Forcibly Changed

My marriage had been beyond rocky by most standards, and definitely compared to God’s standards of what a marriage should be. There was very little trust, with no real evidence of trust becoming established in the future. I am not going to place blame on my husband for this at all, because when I became completely honest with myself and God, I was just as guilty to all that we had endured. Yes endured. We both are stubborn in certain aspects of our lives, the balance in that statement comes from it usually being on very different things allowing for fairly clear understanding of which areas we listen verses plant our feet and try to be immobile in our positions. The main one we jointly were stubborn in was that marriage was forever as the vows stated, and that meant that no matter how rocky things were neither of us was willing to be the “weaker one” by just giving up. We did get close to giving up a couple times, but never did.

I understand that us not giving up was not from our own control, but more from God working in us. The point of us realizing that truth was when it had gotten bad enough that we lived in completely different rooms of the house, were only civil to each other around the kids (for us that meant only talking when we had no other choice), and had all the divorce papers filled out with no signatures or dates. We thankfully had amazing pre-marriage counselors and pastor who married us that we turned to for guidance in this. I remember doing it more for my kid’s sake than actually wanting to fix all the broken pieces.  God had a different plan.

We ended up having to face it all in a way that was like looking through the clearest glass. I had a friend who encouraged me to read a book while dealing with it all. We followed all our advice very closely, even when we didn’t agree with it or it felt too hard to follow. All of this was the basis for my religion becoming the relationship it had been long ago.