The Reality of Divorce

In this deeply personal episode, Christy opens up about the painful realities of divorce, emotional abuse, and the long road toward healing, clarity, and truth. She shares her story with honesty and compassion, unpacking what Scripture says about marriage, covenant, boundaries, and the difference between what we imagine life will look like and what actually happens in the midst of brokenness.

This conversation is especially for anyone navigating a difficult marriage, separation, or divorce, or for those who want a biblical perspective on conflict, forgiveness, communication, and protecting children through hard family transitions. Christy also reflects on the importance of community, wise counseling, and learning to recognize unhealthy patterns before they deepen.

If this episode helps you, please share it with someone who needs encouragement, truth, and hope today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey friends, I am so glad you're with me today. Today we're gonna get honest about divorce, and it's a messy topic, and it's a messy situation in life. And I just want to start out by saying this is so complex of a topic. I don't even know if we can hit everything in one episode in any kind of succinct way. And I also don't know, you know, every relationship is so different, every family is so different. I mean, each individual is their own person, but every marriage comes with baggage on both sides, both parties are coming in with previous traumas, previous hurts. So no two marriages are gonna look alike. And there are some constants in this life, and and the one constant is that God never changes, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and his love is always accessible. Again, there is never a time when you have to be separated from God's love because he is always there, just ready to love you. And so that's true in every marriage, but not every marriage recognize the truth of that about God. And so if God is the only constant in our lives, and you don't believe in God, or you take God out of it, then there is no constant, and so each one is going to be very different. So I want to just start by saying, I know that we cannot pretend like my experience is the only experience, but I do believe that I've been, unfortunately, I have been divorced twice, and so in those two very different experiences, I've learned a lot of things, but in no way have I learned everything that there is to know about divorce. So I can only share from my perspective and what conversations I have had with God about this and the things that He's shown me to this point. I'm quite confident that as I get even older and closer in my relationship with the Lord, He will continue to show me things, reveal things to me that I just was unable to or unwilling to accept years ago. And so my desire in sharing these things is to help people who maybe are right now in a marriage where they are very unsatisfied or are being abused, or just the marriage is falling apart, and one partner or the other is threatening divorce more consistently now than ever. And so if you find yourself in that space, I really hope you stick around today because as much as things might be difficult to hear, there is going to be some freedom in the message as well. And then maybe there are those of you who are recently divorced or didn't want a divorce, but you ended up in a divorce because your spouse chose to leave for whatever reason. And so I'm gonna touch on a lot of different things, but I just want you to know that in this, I as always I want to teach from God's Word, I want to look at the truth where the enemy wants to surround you with lies and shame and guilt or whatever else, and I want to bring the truth to light in these situations, and then I just want to offer again my experience that hopefully has yielded some wisdom in my life that I can share with you from the inglorious parts of my life, some of the most inglorious parts of my life, and so, at any rate, that's what I'm gonna be honest about today. It is very personal to me, and of course, with anything like this, there are real people involved. My children are real people, and their fathers are real people, and so none of this will be to disparage either of my previous husbands, and none of this will be about bashing them or their character. But I do want to speak truth to the things in my experience. So, welcome to this episode. Buckle in because it's super personal, and if you have somebody that's experiencing divorce or is contemplating divorce, maybe you can share this episode with them if it doesn't have anything to do with what's currently going on in your life. Um, but maybe if you listen, you could learn some things about what people struggle with who are experiencing divorce, whether they asked for it or not. So I want to start with the reality of divorce versus what you imagine your life is gonna look like. I know for many years I had only ever heard one scripture that was about divorce, and it was literally God hates divorce. That's it. And I thought that was the full verse. So where we find this in scripture is Malachi 2.16, and I'm gonna back up just a little because there is there is you know always verses that precede what we read. In Malachi 2.13 says, Another thing you do, you flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask why? It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his? And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel, and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment, says the Lord Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith. And so when you hear this and you only hear God hates divorce, or you hear God says, I hate divorce, and people end it right there, it leaves out a lot of the context. These men were coming to God saying, Why aren't you hearing my prayers? Why aren't you answering me? And he specifically says, Because I'm acting as a witness between you and your wife, and you've been unfaithful to her. And as he is talking about that, I don't believe this is only speaking of unfaithfulness physically and having an affair or having sex outside of the marital relationship, but I think it's very interesting that he says, I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment. And I I don't know, you know, this is where I wish I knew more about the Hebrew of this scripture, because in the NLT, the New Living Translation, it actually says it like this it says, For I hate divorce, says the Lord the God of Israel. To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty, says the Lord of heaven's armies. So guard your heart, do not be unfaithful to your wife. And it says the Hebrew means to cover one's garment with violence. In both ways, it's saying it is cruel to your wife, but the violence piece of that stuck out at me when I was contemplating what the Lord was trying to speak to my heart, because I knew consistently I was in a relationship where my character was assassinated, and I was constantly told I was not good enough and demeaned and belittled and put down, and there was so much anger, so much hate that when I read the rest of that verse, and he hates a man that covers himself with violence as a garment, I read that like he is so displeased with the cruelty that can be in some relationships, physically, certainly, but also emotionally, spiritually, and mentally, the games that are played and the mind games that happen, and he is not pleased by that because when we think of marriage, he made it as a covenant relationship, and it's supposed to be a picture, a godly picture, like Christ and the church. And what did Christ do? Christ took all the violence on himself for his bride who was unfaithful. Christ was the one who served and laid his life down for his church. And I'm not saying our husbands should have to put up with all manner of things, but Christ said that's what marriage is to be a picture of. So it certainly isn't that wife would be under an abusive man. I think my whole life when I understood that scripture, I understood it to mean God hates divorce, and if I get divorced, that means God hates me. And there will be no divorce in my future because I knew too when my parents divorced, I knew what that did to me as a child. I knew all the insecurities that it created. I knew how much I missed my dad and all of the different emotions and things I experienced as a 9, 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old girl, all the issues that stemmed from not having my dad in my home to raise me and not even having a deep relationship with my dad during those years that were such formative years for me. And so I said, I will never do that to my children. God hates divorce, I hate divorce, I will never do that. But then I had been in this marriage for over 16 years underneath emotional and verbal abuse, and it was never physical, there was not physical abuse for me personally, but there was so much emotional and just verbal damage done, and you know, I constantly was going to God in prayer and asking him, what parts of this do I receive as you know something that I can be helped in and be a good helpmate, be a better helpmate to my husband, and what parts of this do I just need to put to the side because it's not your voice, it's not you trying to tell me how to be a better wife, it's just the voice of the enemy trying to tell me who I am that I'm not, and so there was so much noise in all of that, and it was very violent, it was very hurtful. I literally thought I was going crazy. I thought that I was losing my mind. I'll never forget the day that the Lord really revealed to me what was happening. Um, we were in an argument and we were in the living room and our kids were out there, and so I just started walking towards the bedroom, knowing that he would follow me to the bedroom. I just wanted to try and take this hate and anger away from the kids, and so I moved into the bedroom and I was just talking soft. I didn't usually raise my voice or get real angry. I'm sure there were times I did, but most of the time I went kind of low. I just would soften my voice and say, hey, I'd really, you know, rather be in here so the kids don't hear. And I shut the door and I had said something and it provoked an angry response. And so in the response, I could hear what he was addressing was not what I had said. What I had said did not implicate the things that he was taking it to mean. So I changed my words and tried to help him understand. Like, I'm I'm not saying that because I've never even thought those things. Like those the things that you just said are not thoughts I've even ever had. So I know that that's not what I meant by it because I've never even thought that, I've never even entertained those ideas. So I tried to explain again in a different way, and then again, it was just met with more harshness and violence, and I was like, I said again, you know, I tried to change it again, and just you know, I'm sorry, that's what you're hearing. That is not what I'm saying, and I tried to communicate it again, and I just kept feeling like I don't understand how I'm being so unclear in what I'm trying to say, but it just made him more and more angry until finally he called me some names that were not nice names and stormed out of the house and shut the front door and left. And my daughter, who was 12 at the time, came to the door and I was just praying and probably crying. I honestly don't remember too much, but I know I was talking to the Lord because I always went straight to the Lord after times like that, just trying to figure out what I can do better, how can I help him understand what I mean without it coming across as like I'm trying to condemn him or bring something on him that I'm that I'm not, that I've never even thought of. Like, how can I communicate better? And so just talking to the Lord and and really feeling crazy, like, am I saying that? And and so confused because I knew I had never had those thoughts. So I was like, there's no way I'm saying that because I hadn't thought that, but yet the accusations just kept coming and they were so pointed, and he was so sure of it that I started to doubt myself and like, what did I do? Like, what did I say? Did I say that? Was I meaning that? So, by the grace of the Lord, my daughter comes to the door and she knocks, and I said, Hey baby, come on in. And she said, I heard that, and I said, I know, I'm so sorry. And because it was always very loud, and I just said, I'm just so sorry. And then I asked her, What did you hear? And she said, Well, I heard you saying something, and then he took it and he twisted it to something you didn't say and yelled at you, and then you said again what you meant, but just in a little bit different way, and he took that and it made him angry, and he twisted that and he said it back to you wrong, and so then you tried again to explain it, and hearing my 12-year-old in her sanity tell me what she heard, it was just really life-altering at that moment to know I'm not crazy, I knew I didn't have those thoughts, and all of this accusation and this cruelty that was coming at me was not something I had deserved or I had provoked, but through the eyes of a child, now I understood there was just a brokenness there in our relationship, in that communication where he could not literally receive what I was saying at its face value. And so I just told her, I'm so sorry that you heard that. I know that was really hurtful, and I wish that you hadn't heard any of it. But I love you and it's gonna be okay, and I just gave her a hug and we both cried. And you know, it it was one of those times in life that I'll never forget because it was so definitive in my next steps forward in what I knew I needed to do, and so like everything in my life at that time, I was very good about seeking the Lord and what did He want, because never, never in my whole life did I expect that I would ever be divorced. Never, and it wasn't what I wanted, and it just it didn't feel like the right way for me ever, like God would never say that, but I had just really started trying to pray about what so what does it look like to go forward? And I was reading a book at the time called Boundaries, and Boundaries is by Cloud and Townsend, and then the other book was Love and War by John Eldridge, and it was just really again, all of the things that I was reading, it was life-giving, and at the same time, I grieved. I just grieved as I read because I was reading in both of those books that separation was my next move, and it was kind of the only hope I had at restoration, which feels weird because you wouldn't think in my mind, separation equals divorce, separation never means restoration, and so I was just sitting with the Lord one day, this is another time. So, this is a process, this is over quite a period of time that this is going on, and I'm sitting at a coffee shop with the Lord, and the coffee shop I went to played Christian music, which is one of the reasons I went to it, and I loved it because it was always just I didn't have to have my headphones in, I could just listen to what they were playing, or sometimes I would put my headphones in if I just wanted it to be quiet, and I could do my Bible study and just spend time with the Lord. And so I was at this coffee shop that I had always gone to, and I was just talking to the Lord about my marriage, as I always had. I had been, I mean, I'd been praying for my marriage for so many years, and with other people from my church, faithfully interceding and praying for our marriage, and not praying, oh Lord, change him. That was never the prayer. It was Lord, please show me how to be a better wife. Show me how I can love him in ways that he will receive it. You made him, God, and so I know you know how to love him. Would you share those secrets with me? And so sometimes he would give me little things to do or to buy or to say, and for a moment there was a glimpse of a receiving of that love, but for the most part, he just couldn't receive my love. And this was in a really financially difficult time. I didn't know how bad our finances were, that was something that he did, and I would say he controlled. I didn't even have access to most of our bank accounts, which looking back, you just go, well, that doesn't feel like a very healthy man and wife kind of thing. But at the time, I just knew he liked to be in control of those things, and I just submitted to his authority. That's kind of how I looked at it all. I didn't understand the financial weight that was on him until a little later, but it was just really difficult, it was just a hard time. So I'm sitting at the coffee shop and I'm just talking to the Lord and I'm reading, you know, from having read these other books and listened to that, I'm just going, Lord, are you telling me to separate? Like, I just can't. If that's you saying that, I'm gonna need confirmation because I just can't get my mind wrapped around that that would be something you would tell me to do. And so I just was praying and praying, and then this song came on, and it was a Christian song, but I didn't know the name of it, so I just kind of took the most you know prevalent lyrics and typed it into my computer. And at that point, I had Apple Music on my computer, and I could at least search for a song. So, in the search for the song, I put in, like I said, the words that I thought could be the title of the song, and just started listening to the preview. You know, Apple Music will give you a some 30-second preview or 25-second preview of a song before you buy it, and at that time you had to buy it, you couldn't you didn't have like a subscription to Apple Music, and you just had all the songs in the world. You had to buy each song from Apple Music, and so I started listening to this song. I didn't know who the singer was, I didn't know anything about it, even the name, and so I just started listening to that song. It wasn't the right song, but as I'm listening, it was a country song, and it was literally from the first 30 seconds of this song that I heard, it was my whole story, and it was this woman talking about you know, I didn't want to do it, but I had to leave because I couldn't have my child looking up at me, asking me why I let it go on, and it was just like, what? I wasn't searching for this song at all, but only the Lord knows that I needed to hear that message at that time as confirmation. So then I called some dear friends of mine and I had them, I said, I want you to pray. That was a Friday, and I said, Please pray over the weekend. I'm not gonna do anything urgent because a lot of times the enemy moves in urgency. Um, when you get that, I have to do this right now. A lot of times that's not a prompting of the spirit, sometimes it is, but sometimes. It is just the enemy's desire to try to trip you up. So you got to get in a hurry about it. So I didn't want to be in a hurry. This was way too big of a deal. So I just continued to pray. I called some friends of mine from church. I asked them to please be praying. And I told them, I really believe that the Lord is asking me to separate. And so I want you to be praying with me over this because I don't want to just run out and do this. And so then I called my dad and I told him what was going on and I asked because I knew that my husband would not leave peaceably. And I had never really stood my ground with him. So he had no respect for me in that way. But I knew if I had my father with me or in town, there would be a different level of respect there. And so I um I called my dad and I said, Look, dad, I don't need you to come right now, but I I need you to come on Monday. I believe this is what the Lord is telling me, and I just want your prayers, and I'll call you and let you know more. But can you can you come? And so my dad said, Yes, he could come on Monday if I needed him. And so then I just said, just pray, Daddy. And so he prayed, and this couple was praying, and I was praying. And like I said, that was a Friday, and then on Sunday we actually had plans with some friends of ours from church. Um, well, they weren't friends of ours from our current church, but they were friends that I had grown up in church with, and they are my parents' age, and we were going out to their ranch and gonna spend some time with them, and he's a godly, godly man, and so I knew it would be an encouraging good time. So we had that planned on Sunday. Well, Saturday that morning, um, for whatever reason, he started drinking very early, and by the time it was 10 o'clock in the morning, he was completely drunk, and we had to go pick up something from my office, and we were going up there. Um, I was very uncomfortable getting in the car with him, but I don't know why. I just didn't want the fight, so I let him drive. And then on the way home, I was like, I think I I would really be comfortable driving. Of course, it started a fight because you know he didn't like what I was insinuating, but I shouldn't have let him drive us there. And so we were fighting by the time we got home, and he was angry and yelling things at me and whatever, and so that was like I said, somewhere like 10:30, 11 in the morning before lunch. Then he went outside in the backyard and he spent some time. I think he was cooking out there and doing some things, and he has music blaring, and he continued to drink. Um, so he was already too drunk to be driving a car, and then he continued to drink throughout the day. And this was not something that he did all the time. I knew there were times that he would be drinking in the garage or whatever, or up at his office, he would be drinking and not coming home. But this was the first time that I'd ever really seen him just drink all day and and be drunk and stay drunk. And that evening, um, I mean it it really went on all day and all evening. And every time he saw me, just ugly words flying out of his mouth, telling me terrible things in front of my kids, not in front of my kids, it didn't matter. And so that evening, I was actually um I'd put the little ones in bed at probably 7:30 or 8, probably 8 o'clock at night. So this is probably sometime around 8 to 9 p.m. I put the little ones in bed, and my 12-year-old and my 15-year-old were awake, and I was actually in with my son. Uh, we played video games together. It was a way that we connected, and I would play with him, but also he would let me play with him and his friends, which was a lot of fun. And um, so I was just in with him in his room, and we were playing a video game, and my husband came in the room with a lighter and was lighting that lighter right in my son's face, and he was drunk. I mean, he was still very drunk, and my son had kind of longer hair, and so he was getting that lighter really close, and I was like, that's not funny. And my son said, Dad, please stop, dad, stop. I don't like that, dad, stop, you know, and he was kind of getting annoyed, but he did not understand that his father was drunk, he did not know that, and so I said, Hey, he said to stop, and I kind of got more firm, and so then he muttered a lot of angry things and curse words about who I was and how I was and all this, and then he left the room. And at that moment, I just thought to myself, okay, that wasn't pleasant, but at least it's over, and it never occurred to me that it wouldn't end there, and so then um, a few minutes later, I hear my daughter kind of hollering from the other room, and she's like, Dad, stop it, quit. This isn't even my book. And I go in and she was reading a book on the couch, and he had come in with a lighter and was in her face as well. And when that happened, um, she actually took a glass of water and poured it on him and the lighter, and so he was furious, and so thankfully I got out there before it proceeded any further because I know he wasn't in his right mind, he didn't act like that on a normal basis, but when he had been drinking, he was pretty angry, and so I ran out and I was like, What are you doing? You've got to stop this, and I was pretty, I was really pretty loud and angry at that point, and so then of course he started just screaming and yelling at me, and then he went outside, slammed the door, and blared his music louder. And so when he went outside, I just told my daughter, I don't care if you go to sleep, I need you to go to your room, I want you to shut the door. And I even told her, if he comes in, I just want you because I figured later he would feel bad and go apologize, so I just said, just pretend you're asleep. Just pretend you're asleep and be in your room. And so she went up there and then I went back in with my son, and he didn't really know everything that was going on, but it was just that, and so I just told him, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and just go to bed, you know, I'm gonna go to my own room and go to bed and just keep in your room and you know, don't just don't come out. And so that happened, and I called my friends that I had previously the day before. I had asked them to please be praying because I felt like God was saying, separate. Um, and I let them know, and they, of course, it was by this time it was 10 o'clock at night, and so I I just called them and she answered, and I said, This is what's just happened, and I don't feel like right now I need to wake up the babies that are sleeping and create drama for everyone. Everyone is now in their beds and in their rooms. I'm gonna go to bed, and I think this is over, but if it's not, I may call you. Is it okay if we come over? And they said, Yes, of course, you could come over if I needed anything, and I could bring the kids. And it didn't come to that as I expected. He just stayed up a long time, stayed outside, and then he ended up going to bed and sleeping it off. And so the next day we went to my friends, and I knew he felt really bad because, like I said, when he was sober, that's not how he acted. He did have a temper, whether he was sober or whether he was not, but I knew this time he knew that that was just not okay, all of that behavior was not okay. So we barely talked about it because we had our kids with us, and then we were with friends all day, but there was an understanding in the air that this couldn't keep going on like this. This our the life we had built was no longer glorifying the Lord at all, and we were a danger to each other, and of course, to our kids, just the trauma from hearing your parents argue and get yelled at all the time, it just it wasn't good, and so um I did call my dad and confirmed, yes, I do need you to come tomorrow. We definitely need to separate. And I called my other friends and said, you know, of course, we made it through the night, okay, and but I still want you to pray. I am gonna ask him to leave and get help. And that was the thing. When I asked him to leave, it wasn't get out of here, I hate you, I want a divorce. I loved him, and there was nothing going to change the fact that I loved him. I just knew we couldn't keep living like that. And so I told him, I said, I want you to get help with your alcohol, I want you to get help with your anger, and I want you to get some accountability in your life, some men around you that love God who will support you and walk with you through this. We love you, you're the dad, you're my husband, you're the only husband I want, you're the only dad I want for my kids. That was what I said, and that was what I meant. I had grown up with him. We got married when I was 19, and we had been married for almost 17 years. We'd been married 16 years, so we had been together 17 years, and um yeah, so the next day, Monday, my dad came and I did I waited after he had a restaurant, and so he had to go in really early, and it they would die down after the afternoon, and so that afternoon I just told my dad I didn't want him to come with me yet, but that I wanted to have a talk with my husband, just me and him, and if I needed his help, he was on standby, and so he was in town and he was on standby, and I went and I talked with my husband. I told him, you know, you've got to get some help, and you you can't be at the house anymore until you get some help. And of course, all the things that I thought would come at me about if you want to leave, you leave, but I'm not leaving, did. And I then I told him my dad was in town and he said some other things, and then he agreed to go get his things, and I said, Um, I don't need to go and supervise you. The kids were not at the house, and I said, you know, you can go take the next hour and get whatever you want. I didn't care, I wasn't trying to lock something up or keep him from taking anything, or you just need to go get your things and you need to find a place to stay. And we had an RV, so he could stay there, but um after that, you know, in my mind, what I thought it was gonna look like was restoration. I thought, and we tried counseling, we tried so many things, and it it was actually the worst experience ever with counseling. Um, the enemy was just so clever and so right there, and because I knew there was a struggle with alcohol that he would not admit it, it was just, and he was just a very charismatic guy and easy to love, easy to like. Um, until you disagreed with him, you would never know he even had a temper. And so it was a very, it was just counseling actually made things much, much worse for us because we did not have the right counselors and we weren't working, we couldn't come to the meeting with any truth. And I knew in my heart I had been seeking the Lord through everything, change me, change me, help me be a better wife. So I knew all the thousands of ways I had tried to become a better wife, and so when you ask me, what did you do wrong? I was like, I know I'm prideful, but it was the only thing I could point to. Like I know I have pride in my life, but I couldn't, there wasn't, it wasn't like I ever did things that were malicious to hurt him, and all of the things that he accused me of were not based in reality or fact, and so it was a very confusing process as a wife, because it looked like what I was saying, well, I mean, he's the one with all the problems, I don't have any problems, I'm just a little prideful. And I I mean, even in that, it just sounds so arrogant, like, well, there must be something you can work on. But honestly, if there was something I could work on, I was already asking the Lord, what can I work on? What can I do differently? And it had become like, you know, it in the driveway, fights would start about where I parked. And I'm not talking about which spot, which side of the driveway, I mean like what exact place my tire went to. And I and so he would say, I want you to park here. And so I would literally go, you know, make a line and know that's where I wanted to park. So from that day forward, I would park in that spot, and then the next day he would come out and yell at me about where I was parked, and I was parked exactly where he had said, and so then it was like, I told you here, which was not where he told me, because I had marked it for myself because I was trying to be pleasing, and so it there was a never, I could never get it right, and that's what was making me feel crazy, and so there were so many arguments and so many things, and it was like when he asked me to do something, I always tried to do it, and so that's where it was very confusing for me in counseling. I couldn't come up with anything that he had asked me to do that I wasn't trying to do to the best of my ability, and so it was just a oh man, it was a disaster. And I'm thankful now I do know some people in this town who I would recommend 100% for marriage counseling, but at that time um the people that were recommended to us were in the church, were people who were believers, and it was a horrible, horrible, horrible experience, and it made me very sad just for the overall body of Christ and for women who are in a relationship with someone that struggles with alcohol because you feel so alone already, and especially when you've been so your character has just been assassinated over and over again, it's very defeating, and you feel crazy like a crazy person, and and you just want somebody to tell you you're not, and um that was really hard, and so you know this actually has turned into more of an abuse than a divorce, but I wanted I'm wanting to share this part of my story, and this is definitely going to be more than one episode because it's just too much, it's just too much to relay. But that's my experience in my first marriage, and we were divorced, or we were separated from the end of July to December, and then in December he filed for divorce, and because we weren't getting anywhere with the marriage counseling, um, he thought that I was thinking everybody who drank any alcohol at all is an alcoholic, and I was just the problem, and until I could see my problem, we couldn't go forward, and you know, we both had that same kind of mentality because I knew that the drinking was an issue and the anger was an issue, and I couldn't see any other of my problems at that time, and I'm saying that very clearly at that time, I couldn't see how I had contributed to any of it, so we were at a stalemate. So divorce looked like the only way out. And then um the divorce took 14 months, court was really ugly, really messy, both of us fighting for custody of the kids, and I was looking at it from a safety perspective. Um, like I'd said he had never been physically abusive with me, but there was starting to be physical aggression with our kids, and I'm not gonna recount the events that had happened, but I did, um, because we were in a financial crisis, we had had some college students move in with us and take bedrooms in our house and pay rent, and so there were people who had lived with us that had observed behaviors and specific things, and they were willing to come to court and testify to what they had seen and heard with their own ears. And you know, it was such a sad day in court because even in court, I was still just praying, like primarily I was praying the protection over my kids, but just that he would see that he would understand his part and what was going on, and as I was hearing them tell the stories, I thought I'm that woman. I'm that woman that you go. How did you bury your head in the sand and let your kids endure that? Because as they were sharing stories, I didn't even remember these stories, but as they recounted them in court, it was like my eyes were just opened to things that I had let go on that I hadn't, because I was trying so hard to just salvage the marriage. And you know, that movie War Room had come out sometime all around that, and I was mad. I mean, I was really angry, mad when I saw that movie because it while the premise is correct, that prayer changes things, it really has the power to change things. I had been praying for 16 and a half years, and nothing was changing, it was getting worse, and the enemy was winning, and I couldn't reconcile how with all of those prayers and asking the Lord to make me into the right wife, I couldn't make it happen. And that's when the Lord showed me marriage takes two people, both people have to be working together, both people have to be seeking God because, in and of yourself, you're never gonna see things the way that God will help you to see things, and so it was just gosh, it was a devastating time. And um, you know, I have a ton of things that I'm not sharing with you about my part and why there were so many holes in the marriage already, like when the scripture says, Don't let the little foxes in. I had let a ton of little foxes in to our marriage that I didn't even understand or know. Part of it by being codependent, I was very codependent on my husband. Um, another part of it, I was such an enabler, and I didn't put up boundaries because to me, boundaries meant that I wasn't being submissive, and I wanted to be a submissive wife because that's what scripture said, but I had it all wrong, and much of the teaching I had heard was kind of pointing me in one way, and it was just basically you do whatever he says, and God will hold him to account, but you just have to do whatever he says, no matter what that looks like, and that's how I lived my life. Well, that wasn't helpful to him, and it wasn't helpful to me, and it wasn't helpful to my kids. If I would have had more of a backbone and gone to some people that could have helped intervene, the whole story might have looked differently, but I didn't because I thought I was being submissive. Again, so much of it was done in the right heart. Thought I was just being submissive, but I was being codependent and an enabler and not setting boundaries where boundaries were absolutely necessary, and um, I contributed a great deal to my divorce. This was not a one-sided thing. I think that's why I am willing to share this with you because I have no animosity or ill will towards my ex-husband at all. None. And that's the part where this is hard because it is my life, it is my story, but it is my perspective on this, and there are two sides to every story, and my kids have their own side. But that's where the reality, I started to talk about it, but the reality versus the imagined life, at first I just thought that we were going to get back together, that we would reconcile, that the Lord would fix it, and that our family would come through with a miraculous testimony of what the Lord can do. And I believed He could do that. Then that faded as the counseling went from bad to worse to even worse. I was starting to feel even more crazy because of what the things the counselors were saying to me, and it was just it was really a nightmare. It was probably one of the worst experiences I've ever had in my entire life. It was just really difficult. And then in December, uh he served me papers, and when that happened, you know, it was almost a relief, and so then I started imagining a reality outside of that marriage. Like, okay, I'm older, we have five kids, so now I never wanted to be divorced, but here I am, and who's gonna want a woman that has five kids? Like, that's crazy, and I just kind of had all these wrong thoughts in my mind. Like, I I loved being a wife so much, or I loved the idea of being a wife and a mom so much, and I wanted a partner that would chase the Lord with me, that would love God, and that we would build a beautiful life together with our kids. And so that dream was dying, and I just couldn't see that there would ever be anything further. And then two months after we filed for divorce, we lost our oldest son, Jacob. And it was six months after our separation. And it was devastating. I mean, there's never been anything like that in my whole entire life to be going through a divorce that a lot of people didn't even know about because I wasn't on social media blasting things. I didn't feel like that helps anything. Certainly, it wouldn't help my children to see me say terrible things about their dad. That was a gift that my mom had actually given me when my parents got divorced. She never said bad things about my dad. When I would say things about the life that he had chosen over our family, I would get in trouble. She would tell me you're not going to be dishonoring to your father. I didn't raise you that way. And it would kind of make me mad. Like you deserve to be angry and mad at him. I deserve to be angry and mad at him. So why won't you let me? But it was actually just one of the most beautiful gifts she could have ever given me because I didn't ever have to hear my mom tear my dad down. And so I knew from that that's how I wanted to be with my kids. I did not want to bash their father because they would have enough trauma to deal with on their own without me doing that. And so again, it was pretty private. There was a handful of people in my immediate circle that knew, but especially because of the way everything went with counseling, I had just left a church that I had been a part of for three years and gone back to the other church that I had been a part of for a lot longer than that. And so anyway, it was just a huge shift in a lot of things, and um, it was really, really hard. It caused a lot of heartache in relationships that I had because when you're friends as couples with people, and then you're no longer a couple, it's a really difficult situation. That was part of the reality I never could have imagined. But it's hard because people feel like they have to choose, and especially a lot of times there's at least one partner that does say basically, you choose her or you choose me, but you don't get us both. And so that makes things even more complicated and difficult. And so the life I had known and wanted to build, and this imaginary life I had had of everything working out gloriously, was dead, it was gone, and then we lost our son. And our business actually had been failing since the year before, and so we had lost our business, our marriage, and our son all within about eight months to a year's time. And it was really right at about a year, I guess. And um, it was devastating. It was personally very devastating, but it was also very devastating, you know. We didn't have each other to lean on at the loss of our son, you know, it was just a it was just a terrible, terrible, terrible time. And so, you know, I just want to say it's so important to communicate. And if you can't communicate well because both of you are holding resentments or you just can't seem to hear each other correctly, I do recommend that you find somebody that will help you. And it may take some searching until you find somebody that is able to help the both of you. But this is where community is vital. Community is vital. And you know, I actually ended up having two pastors come up to me, um, one from the church that I've been a part of for three years, and that sought me out and apologized to my face for what had happened, which I just thought was an incredible, that was just an incredible witness. First of all, it's just incredibly humble to do that, but secondly, it was an incredible witness to just how the Lord wants to reveal himself even in the midst of brokenness in ways of grace and his mercy. And it was a mercy and a grace to me to receive that and extend that forgiveness in that time. And then I had another pastor in my second marriage that also came and said, We didn't know how to handle this, we didn't understand the abuse that was happening because my second marriage was more abusive than my first because it also went physical, it was it was all of the same, but it was more, it was even included physical. And um, that pastor came and he didn't owe me an apology. As far as I was concerned, he had never said or done anything to me. I had more better counseling there than I had ever had at another place, but he said, you know, we just didn't recognize the abuse for what it was. Now I looking back, I can see the abuse was there because we've just dealt with it in another relationship. And I'm sorry we should have been there. That's who you need to look for, is somebody who is willing to fight with you for your marriage alongside of you, as long as both of you are really trying to save the marriage, and somebody that's not afraid to offer a rebuke to either one of you if you're out of line and apart from scripture. And man, if we would have had that, I know the church we attend now, the church of 1122 in Florida, and we we have an outpost in Texas, but you know, the main church is in Florida. I know they walk alongside of people who are in these broken relationships that are trying to get restoration, and they do it with love and gentleness, but also with the truth of God's word, and they stand firm on God's word and hold both parties to account to the word. And so there can be restoration in a situation like that when it's not just this one and the other, but they they know how to walk beside somebody that's been in an abusive relationship, and they know how to walk beside an abuser to the point where they can help them if they're willing to be helped. And it's beautiful, and so there are places out there that you can find that will walk you through this difficult time if you are married and you are in an abusive situation. God's will is not that you just stay and submit to abuse. I have come to understand it was not God's will for me to submit to abuse, that was not the picture of marriage that He had laid down from the very beginning. I should have set boundaries and gotten help in ways that I didn't know how at the time. But I would encourage you to do that. But communication is key, and if you can't communicate, bring in somebody that helps you communicate. It is worth fighting for. Marriage is worth fighting for. My first marriage was worth fighting for, and I've even had times that I've looked back and said, should I have done something differently? And the Lord has shown me a lot of things that I could have done differently now that I could see that I couldn't see while I was in the midst of it and hearing all of that abuse and so confused about what was happening around me. And um, yeah, I think there's in your mind you think, well, best case scenario, I'm gonna move on and get married, and there's gonna be a godly man, and he's gonna take care of my, you know, and it's this Pollyanna happy story that has very little hardship in it, and that's just not the reality of life. And the truth is, I had grown up with my first husband. We had grown up together. We were 19 and 21 when we got married, and so we were just kids, and we were both kids that had experienced different types of traumatic events in our lives, and we took it out on each other, both of us. And there were things I did early on in the marriage to sabotage our whole marriage. There were things that he did early on that were to sabotage our marriage, and we just didn't have the wisdom and we weren't involved in community to walk it out in a godly way, even though I was seeking God, and at times he was also seeking God. We just we never dealt with our resentments. I thought it was okay, I thought it was submissive to just shove down all the anger that I had towards him, all those resentments that were building day by day by being treated that way, instead of giving voice to them and speaking to them and bringing them to light, I just shoved them down and shoved them down because I needed to be submissive, and it wasn't okay to be angry and all of these things. And the Bible never says don't be angry, it says be angry and do not sin. And I just so it would come to this boiling point, and then I would be angry, and then we would just fight and fight and fight and fight and fight, and then I would go back to I need to be submissive and push it down, push it down, push it down, push it down. And so instead of dealing with resentments, I was more passive-aggressive. I was passive-aggressive, he was aggressive-aggressive, and that's just how he is wired. He is that Enneagram eight that is not afraid of conflict. But, you know, I and I was the helper, the empath, the one that gets my feelings hurt easily. So if you can imagine those two personality types both operating in a false way in the worst sides of their personality, it was just a disaster. And we needed help. We needed help early on that we didn't get, and we should have. And so that's why I even encourage people who are newly married, get a counselor that you both like early on before there's trouble, so that when there is trouble, you have somebody that knows the both of you and that can speak unbiased to each of you as things come up in your marriage. And don't go to bed angry. I mean, the Bible says that for a reason, when you harbor that anger and those resentments, it creates a root of bitterness. And I was full of bitterness. I can tell you now, in hindsight, I was so angry and hurt and bitter for all of the things that I never addressed, or that when I did address, I would just get told I was crazy or I'm not right or whatever. And that will destroy a marriage. It will destroy a marriage. So we both just kept doing all the things that would tear our own marriage apart. So it wasn't any wonder that we got divorced. You know, I think a lot of people start building a life outside of that marriage that if you just had the right partner, marriage would be easy, and that's not true. Marriage is always hard, it doesn't matter who your partner is, and this is something that I am an expert in because I have now been married three times, and I can tell you in every marriage, there has been difficulty and hardship, and yes, some of it was brought on by abuse, but some of it also is just because we're both human. And so I am happily married. I love my husband. I am very grateful for the man I am married to, and I am very grateful to the Lord for the redemptive work that He does in each of us, but we had to fight to get to this place that we have a peaceful marriage because both of us came even with more baggage, and when you're blending a family, it adds another layer, and so marriage is never just easy, it's just not when you both are seeking the Lord first and you're submitting to the Lord together, it is certainly easier because you're together as a team fighting the true enemy instead of separate and feeling like your partner's the enemy. Your partner is not your enemy, there is an enemy, you can fight him together, but that's where you have to be seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else then will be added. But just because you're seeking him first, it doesn't mean you're gonna have an easy peasy marriage. It just means it's going to be the two of you together as one together against a common enemy instead of the two of you constantly separate and trying to go different ways. So I just think it's very important. Communication is very important, seeking the Lord and putting him first, extremely important. That's more important than any other thing, and then forgiveness. Forgiveness is of huge value. Sex, that's something we haven't talked a lot about, huge value, and it's a very important that both parties that I promise you is an area that the enemy will come to steal from in a thousand different ways. That's a whole nother episode in and of itself, and I won't get into that here because this is not that kind of an episode, but we will talk about that at some point. But man, if the enemy is getting into that piece in your marriage, seek help right now. Don't wait. Don't wait. If you don't have an intimate relationship with your partner that both of you love, work on it now before it turns into something terrible. It's just vital. And then finances, I mean, you know, they have percentages about what percentage of people their divorce is caused by a lack of intimacy, what is caused by financial struggle and not being on the same page financially. And those numbers are huge. I will actually get them for you because I feel like it's important. But in abuse and other things, you've got to get help outside of yourself. Don't sit there in that abuse and be just like I was, where you're hearing other people talk about your marriage, your home, the inner workings of what goes on in your house. And I mean, my eyes were just wide open. But if you would have asked me, that was the problem in counseling, if you would have asked me what's going on, I could not articulate all the things that were happening like that. I couldn't, you know, it was like all I could say was, well, he's just mean, he attacks my character, but I couldn't give definition to what mean looks like, and that makes it very difficult for a counselor to be able to help you. But I literally, my mind was so because I was trying not to harbor resentment, so I was just trying to forgive and forget. That's what I thought. Just forgive and forget, just let it go and don't think of it again. And there was just so much trauma around it all. I could not give voice to what living in our house felt like, but these girls could give voice to that because they had seen it with their own eyes, and then as I'm listening, it was just such a revelation. So don't bury your head in the sand, don't dismiss abuse as it's not that bad, or I can get through it, it's not physical. You need to get help before it gets to a part where it's beyond help, right? When you grow up together, like I did with my first husband, being married, you know, when I was 19, our divorce wasn't final until 17 years later, right? So being married literally for almost half of my life, he knew me and I knew him better than any other human on the earth. And we loved one another. It wasn't that we didn't love one another. There was genuinely love there. We had built a family that we loved, but there was so much brokenness. There was so much brokenness, and instead of growing up with each other and having grace for one another, um we grew up with one another, resenting one another and holding deep resentments, and that cost us our marriage, and very bad habits cost us our marriage, and it's just um it's really sad, it's very sad because it wasn't that we didn't love one another, it was just such a broken love on both sides of the deal. And there are things about growing up with somebody that are just different than remarrying later on, and it's important that the reality in your mind matches reality later on, and that you're not building some dream world where you're gonna have a perfect husband or a perfect wife that's gonna treat you so much better. No, there's gonna be challenges, she's gonna disrespect you, he's gonna hurt you, and you've got to deal with the ways that you couldn't be a good spouse back. It's it's a lot of personal inner work to figure out what part of your divorce you had your hand in. And sometimes you really cannot do it in the middle of the chaos. You do have to separate to get some clarity. And if you think, you know, that your kids will be better if you guys are divorced because all you do is fight. I want you to think about the fact, you know, when our divorce was final, because of the testimonies that were given outside of my testimony, which was by far the least effective testimony, there was a supervision clause put in place, but it was only there for a year. So they had supervised visits for a year, and then they were going through all of the same alcohol and abuse that was present in our home. I wasn't there anymore to be the buffer, to be the stand in between. So now my kids, after that year, were subjected to the same life just without the protection of me there. And so I want you to just understand the reality. You know, you think in your mind, well, there's abuse, so the courts will rule, and they did for a year. And then after that, no, there's nothing more, and so your kids' reality is going to be a reality without you, and so that's why I just say, man, pray about it. Be sure before you sacrifice all of the good with the bad, make sure you've done everything as far as it depends on you to be at peace in that relationship. And if you're going through a divorce, I urge you not to talk poorly about your ex-wife or ex-husband. It does not do anything but hurt the children. They are 50% that person's DNA, and all that does is wound your kids. It doesn't get back at that one that hurt you. It should not make you feel better because you are adding on to pain on pain on pain for your children. And so do not rejoice in speaking even truthful, hurtful, ugly things in front of your kids. That's not beneficial to anyone. It's not beneficial, it just hurts your kids. So that's something I would definitely say, you know, after years of hindsight, it, you know, it took years for that abused mind to return to a sane mind. And even still, I will find things that I'm like, ooh, that's a lie. I've believed for a really long time that isn't true about myself, but I let it be spoken so many times that I accepted it as truth. But in hindsight, that's where I can see I should have set boundaries, and I can see where what I was trying to do to be a submissive wife came across as a I'm better than you, an arrogance, a spiritual pride, and how that hurt. And I can see how holding resentments added up, and just all of the ways the Lord has revealed so far, and there's probably more that I contributed to the pain in my marriage that I could never have told you while we were going through the divorce. It just took years in hindsight. So don't be quick to move on for a lot of reasons, but primarily so that you allow the Lord time to reveal to you things when you're not right in the middle of it. Because it's possible, it may take years, but if if you're both willing to not file for divorce, but just separate, the Lord can bring redemption. He can bring healing to every broken place in the marriage. If you're both willing, He can bring every single place into a healed and whole place. I think that's where I want to leave it today. I think a lot of people look at the future and say, well, if I just had a different partner, everything would be different. And the truth is, if you had a different partner, the partner would be different, but you'd be the same. And so the most healthy thing you can do is explore all the ways you contributed to the downfall, to the place where you are right now. Because if you bring somebody else into it, you're just gonna do the same things, and those same patterns are gonna present themselves again, and it's just gonna be another relationship that doesn't go the way that you want it to go, and that's more pain for your kids and for yourself, really everybody involved. And you don't think about that, you don't think about the fact that at every graduation from high school or college, your ex-spouse is gonna be there. Every marriage, every event, baby shower, your ex is going to be there or be a part of that. And do you want your children to have two parents that can't be in the same setting because they can't get along even after divorce with bitterness and all those things? Do you want to be sitting there looking at him or her with another spouse and all of that? Like you need to look at the reality of what happens after divorce and not just that picture you have in your mind of what you deserve and how much better that life's gonna be when you can get it. And so that's yeah, that is where I'm gonna leave it today. But I thank you for being with me. Marriage is hard, pray a lot, have a community around you that supports you, and from the beginning, before there is trouble, get a counselor in your life that you both trust, that you can both go to, and when things hit the fan, because they will, you can go to together to get good counseling from somebody that's unbiased, but that has seen both of you and knows some of your faults already. So I love you all. I pray that this has been a help or a blessing to you in some way. I know it's a heavy topic, and there's a lot I didn't get to, so we will have a part two, but I think this is enough for today, and just thank you for joining me. And I really do pray that the Lord go before and behind you and hymn you in and give you wisdom as you seek him for how to proceed. What's the next right thing to do? And love you guys. Thanks for being with me. See you next week.