I woke up at 1:00 this morn­ing and assumed as always that God woke me to pray. As I talked to Him and wor­shipped, I remem­bered some­thing that left me reel­ing once more. 

My hus­band start­ed his busi­ness in 2008, but as ear­ly as 2007 (could have been ear­li­er, how would I know?), he was doing artis­tic shoots (mean­ing undressed women with strate­gi­cal­ly-placed cov­er­age, and even­tu­al­ly boudoir as his busi­ness grew). He would have mod­els come to our apart­ment while I was at work, or he would meet them at hotel rooms. Oh, God, I can’t han­dle this. I want to throw up.

At first, he would tell me all about what hap­pened, who the mod­el brought as their accountability/protection per­son, show me the pics, and keep ask­ing to make sure I was ok with him tak­ing pics that involved women undress­ing. (He lat­er also made sure to get my ok for being at yet anoth­er net­work­ing event – I’m assum­ing where he had his one-night stands with “casu­al acquain­tances from the indus­try” – and to get my ok when extend­ing each of his trips, and they were to be with the cur­rent mis­tress, so…). At that point, I was so naïve, so sure of his integri­ty and secure in myself, and actu­al­ly liked the taste­ful shots he showed, that I said yes. 

Now the pain and pres­sure of real­iz­ing what he must have been doing with those mod­els over­whelms me. There was one who had brought her hus­band and young tod­dler to a hotel shoot. He told me they were swingers, who thought noth­ing of their son being in any envi­ron­ment. Through­out our mar­riage, he always point­ed out and judged oth­er people’s sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, when all the while he was doing the same, if not more.  He could have had a three­some with them. And even if no sex­u­al acts were com­mit­ted with these women, men­tal­ly he must have been liv­ing out such a fan­ta­sy. He was tak­ing his own porn shots basi­cal­ly, with dig­i­tal files he could review when­ev­er he had an urge to ful­fill. This whole time, he has been one of those sleazy pho­tog­ra­phers, hasn’t he?

He told me one of his employ­ees accused him of hav­ing an affair with anoth­er employ­ee at an indus­try con­fer­ence. (She wasn’t far off. He did cheat with some­one from that con­fer­ence, just not the sus­pect­ed employ­ee.) A few years ago, he men­tioned a lady at a net­work­ing event who got SO drunk, he felt it was unsafe for her to dri­ve her­self home. So he did. And he could hard­ly main­tain eye con­tact with me when he said it. And I remem­ber think­ing, “That’s noble of you, but you put your­self in a real­ly bad posi­tion. What if she were to accuse you of some­thing?” I bet she was one of his one-night stands, and that was as close as he could get to “con­fess­ing” some­thing to me, to relieve his con­science somehow. 

So many times I thought, how is it that all these dys­func­tion­al peo­ple are drawn to you? All his col­lege girl­friends (they’re the only ones I know about; he said he nev­er did any­thing he regret­ted with the high school ones, what­ev­er that means), all the peo­ple he hired, the indus­try pro­fes­sion­als he talked about. Now I know it’s because he was just like them. 

I asked God, “Why are you show­ing me this? The more I know, the more I am absolute­ly crushed.” So all I could do in response was what’s become my SOP. 

Step 1: Give it to God. Let Him car­ry this bur­den, because such knowl­edge is too much for me. I can’t bear it. But He can.

Step 2: Remem­ber that Jesus already knew and died for these sins I’m just now dis­cov­er­ing. Each one of these new rev­e­la­tions was already a lash, a thorn, a nail, a pierc­ing He took. He already bore the pain; I don’t have to. And for that mat­ter, nei­ther does my husband.

Step 3: Pray for him yet again, that God would inter­vene, and redeem his soul from destruc­tion. He could be such an amaz­ing per­son; there’s SO MUCH God has put with­in him, to shake the world for His glo­ry. But the dev­il has had his way with my hus­band, and he is no longer putting up a fight.

Step 4: Try to let go once more.

How can he live with him­self? At times I feel sor­ry for him. How can one stand under such weight and not go crazy? How does one func­tion? No won­der he was stressed ALL. THE. TIME.

1 Peter 5:7 (ESV) — Cast­ing all your anx­i­eties on Him, because He cares for you.

Isa­iah 53:5–6 (NLT) — But He was pierced for our rebel­lion, crushed for our sins. He was beat­en so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to fol­low our own. Yet the LORD laid on Him the sins of us all.

1 Peter 3:9 (TLB) — Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t snap back at those who say unkind things about you. Instead, pray for God’s help for them, for we are to be kind to oth­ers, and God will bless us for it.

2 Peter 3:9 (NLT) — The Lord isn’t real­ly being slow about His promise, as some peo­ple think. No, He is being patient for your sake. He does not want any­one to be destroyed, but wants every­one to repent.

Matthew 11:28–30 (NLT) — Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and car­ry heavy bur­dens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am hum­ble and gen­tle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the bur­den I give you is light.”

Today’s Playlist:

The Hope I Found Online:

https://www.familylife.com/articles/topics/parenting/parenting-challenges/anger-and-rebellion/5‑prayers-for-prodigals/

There’s so much in this arti­cle that stands out to me.