Lord, I real­ly don’t want to know. 

Please.

I don’t think I can han­dle this. 

So far, he’s only turned in one bank account’s state­ments from the last two years, and I can’t han­dle the duplic­i­ty I’ve seen so far. 

I briefly scanned the 306 pages on 12/21. Per his answer in the offi­cial dis­cov­ery doc­u­ment, he cheat­ed with his employ­ee (the one he sup­pos­ed­ly despised, whose sex­u­al escapades he would tell me about in dis­gust)! He said it was in Octo­ber 2014, four months after I had our daugh­ter. He could tell me about one-night stands with casu­al acquain­tances in the indus­try, but could­n’t tell me about her? He won’t admit to the one-night stands on paper, but does admit to this? It’s not like he’s telling me about the cur­rent mis­tress, either. 

Read­ing that, and then see­ing from his bank state­ment how he flew his cur­rent mis­tress with him around the coun­try AND booked a flight for her to stay with him IN OUR CITY for a week (the week he repeat­ed­ly told me he would have to stay at the stu­dio because he was going to be so busy) TWO DAYS BEFORE TELLING ME WE HAD TO HAVE A “SERIOUS TALK,” was enough to break me yet again. 

(Is that the point? Is that what you’re after, God? Bring me to dust? I’m ok with it, if You are.) 

Now hav­ing to go through all of it closely… 

Who is this man?? How can he live with him­self? I sound like a bro­ken record, but really! 

With every dis­cov­ery, every rev­e­la­tion – how can he live with him­self? You know, so far I’ve been able to for­give, Lord. Are you test­ing my lim­its? Slow­ly show­ing me just how despi­ca­ble he has been, to see if I tru­ly can for­give to the lengths You do? 

I’ll do it. For Your sake, for my rela­tion­ship with You, I’ll do it. For­give us our sins as we for­give those who sin against us, right? Noth­ing has ever been worth jeop­ar­diz­ing my rela­tion­ship with You. I won’t let this come between us. 

You are my every­thing. You are my prize, my reward. Help me to con­tin­ue to for­give. To con­tin­ue to hope and pray for repen­tance and change in his heart and life. That he will become the man you cre­at­ed him to be. That his life will be a ridicu­lous tes­ti­mo­ny to your redeem­ing pow­er. That he will speak from a stage, in utter trans­paren­cy, let­ting Your light shine and pierce the dark­ness that was once in him, that still lives in his audi­ence. Oh, God, please, would You send your angels, send Your Spir­it, even now, to con­vict him? Where is the pow­er of Hebrews 4:12? I demand that for him. 

Fight­ing bit­ter­ness and unfor­give­ness is a minute-by-minute bat­tle. His side of the fam­i­ly is togeth­er at their par­ents’ home right now, since they were apart for Christ­mas. And I know beyond a shad­ow of a doubt, I will be a top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion, per­haps a sub­ject of ridicule. Know­ing what they would say about me to my own par­ents WHILE we were mar­ried was bad enough. Now I’m sure they’ll take his side, accept his lies, and berate me all the while. Sad to think that even his brother/brother’s wife may par­tic­i­pate. I was hop­ing to still be friends with them, but I guess that’s impossible.

There will be so many oppor­tu­ni­ties to make room for resent­ment, anger, all the neg­a­tive emo­tions the dev­il wants to use to dis­arm and dis­able me. And it will be an even greater bat­tle once word gets out in our com­mu­ni­ty, to my rel­a­tives, about the divorce. 

Holy Spir­it, help me. Every moment, I pray I will keep my eyes fixed on You, and that Your love will per­vade every part of my being. I want to walk in love. I want to make You proud. I want to be an exam­ple to my kids. To the world. I want to choose life, choose bless­ings. Choose for­give­ness, choose grace.

My broth­er called me to remind me there is no hope for my hus­band. In his words, my hus­band is with­out con­science, and his sin and iniq­ui­ty so thor­ough, even a mirac­u­lous encounter with God wouldn’t change him quick­ly. Decades of renew­al and regen­er­a­tion would be in order, but he doesn’t think it’s going to hap­pen. He sees noth­ing but utter destruc­tion in my husband’s future.

I know why he said that… again. I told his wife last week of my secret lit­tle hope for a fairy-tale end­ing. I knew admit­ting it to her would be admit­ting it to the fam­i­ly, but I can’t hide any­thing. I know this is a process, and I have com­mit­ted to feel­ing what­ev­er emo­tion comes, and walk­ing through it. I place it all in God’s hands, and trust Him to guide me through each moment. God knows the unbear­able moments I’ve had so far, and those that are yet to come.

I can’t wait to wor­ship in God’s house tomor­row. I would stay for every ser­vice if I could. I under­stand David say­ing, “I was glad when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord.” “Bet­ter is one day in Your courts than thou­sands else­where. I would rather be a door­keep­er in the house of my God.” “My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my life and my por­tion for­ev­er.” “Young lions do lack and suf­fer hunger, but they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.” “The Lord is my light and sal­va­tion; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

I don’t know how long I’ll be with­out a job. But I plan to make use of every moment, immers­ing myself in the Word and wor­ship, read­ing every book I can, pour­ing into myself, seek­ing out wise coun­sel and god­ly fel­low­ship. I des­per­ate­ly need heal­ing, and I des­per­ate­ly need purpose. 

I am over­whelmed when I think of being a sin­gle mom, and that’s even know­ing how good I have it with my par­ents’ help. But when I think of all my par­ents pro­vid­ed for me – how do I as one woman, give my son and daugh­ter what they need from a god­ly father? How do I not lean on my 10-yo and force him to grow up more quick­ly than he already has? How do I encour­age and affirm my daugh­ter, so she won’t go seek­ing it from oth­er men? 

But God already knew all this, even while I was yet in my own mother’s womb. And He will equip me and sur­round me with every­thing we need. If we being evil know how to give good gifts to our chil­dren, how much more our heav­en­ly Father? He that spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? 

I saw a clip on Joyce Mey­er’s Face­book page ear­li­er that spoke to this. I think it was called “Hope for Sin­gle Moms.” I can’t find it now, so I’m not sure. The four links below are the clos­est I could find.

This is a ran­dom per­son­’s record­ing of when TBN aired that par­tic­u­lar segment.

This is the entire source mes­sage from which the clip I saw was taken.

This link is to a tran­script of the entire mes­sage the clip was tak­en from. Just search the page for “stinker hus­band,” and you’ll get to the right area 🙂

And this is anoth­er Face­book video that is encour­age­ment for sin­gle parents.

I thank You, Lord, that You nev­er leave me, nor for­sake me. I thank You, that Your strength is made per­fect in my weak­ness, that Your grace is suf­fi­cient. That as I wait upon the Lord, You will renew my strength. I will mount up with wings like eagles. I will run and not be weary, walk and not faint. In God, I will praise His Word; in God, I have put my trust. I will not fear. 

What adven­ture do you have wait­ing for me? What bless­ings lie around the cor­ner? What does this new year hold? If I were to reflect on this past year, the tears would nev­er stop falling. Some­thing like this was nev­er sup­posed to hap­pen to me. But if this, what I thought was impos­si­ble, has hap­pened, how much more will the impos­si­ble good things I’ve been dream­ing of, come to pass? It’s Your promise, Lord, and You’re not a man that You should lie. 

---

My Crazy Wish List:

• I want a home of my own by next Christ­mas. (My son wants a house, too, in a “nice” neigh­bor­hood. We’ve set his expec­ta­tions high with the neigh­bor­hoods we lived in.)
• I want my baby boy, and twins. (My son wants “at least one more sib­ling, twins if God is impa­tient,” lol. Struck me how he want­ed the same thing I did. I’ve nev­er said any­thing about it to him.)
• I want a job where I work from home, with a lit­tle bit of trav­el, great flex­i­bil­i­ty, and make $200K at least (I did say crazy wish list, though it’s not too crazy in my field).
• I want to tithe (not crazy, already doing), set aside mon­ey for the kids’ tuition and col­lege, and start build­ing busi­ness­es. Every­thing that’s in my “Dreams” binders (that’s the crazy part).
• I want to repay my par­ents for every pen­ny they spent on me, from col­lege on.

All this is on top of my To Do list. My To Do is more accom­plish­able. The Crazy Wish List, only God can achieve.

• Final­ly get the body I’ve always want­ed – in progress, start­ed work­ing with a train­er 3 days a week, and work­ing out on my own the oth­er days
• Wardrobe to match (STYLIST should go on crazy wish list) – start­ed shop­ping. Got my must-have shoes, added some tops, wait­ing on bot­toms until I lose more weight.
• Hair/­make-up lessons – Hair needs help, but did the m/u lessons!
• Piano (gui­tar, vio­lin) – haven’t tack­led yet
• Write devo/ministry plan – in progress! 🙂 
• Vol­un­teer with church min­istries – filled out a bunch of appli­ca­tions today
• Speak Span­ish and French and native lan­guage – start­ed on the Spanish
• Make YouTube videos with kids - got their chan­nel cre­at­ed, haven’t dreamed up con­tent yet
• Pas­try school – oh, I’d love this. Prob­a­bly should move to the crazy wish list.
• Learn to cook more – I see this hap­pen­ing once I get my own home. There’s only room for one woman in my mom’s kitchen.
• Clean­ing sched­ule – lol, I should get on this.
• Sing on the wor­ship team (lead on one that records) – applied! See appli­ca­tion answers in pre­vi­ous post. Though that par­en­thet­i­cal should move to the crazy wish list, too.

Per­haps if my life is full of pur­pose and joy, there won’t be room for bit­ter­ness and unfor­give­ness. Now, is it pos­si­ble to inter­cede for him, and not hold on to any hope for a future togeth­er? Isn’t that what Pas­tor Jay asked me? 

Isn’t that what God told me? Sur­ren­der him (and say good­bye). Trust Me. Focus on today.

Time to go wor­ship. And keep read­ing Whis­per. I don’t think my heart could han­dle It’s Not Sup­posed to Be This Way tonight. Enough tears for one day. 

Psalm 122:1 (ESV) — I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”

Psalm 84:10 (ESV) — For a day in Your courts is bet­ter than a thou­sand else­where. I would rather be a door­keep­er in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

Psalm 73:26 (ESV) — My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my por­tion forever.

Psalm 34:10 (KJV) — The young lions do lack, and suf­fer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.

Psalm 27:1 (NKJV) — The LORD is my light and my sal­va­tion; Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid?

Matthew 7:11 (ESV) — If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your chil­dren, how much more will your Father who is in heav­en give good things to those who ask Him!

Romans 8:32 (KJV) — He that spared not his own Son, but deliv­ered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

Deuteron­o­my 31:8 (ESV) — It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not leave you or for­sake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.

2 Corinthi­ans 12:9 (NKJV) — And He said to me, “My grace is suf­fi­cient for you, for My strength is made per­fect in weakness.” 

Isaish 40:31 (NKJV) — But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint. 

Psalm 56:4 (NKJV) — In God (I will praise His word), In God I have put my trust; I will not fear. What can flesh do to me? 

Num­bers 23:19 (ESV) — God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change his mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spo­ken, and will He not ful­fill it?