“Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand; and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” Matthew 7:24-27
In retrospect, our marital struggles started from the very beginning……there was no spiritual foundation. Even when my husband accepted his calling into ministry, no biblical principals were applied to our marriage. We still tried to fight spiritual battles with carnal weapons, and we lost every time. Neither one of us were truly living according to Christian standards. We put up fake fronts and put-on fake faces in public and even in church; when in reality, our lives were everything but what we were portraying. As time went by, it had gotten to the point where I stopped going to church with him when he had to preach. It made me feel like a hypocrite, plus what he was preaching about was not being reflected in our home. It made me angry and sad at the same time. And all of the turmoil made our marriage vulnerable and susceptible to the schemes and tricks of the devil. He used whatever he could throw us – nothing was off limits. The built-up resentment and resentment opened the door for spiritual attacks of all kind: soul-ties from the past, lying and deceitfulness.
Things were bad and it felt like we were trapped in a living hell and there was no peace. Any attempted conversation always ended in an argument because neither one of us wanted to be wrong. We even tried counseling and after a few sessions, she (counselor) flat out told us that we were headed for divorce court if we did not learn how to communicate. Foolishly, we laughed it off and did not heed the warning. Our finances were a mess; and it seemed like we could never get ahead. It got so bad that I had to file for bankruptcy. I felt like I was drowning. I was depressed, stressed out and in an unhappy, disillusioned-Godless marriage. My health also suffered. I had four surgeries in four years, back-to-back. For about five years, I was carrying the weight and it was taking a toll. There were times when I went to work in pain, both mentally and physically. I went even when I did not feel the best, but bills were due.
During those times it felt like the roles were reversed, which made me not respect my husband, as I should’ve. I was living in turmoil and no one really knew my struggles. It was hard because I internalized and hid a lot of my pain. One day, at a previous job, I broke down in my supervisor’s office because I had taken all that I could. The load I was carrying, had finally broken me. She asked what was wrong and I explained. She asked if I was being “physically” abused and I told her no. She told me that I needed to get out of the situation and do what was best for me. I thanked her and I told her that I would. However, I stayed a little longer, in hopes that things would get better. One day, amidst the chaos, I snapped. I snatched all our pictures of the walls, shelves, or wherever, and got a hammer and started smashing them. Then I proceeded to throw all of his clothes out of my closet (we had two closets at the time) and threw them out of our room. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired! I had reached my breaking point. I couldn’t live like that anymore. I left and moved in when with my parents and eventually he moved out too.
At that point we both thought the marriage was over and put little to no effort into trying to mend it. I was done with him and he was done with me…...so we thought. Months went by and we really did not talk, text or anything. So, I finally reached out to him and asked him to meet so we could discuss the fate of our marriage. We decided to give it another try, however, we still lived separately for about two years. Looking back, we still did not take any steps or do any real work to strengthen our marriage. Yes, he was still preaching but nothing really changed. Whenever there was a disagreement, we just did not talk or we stayed away from each other, which wasn’t hard to do because we were already living apart. Then about a year later, our circumstances changed, and we ended moving to another state due to my husband’s reenlistment. ---There was still no sign of God in any of this --- but that would soon change.
Test! 😊