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magdaleine -> RE: Offering Hope to Those Struggling (4/21/2008 1:36:22 AM)
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I've had a window open with this thread on it since it was started but just now I'm bringing myself to write. I don't have any single word to describe our issues, there have been so many of them.
My husband and I have been married 34 years. I was 14 when we met and he was 22. We married on my 18th birthday. He'd just turned 26. The age difference was a big thing, looking back. I hadn't formed yet who I was and if he had been the same age we would have been forming who we were together but he was so much ahead of the game that who I was got lost and for years I didn't really have an identity separate from him. Everything revolved around what he thought and wanted.
Not only were our ages different but everything else as well. He grew up on the other side of the world from me. He grew up in a well-to-do family and I grew up on welfare. He has several degrees, I only finished two years of university. I thought we were on the same page in regards to God only to find out (after we were married) that we were miles apart there too. We liked different music, had differing moral values, different expectations about marriage and so on.
Everything began to unravel on day two. I saw him as a tyrant who demanded his own way without any consideration of what my needs or wants might be. I did everything I could think of to please him but nothing ever did. When the kids came along (four sons) I took them to church alone. I took them to soccer and music lessons alone. I built up walls to protect myself. I left him once for over two years. A number of years later I left him for a summer. But despite the pain of it all, I believed God wanted me to be with him and so I stayed.
Interestingly, it was infidelity on both our parts that has led to the healing of our marriage. And it began, for both of us, in the same month of the same year--October, 2001, though I just recently discovered this. For my part, I had fallen in love with a woman who adored me. Dh had fallen in love with a woman he worked with. Both set us on a road to spiritual growth and healing.
It was in the summer of 2004 that God gave me a distinct promise that he would heal our marriage and it would be far better than I could imagine. I can imagine quite a bit! For two years after that I saw no evidence of change or healing. Many wondered why I stayed. But eventually change did start to show (I think change always stays underground to begin with because true changes happen in the heart and aren't always immediately visible).
I started noticing improvement in September of 2006 and that improvement has continued. Things are still far from ideal and in many ways we still live very separate lives but what a change. No longer does he get angry with me when I'm sick, for example. He doesn't put me down anymore and I'm starting to let him into my world. We even spent a few days away at a very romantic hide-away a few weeks ago--something I never thought he'd be willing to pay for--and we've agreed to make this an annual event. He is now following God and serving him. There's no more porn in the house, he doesn't get drunk anymore and he's become loving and considerate.
We were talking about this a couple weeks ago. For thirty-two years we tried counsellors, marriage retreats and conferences, books, everything. Nothing helped. So what did make the difference? We both began to put more of our focus on God--each of us separately, not even aware what was going on in the life of the other. My same-sex attraction issues forced me connect with God in ways I never had before and my spiritual life seemed like a jet taking off after taxiing on the runway for years. Dh began to pay attention to God because the woman he was attracted to asked him one day if he was a Christian and to save face he lied and said he was. But having said he was, he realized that he needed to start living that and so began his search for God.
God does a lot of things in an upsidedown manner. We can never put him in a box and expect him to do things the same everytime. I do believe, however, that the best way to deal with problems in our lives, whether they are marital, addictions, children, finances, is to make our pursuit of God our focus and learn to listen to his voice. We find that he enables us to get through the difficulties and he begins to reorder our thinking. And as we listen, and then obey, we will eventually find ourselves doing things we never thought we would and thinking in ways we though impossible.
We had to wait 32 years before we saw any sign of improvement in our marriage and the work has just begun but I want to encourage any here who struggle with their marriages. There is hope. Even when it seems as if nothing will ever change, it will--if you're focusing on God and learning to listen and obey. It may take over thirty years. It may take less, it may take more but there is hope. Our God is a God of miracles.
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