How did you get through infidelity and get back to “happily ever after?”
Well, what began as my reply to a post on our IG page, has officially become our first blog :). It’s probably less coincidental and more God’s divine plan because this is our most frequently asked question. Teddy and I could go on for months and Sundays answering this in detail, but how about I try to nail it in one post.
Well, after spazzing out and trying to kill my husband regularly and living miserably from being totally enraged, hateful, resentful, insecure, and scared, and after my husband decided that he wasn’t going to keep covering up his failures and running away from my insane reactions to his horrible actions, we ran to God, HARD, and asked him to help us change, forgive, heal, commit to our marriage vows, and become the most in love, fulfilled, God filled, unified, satisfied couple on the face of the planet.
We prayed and read our bibles, extensively, every day, in between the struggle to heal. We sat in front of a crisis counselor for the first 6 weeks and then a marriage counselor, every week, for over a year. We talked and cried and had to hurt even more after baring our souls to each other about our ugly truths. Initially, and because of fear of the outcome, we would fail at being totally honest and vulnerable to each other, but we were very aware that lying, covering it up, guarding ourselves, and not really being all in with each other, was what had landed us in the mess that we were in, so we kept working at it. We kept trying. We shared all of our failures, our hopes, our desires, our heart, our mind. We kept trying and trying and chasing God and chasing each other and believing that the person up under all the failures and all the stuff, was the amazing human being, with immense potential for good, that we loved and believed in and willingly chose to spend the rest our lives with. We didn’t love each other well for a long time and trying to see beyond the pain and fear was a MASSIVE struggle, but we kept trying. The more we tried, the more we chased God, the better we became at seeing each other through His eyes. The more we saw each other through His eyes, the better we became at loving each other and becoming one.
We fasted for a month at a time, every other month, and detached from everything that wasn’t God or Godly. We couldn’t afford distractions, opinions or communication of any kind that was contrary to God’s perspective of marriage because, as the Bible says, evil communication corrupts good manners (1 Corinthians 15:33). We already had our own demons to fight, but it was God’s perspective and plan for marriage that we desperately wanted and was earnestly pursuing, so we chased God and each other and we shut out everybody and everything out that weren’t by, for, and about that same thing. While we chased God to help us commit to our vows, God was also chasing us. And me and God and Teddy all kept chasing each other and we didn’t stop until we won the battle of loving, forgiving, changing, accepting, cherishing each other, and reflecting God’s idea of marriage, through better and worse.
We absolutely got what we prayed for. We received what we fasted for. We achieved what we worked for. God awarded us with better because we endured the worst. It’s the hardest thing we ever did, but also the smartest and most rewarding. We chose to live and love God’s way and that is how and why we are now able to enjoy the benefit of happily ever after, today and every day.
Trials and challenges sometimes serve the purpose of helping you find and live with purpose. I believe that that is especially the case when you find God in the middle of those hard times. So, although the devil tried to ruin us with infidelity, we made a decision to follow the King and now we live, DAILY, with Kingdom benefits and AINT NOTHING BETTER THAN THAT! The devil lost and WE WON because GOD IS GOOD and He can and will turn any and every evil circumstance into something that works for our good WHEN We Choose Him. Easy? Never! But anything worth having never is and GOD’S WAY AND OUR MARRIAGE WAS SOOOOOO WORTH IT!!!!
There you have it.