I came home griev­ing. I had a very intense dream about him last night. Again, it just reveals what my heart cur­rent­ly wants – restora­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with him. To have the mar­riage I thought we could/were going to have. The idea that it will offi­cial­ly be over in a few days… it’s not even about the divi­sion of prop­er­ty. It’s just that it’s over.

It’s also about jus­tice. I don’t know if that will come through medi­a­tion. I looked through bank state­ments of our joint account, going back to the first few years of our mar­riage. I real­ized that with­out my knowl­edge, he was mak­ing close to $3000 in month­ly pay­ments towards his col­lege cred­it card and stu­dent loan debt. I knew he’d been pay­ing off debt, but he led me to believe it was a small­er amount. I remem­ber ask­ing him how is it we’re mak­ing over $150,000, we live in an apart­ment, and we still strug­gle with bills each month? He nev­er had an answer. 

A few years ago, I came across some real­ly old papers while clean­ing out the garage. He nev­er got rid of any­thing. We car­ried trash bags of clothes and papers from one move to anoth­er. So this one stack I found indi­cat­ed he had over 40 lines of cred­it in his name before we got mar­ried. Forty. My heart plum­met­ed as I scanned the accounts list­ed. How could he have kept this from me? When I asked him about it, he denied it as usu­al. He said it was wrong, or that it’s how the gov­ern­ment broke up his stu­dent loans. And that was the end of the “dis­cus­sion.”

So now via dis­cov­ery, I see how many oth­er bank accounts and cred­it cards he cur­rent­ly has, that I knew noth­ing about. He told me he had one busi­ness expense and one busi­ness sav­ings account. There were many more, includ­ing one that he used just for his own per­son­al spend­ing on food, clothes, etc.

And then I saw all the mon­ey he spent on the affair. Since she flew to all the con­fer­ences, work­shops, and shoots he did out of state, the pur­chas­es could look like busi­ness expens­es. He’s def­i­nite­ly writ­ing them off as though they are. But you don’t need to use a lux­u­ry car rental ser­vice for a work­shop, in the city where you just hap­pen to also take her to a fan­cy hotel and restau­rant. You don’t need to book a hotel in the heart of Times Square for an engage­ment shoot in NYC, where she also was. There are so many yel­low high­lights on these bank state­ments, includ­ing for flights with tick­ets booked under her name, and pur­chas­es in her sub­ur­ban town 35 miles from where he so fre­quent­ly flew for “busi­ness.”

Look­ing back, there’s so much I assumed and took for grant­ed, because up to that point, the two men in my life were men of integri­ty. It nev­er occurred to me that he would hide things from me or lie to me. I should have seen a huge red flag when he adamant­ly refused pre­mar­i­tal coun­sel­ing. It was yet anoth­er case of gaslight­ing, even back then.

I’ve come to the real­iza­tion, though, that every­thing is in God’s hands, includ­ing me and my future. There were two things I heard that brought me peace. 

My broth­er told me that even if I were to get 100% in the divorce, it still wouldn’t actu­al­ly be jus­tice for what’s been done against me. Jus­tice will only come through God. Yeah, He could work through the court, but even if He doesn’t, I’m hap­py leav­ing it in His capa­ble hands.

The sec­ond was a mes­sage by @psrobertmorris. He said every­thing we have belongs to God. It’s all God’s mon­ey any­way. Some­how hear­ing that just lift­ed a bur­den off of me. 

Every­thing I did dur­ing the mar­riage, I did in faith­ful­ness to God and to my hus­band. I didn’t know what my hus­band was doing, but I did my part in integri­ty. Although I was the bread­win­ner and the life we lived was paid by my checks, in real­i­ty God was the real Provider. Every­thing we had, belonged to Him, not us. He can divide the prop­er­ty between my hus­band and I as He sees fit. He knows what all I’ve lost and how I’ve been tak­en advan­tage of. I can trust Him to take care of me just as much now and in the future as He did then.

And of course, God sends more encour­age­ment my way. The sto­ry of Joseph is part of my dai­ly Bible read­ing plan right now. He’s always been one of my Bib­li­cal role mod­els. Despite the injus­tice and pain he endured on his jour­ney from the pit to the palace, he was able to see God’s hand in it all. You can see how God worked it all for his good, by what Joseph named his sons. Man­asseh meant “God has made me for­get all my trou­bles,” and Ephraim meant “God has made me fruit­ful in the land of my afflic­tion.” Though 13 years of his life were fraught with suf­fer­ing, God cre­at­ed a future for him where he could say, “I have for­got­ten my pain, and I prosper.”

I saw a show about New Year’s prophe­cies fea­tur­ing @HankKunneman. He calls this the year of divine sur­pris­es, and the year when God set­tles the score. Man, do I need both!

I put stock in things lit­tle kids say. My niece ran­dom­ly said, “We are going to jus­tice now.” ?? What 5‑year old comes up with some­thing like that? And my son’s been focused on the idea of judg­ment late­ly. It could be because he’s read­ing the book of Revelation!

So although I’m not look­ing for­ward to the 29^th because it her­alds the end of my mar­riage, I am at peace with what­ev­er will hap­pen that day. Though the mar­riage will be over, my sto­ry is not. God is still writ­ing, and I know He’s got good things to come.