i­cal­ly when try­ing to shift atten­tion away from her sin onto oth­ers), told her to come apol­o­gize to my hus­band. So all I knew was they talked, and she sup­pos­ed­ly apologized.

I searched my heart, prayed… and believed him. But I always believed him. Every­thing else he has told me was a lie. Why would this be any dif­fer­ent? I didn’t bring it up before because I didn’t believe he was capa­ble, and to do so seemed vin­dic­tive and puni­tive. But now, I don’t know what to believe. So I put it before my coun­selors, and trust their judg­ment in how to move for­ward and best pro­tect my children.

This was the first time I felt like I may not make it through this. My world start­ed spin­ning, and I sat par­a­lyzed. This was too much for me. How did I end up in such a hor­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion? Treat me how­ev­er, but my chil­dren? I always knew, regard­less of covenant vows or love, that if I believed he were a threat to the kids, the kids and I would be gone instant­ly. I nev­er felt it to be so, or saw any signs. I don’t believe any­thing has hap­pened to date. But is it pos­si­ble to hap­pen in the future? I didn’t think any of his hid­den behav­ior was pos­si­ble. And since it looks like he’s just quick­ly descend­ing and spi­ral­ing into destruc­tion, any­thing is possible. 

Did he ever imag­ine him­self being addict­ed to porn? Did he ever imag­ine him­self hav­ing non­stop sex­u­al thoughts? Did he ever imag­ine him­self hav­ing one-night stands? Did he ever imag­ine him­self hav­ing such illic­it affairs? Did he ever imag­ine bring­ing divorce into our families? 

Hon­est­ly, what I see on the hori­zon is vio­lence. I fear he will not be able to con­trol the anger that seethes with­in him, and as his tight­ly-held con­trol over his appear­ance to those who mat­ter (mean­ing his fam­i­ly and the indus­try) slips, and the plan he craft­ed in his mind for his future doesn’t come to real­i­ty, he will lash out in anger. If it’s with me, it will end abrupt­ly, because I’ll nev­er be alone with him or in a non-pub­lic place. If it’s with the mis­tress, it will get ugly. And in either sce­nario, the police will be involved. And I don’t know if he can sur­vive that, if he doesn’t sur­ren­der to God even then.

My mind and heart still reel­ing from the pos­si­bil­i­ty, I called my new insur­ance com­pa­ny to con­firm cov­er­age. It’s a Chris­t­ian com­pa­ny, and at the end of each call, they ask if there’s some­thing they can pray for. I had already men­tioned I’m going through a divorce, so all I said was “the divorce.” 

And the CSR starts pray­ing… and straight up proph­e­sied about my EXACT sit­u­a­tion. I mean, it’s like he has been lis­ten­ing to my prayers, read­ing the same Scrip­tures, and got­ten a syn­op­sis of the sit­u­a­tion. He talked about God’s favor on me, about open doors, about mak­ing no place for unfor­give­ness or bit­ter­ness to take root, and the role that would play in stop­ping the gen­er­a­tional curse from pass­ing on to my kids. 

He prayed against my husband’s pride and blind­ness to his sin, that God’s Word would pierce him as it says in Hebrews 4 (!), that God would pin him down (Dar­by used the same words) and bring about change. 

As I in shock asked him if he’s a prophet, he said he has the gift of word of knowl­edge and oper­ates in the prophet­ic. He said he came from a bro­ken fam­i­ly with a gen­er­a­tional curse, but God redeemed him and uses him now, and how God is going to make our fam­i­ly such an amaz­ing testimony.

What the heck?!?! Who calls their insur­ance com­pa­ny and gets proph­e­sied to by the cus­tomer ser­vice agent? Oh my gosh, talk about “a word fit­ly spo­ken is like apples of gold in set­tings of sil­ver.” What a time­ly word. I mean, here I am wor­ried about my kids, and God uses a ran­dom stranger to reas­sure me once more that the gen­er­a­tional curse will not pass on to my chil­dren (pre­vi­ous­ly hap­pened the day after I told my fam­i­ly, from a pas­tor who knew noth­ing about the sit­u­a­tion). And also reas­sures me of the tes­ti­mo­ny all of this will be to peo­ple around the world (spo­ken by the intake coun­selor I talked to the day before I told my fam­i­ly, and the exam­ples he’s giv­en me in Dar­by and DJ and so many oth­ers). I went from sor­row to joy in a straight shot, and car­ried that high with me as I pre­pared for evening services.

I went to my home church’s prayer ser­vice from 6–7, watched anoth­er ser­vice online from 7 on, then TPH had their stream­ing ser­vice from 10–1! which was amaz­ing (I’ll post notes lat­er?). To real­ize I left 2018 and entered 2019 in the mid­dle of such a Word, was heal­ing to my heart. Every word was for me, for my bright future.

So even though I awoke today still sor­row­ful, and still griev­ed when I think about each sin he has done… I sur­ren­dered him to God with open hands; I trust God, look­ing for­ward to what He has for me this year because I know it will all be mind-blow­ing (I real­ly expect my crazy wish list to come to pass), and I focus on today. 

Today will be dif­fi­cult. Real­ly, any day I have to parse finan­cials will be dif­fi­cult. Weep­ing may endure for a night, but my joy will come in the morn­ing. So I will per­sist. I’ll cry my tears, but I’ll reach for my horn filled with oil, and I’ll go forward.

I know, in the end, it will be exceed­ing­ly, abun­dant­ly far above all I could ask or think. I will see mir­a­cles. My fam­i­ly will be a mir­a­cle. My kids will know God in such an inti­mate way because of this, and we will be launched to turn this world upside down for God, just as the dev­il tried to turn our world upside down. I will see deliv­er­ance come to my husband’s extend­ed fam­i­ly. He will be a tes­ti­mo­ny, the cat­a­lyst and linch­pin he always felt he was to be to them. Secrets will no longer be in the dark; lies will fall like chaff. And the truth will set every­one free.