It's been a while since I've posted in the Encouraging Husbands Series, but it's well worth the wait! Considering I have a few blog readers/friends who are experiencing broken trust in their marriages and are struggling, I wanted to write a post on encouraging our husbands during the healing process, and even afterwards. Since I haven't experienced this sort of struggle in my marriage, I didn't know where to begin. But, I oh-so-bad wanted to offer some encouragement to these women I've grown to love who have trusted me. Thankfully, God placed Shelly in my life through our blogs. I have to say....she's pretty brave and I'm so proud of her for sharing her testimony on my blog today, as well as ways she encourages her husband. Even if you have not experienced this type of hardship in your marriage, I highly encourage you to read this post in it's entirety. God speaks through Shelly on many levels. There are words she's written we all need to hear. So encouraging!
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Thanks Cat, for thinking of me to share my testimony here for others that may be going through troubled marriages, mistakes, hurting and depression. Sounds like all sortsa fun doesn't it?
I'm Shelly. I am married to Todd. I am a stay at home mom and my husband is a Lt. Col, in the US Army.
I have 3 grown, graduated step children. We also have 2 little blondies of our own. Todd and I have been married for 8 years. We have known one another for 10. We met while we were both going through long term relationship break ups and turned to one another for conversation, company and just, a smile and laugh. Our relationship was first built on those foundations.
Friendship and laughter. He's the funny one ;)
When it comes to sharing our testimony with others, it's like a good novel. It's worth it to read it to the end. God worked a miracle in this little grey house of ours and if you ever doubted His grace, this story will for surely change your mind.
Todd and I eloped in Colorado in a hot air balloon wedding ceremony. Just us 2, a camera man and the pilot who married us!
We got pregnant right away. Doing this while he was a mobilized soldier on leave of absence from his police job was kinda stressful. In the beginning, Todd came back home 4-5 nights a week. Alot of driving.
From the beginning, the odds were stacked against us...
*Neither of us were true Christians. We didn't understand grace until years later; when we both accepted and let God be the guide to our marriage.
* We were a military/Army family.
* We were a "blended family" with older kids who weren't particularly fond of me.
* My husband is 19 years older than I am, so that was awkward to them.
* I was noted as"the other woman" to anyone in the community, based on gossip.
* I was young, he was 19 years older.
* I hadn't learned how to communicate yet at the age of 21, and he hadn't learned how to communicate EFFECTIVELY yet.
No communication=disaster
When things started getting stressful, I didn't know what to do. I just did what I knew.
I did what I thought would help ME get through things. I talked about our marriage to "friends", I nagged to him, I badmouthed the decisions he made. I was everything opposite of the Proverbs 31 woman!
Todd spent 8 months overseas in Kuwait. I had found out I was pregnant when he was still stateside, training before his deployment. It was the very first week he was away. I broke down, cried and was so upset. I couldn't understand why God was bringing another baby into this family when I was so unhappy and unable to mature how I should have been.
Many times I didn't think Todd did enough to make me feel better about "life". I was the "damsel in distress" and he didn't come to save me.
Us now:
I worked insane hours. The people I worked with were drama and it was so easy to fall in the trap of gossip. Here's where the truth comes out: I eventually gave up on the marriage idea and never told Todd that. I just let the tension turn into self-pity and self-indulgence. I thought I needed some words of affirmation and I didn't want them from my husband.
Here is where it gets a little sad and crazy. I started to revert back to that girl I was in college. The party girl. I started remembering how easy life was when I could just drink the emotions down and act a fool. I put my ultimate worth in the words of drunk college guys at parties.
I'm writing from a place of pure honesty. I know I'm not the only woman that has a history like that. A history where guys were able to give make us or break us with just a word or actually, no words....
Eventually I was swayed by a "tell you what you want to hear" type of guy.
I felt like this person was listening. Reality check. He wasn't. He had a game and he played it. And I, unfortunately was a participant. When I talked to this guy, I would feel hurt in my heart with each message I sent, and knew that THERE WAS SOMETHING or SOMEONE trying to stop this conversation and relationship from happening. I know now, that that pull in my heart was the Holy Spirit. And man, did he pull hard....
I was unfaithful.
I eventually came clean to my husband. Life became a blank slate. Every conversation I had hid from him, came out, and every stupid mistake I had made was brought to light. It was horrendously embarrassing. But necessary. He confessed to me also, things I hadn't known. It was good that we started fresh.
I decided I wanted my kids to have a mom they could respect, and I wanted my husband to have no other choice, than to move on without me. I gained some liquid courage one day after I left our house, when he was home.
Eventually I was found after I had been drinking all day and taken a box of sleeping pills, off in a parking lot of a wildlife refuge area. I asked God to forgive me for what was about to happen. I also didn't think I deserved eternity anymore.
What ensued after this was a long, very long road of regaining my mental strength and training myself to know there was purpose in life for me.
It didn't come easy. I believe that the gospel was written for me. I had to remember that He promised forgiveness and grace, for occasions such as these.
I found all this out when a man came into my room while I was in the ICU. It was a military chaplain from Todd's work. He drove an hour and a half to talk to me for 10 minutes about the love of Jesus and God's forgiveness. The words he said are still clear as a bell to me. He said,
"Your story is going to help other people.You will share your story with others..." there was more to it than that, but those words are the ones that God reminds me of.
I learned that God would take the devastation, hurt AND ALSO the healing, and use it in His own way. I knew that this was going to be my testimony. I wasn't real excited to be shouting from the rooftops that I was an adulterer but I wasn't going to hide the fact that the amazing Grace of God saved MY LIFE.
That would have been the most selfish thing I could have done. Not allowing God to use this for His good because I was embarrassed.
If someone could see that a life was spared, a life that had been a sinning life...well, maybe they'd give God a chance. If I never talked about it, then nobody would know of this great Love and amazing Grace He has for us.
God used my marriage as a way to Him. He cleared a path, through my bad decisions, and made it lead directly to His forgiveness. God took my mistakes, and brought them to a place of healing and understanding. I never thought I'd understand how I could have done this. How this was my fate for the rest of my life. But I know that God took that opportunity when I was at my lowest, weakest point, where life seemed much too difficult to come back to, to show me His great light.
His arms carried me to a place of heavenly peace, and I know that He will never let our hurt go in vain.
NOW.......back to building trust and encouraging our husbands. Now that you know what I did to earn the dis-trust, I want you to know what I'm DOING to earn his trust back.
The first thing, the VERY FIRST THING was to give God a chance. I shared and encouraged Todd to do this too.
When Todd saw me turn to my Christian friends, and saw some of them soften my fall with their prayers and their amazing words of encouragement, I came to realize that what I did wasn't who I am. It is only a tiny sliver in the days of my life on earth. I am not perfect on earth, and nobody is, or ever will be. That is what our destiny in Heaven is for. We can't understand the perfection there is in heaven, unless we truly understand that earth is a place so far from God it just can't be compared.
When Todd saw me turn to God, and to begin to try to understand things from a Godly perspective, he too was able to join me.
Also, I am blessed enough to be a stay at home mom. I got to spend the first years of my daughters lives here with them. In that time, we began implementing prayer at meals and bed time. We all take turns saying "I'm thankful for". We ENCOURAGE our kids together.
I began blogging. The single most amazing and important thing I have done in our relationship to save and bring it back, was to openly share my story and testimony with others. I know that when Todd reads a heartfelt blog post about our past...He knows that God restored that part of our marriage when it fell apart.
Another thing that helps Todd is that I am able to look at my step kids and show them support in their own trials. I am blessed they gave me a second chance. When Todd looks at that, and sees that I want to be invested into HIS kids lives he knows that I am invested into OUR life. He witnessed a softening and a new leaf was turned. I was able to accept and love them for who they are.
I go to a weekly bible study and am held accountable by other Christian women. I also found a couples bible study for us to join, so we can have some alone, focused time with other married couples, talking about God's principles in our lives. These things speak for themselves of importance and why they would show trust building.
He sees my efforts to bring God into our home. Recently I made a bedspread for our bed with 1Cor 13: 4-8 on it.
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails."
We remember that verse and read carefully the laws of Love, governed by our God. Living that out loud is a fail-proof way to keep your everyday focused on supporting and encouraging your husband.
I do things often for Todd now, that I didn't do before, to let him know I am thinking of him. I figured out his Love Language and I spend time putting his needs first. I know HOW God made him and I respect God's vision for Todd's life. I don't try to change it or mold it into my own.
I trust that God knows Todd better than I and that the personality that he has is the one that God needs him to have to be successful in our life.
I throw my words out into the WWW. I acknowledge his greatness and brag about him to my family and friends. But most of all, I forgive HIM too!
To read Part 2, click
HERE
Labels: Faith, Guest, Marriage, Scripture, Series
