The Confession – Part 1

 

It has occurred to me that I have not been terribly transparent. Part of that is just because I felt there was more value in giving you meat versus my story. Don’t misunderstand. I have not lied, but I have been vague. My life has been a series of mistakes at times that I am uncomfortable sharing openly with the general public, especially on the World Wide Web. But today, I will give you the full picture. I won’t go through all my mistakes….today….but I am sure over the next several months and years, as I continue to write this blog, I will unveil them all to some degree. The point is not to confess my mistakes, but to tell you what I have learned from them. So let’s get started…

I am the wife of a pastor. I haven’t always been the wife of a pastor. I was once the wife of a City Utility manager and also once married to a correctional officer. I have mentioned before that I have been married previously. Well, it was not just once before, but twice before. Actually, I have been married a total of 3 times. Divorced twice. OUCH! Most of the time, I never think about it. I just go about my business, but then something comes up in conversation and it comes back like a ton of bricks being dumped on me from the sky. Yes, it happened. No, I am not proud of it. Does it define me? No. Again, I don’t think about it often. I can’t change it though. Since I can’t change it, I decided to learn from it and help others through it.

Now, let’s go a little deeper…I was a born-again, God-fearing, church-going, Jesus-loving, Christian during both marriages…well sorta. I wasn’t attending church during my second marriage, but the rest was true during both marriages. Now, how does that happen? How do I break one of God’s most sacred covenants all while being a Christian? Well, for starters, I wasn’t a very good Christian. I obviously had some communication breakdowns between me and God. All self-induced. He was always there waiting and ultimately, when I did begin to come back to Him, He rewarded me greatly.

This isn’t going to be a “tell-all” story of what the problems were in my marriages. Suffice it to say that we were both at fault in both marriages. The point is, after the ending of my second marriage and beginning the journey of drawing closer to God, He blessed me beyond my wildest imagination. Here I had sinned and sinned and sinned against Him, all while taking Him along for the ride, yet, He still blessed me after I came back. He is sooooooo good to us, isn’t He?

Let me also say that I didn’t have to divorce my husbands. God could have fixed both of my marriages if my husbands and I would have wanted Him too. He could have made both of them sweet. Would I have done that, had I known He would? Definitely, in my first marriage, if I had been willing, He would have and could have fixed it. Now knowing what I do, it would have been the best thing for everyone. Myself, my ex-husband, and our two daughters. Sadly, I wasn’t interested in any of that. I was angry, tired, dissatisfied, selfish, and confused. My first husband was never God’s choice for me, but once I married him, it became a union God joined and one that He could bless. I often wonder if my current husband was always His choice for me, because looking back, I can see how He could have orchestrated our paths to cross. Hmmm….

Ok, since I don’t know that, we will move on. So once I married my first husband, God saw us as one. Even if I didn’t, God did and He can do a lot to have made it better than what either myself or my ex could. Of course, I wasn’t terribly desirous of that because I didn’t really commit to it as I should have. I always knew I had not married the person God had for me and therefore, I just never applied myself as I should have. More importantly, I never loved him as God would have preferred. Love is not a feeling, it is a choice. I never chose to love my first husband as I should have. Feelings of love are a bonus and they also come and go. There are days, even now, that I don’t get all fluttery inside when I kiss Earl, but I choose to love him. There is a huge difference in that.

Ultimately, after 9 years and two beautiful daughters, my first husband and I divorced. All my choice. Heavy sigh Then, I fell apart inside. I lost like 70 lbs, most of which I needed to lose, and my self-esteem careened down, down, down. One might think I should have turned to God in that case. I had the foundation for it. I never stopped praying to Him, but boy, was I ever praying the wrong things back then. I can’t exactly tell you what I was praying, but I can assure you, it was not effectual prayer.

I should have turned to God, but I didn’t. My subsequent decisions show pretty clearly that I did not turn to God. There was Light at the end of the tunnel, but I wasn’t to find it until many poor decisions later as you will see in my next blog post…. How is that for a cliff hanger…

 

In His Love

~Jennifer

 

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/49273060@N04/14772766682″>entre sueño y realidad</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>