The Confession – Part 2

Here we are again, getting ready to relive some poor decisions I made. Isn’t it good to read about what someone else did?  Ha!

So let’s dig in again.  I left off last after my first divorce.  I was wallowing in self-pity.  When he and I decided to get divorced, it took exactly 3 weeks to write it up, hire an attorney, get in front of a judge and seal the divorce.  3 weeks. That’s it.  That is custody of our daughters, household decisions, 9 years of marriage, all done in 3 weeks.  That was quick!  I am not sure I had time to digest it.  In fact, I didn’t even have a job!  I was a stay-at-home mom up until this point and my girls were young.  I became stressed and depressed.  I stopped eating (you can lose 70 lbs fast like that), I didn’t sleep much.  I said stupid things trying to be funny at my new job.  I quit going to church.  I felt that EVERYONE in our little town was talking about us (I was right about that actually) so I didn’t go anywhere in public in town at all for months.  It was tough.

My newly single neighbor began to come calling.  I wasn’t ready for a relationship and I knew that.  So for several months, I turned him down.  Finally, in a moment of weakness, I agreed to go out with him.  He was the worst match for me.  As I said, I had not been faithfully going to church since my divorce, I had not been reading my Bible, I had certainly not been praying effectively, so my decision-making sensibility was severely lacking common sense.

But here I was on a first date with a guy who lived just 5 houses down the street.  I liked him. He could be very charming. I allowed him to kiss me on our first date and that did it.  I was hooked.  It wasn’t that he was some awesome kisser, but I was vulnerable and desired the tenderness he presented.  I was not in any condition to be making life-changing decisions, but I did anyway.  Within a year, we were engaged and married 6 months after that.  There was much, much, much about this man that was not God’s best for me.  He told me once that he didn’t even know if he believed in God.  I remember hearing that and thinking, “How could I be married to a man that does not believe in God when I believe in Him so deeply?”  I will tell you how.  I wasn’t living like I so deeply loved my God.  I wasn’t living a life that was pleasing to Him.  Not because I married the wrong guy, but because I was not seeking Him.  I was not listening to Him.  That is how I married a man that was the complete opposite of me and not in one of those good “opposites attract” kind of ways.  We were unequally yoked.

Now, I know what you are going to ask me.  “Could God have saved this marriage?”  (So glad you asked me that.) Under the current situation of the marriage and the stand my ex-husband was taking, the answer was “no”.  Why?  I know, you thought God could do anything, right?  Well He has the power to do it, but He doesn’t have the authority to do it.  With that being said, my ex didn’t have any desire to pursue the things of God and flat out told me that he wouldn’t ever attend church.  I once had to beg him to attend the wedding of his niece because it was in a church so the thought of attending a church service was off the table.  That was not a compromise I was willing to make. My relationship with God came before my relationship with my husband and if he wasn’t willing to even consider a relationship with God, I wasn’t going to be able to stay married to him.  God cannot change the will of a person and He will not go against a person’s will.  Since my ex was not willing to become a believer, God would be restricted to what He could do in our marriage.  Could I have stayed with him even though he was an unbeliever and I was a believer?  Yes, but I was not in a place that I would have been strong enough to draw closer to God without a Spiritual husband.  I needed a leader at that time and not someone that was going to give me resistance and he would have given me a lot of resistance.  God talks about this in 1 Corinthians 7:15.

After 3 ½ years of marriage, we divorced.  Heavy sigh  This time, I committed to God that I was not going to date anyone at all for at least a full year and that I would not only get myself in church, but that I would get my girls there and stay there.  I began praying differently, I began leaning on Him more, and I began letting Him lead me.  And guess what, I began to see myself as God sees me and I began to believe in myself the way God believed in me.  I began to see things differently, the way He sees things.  What a new outlook on life I had!

I had created a new beginning…

In His love,

~Jennifer

 

Photo credit:  MARY ANN MOSES VIA GETTY IMAGES