I said in a previous post that I would tell my story. I want to apologize early for the length. I am going to start way back because for us it is a big part of it. In the spring of 2007 we found out some very upsetting news about our sons. We were told that two of them had been molested by two different people. This was a horrible time and broke my heart as a mother. If I only knew what was coming. We put both the boys in counceling, it was very hard but felt like we were getting somewhere. Twice one of my boys tried to kill himself because he was having such a hard time dealing with all of this. There is much more heartache invovled there but for the sake of my sons' privacy I wont say. We started going to a new church and that was a big change for us. Very exciting and yet hard because we had belonged to our previous church for 8 years. That fall our daughter starts telling us that her eyes are bothering her. So we take all the kids in to get their eyes checked. I left there having been told that my daughter had a severe vision loss. She was only able to see 30% of what everyone else sees. I was told that she has something called a conversion disorder. It is very confusing but basically what was happening is that her "mind" is telling her brain that she can't see. So we put her in therapy too as this is really a psychological disorder. She has a history of seizures so we had to figure out if this was also what was perhaps causing this. The middle of October I get a call from my neighbor saying that I need to come over to her house as my daughter is there and needs to tell me something. I knew that something had been really bothering her. She had not been herself for a few days. I get there and she tells me that the week previous after school a boy, who she knew, had raped her. We call the police and report it. They confront him and because of various circumstances they can do nothing. I know that sounds odd but please just trust me without going into the details. We take our daughter in to be examined and they tell us that there were sings of trauma and that something indeed had happened. I can't tell you what that is like to know that someone did that to my little girl. She is 15. Well I am thinking that we will just have to muttle through this and somehow come out the other side of it all. Two weeks later we find out that she is pregnant. She right off the bat says that she wants to keep the baby and that somehow God is in all of this. We agree and tell her we will support her in everyway we can. Two weeks after that, my mom who had been dealing with numerous health issues finds out she has lung cancer. At this point I am nothing short of a wreck and I was finding it hard to just breath. Well I have to back up again. By this time my husband and I had been married for 8 years. My marriage has always been hard. My husband had a very hard time communicating and some really messed up priorities. He always had a hard time putting me first. He was often emotionally and verbally abusive and rarely but sometimes physicall abusive. He neglected so much that I would have to call that abuse too. He really struggled with our children and this became worse and worse. I knew that in his heart this was not what he wanted to be but did not know any other way and was to proud to ask for help. Around the fall of last year I noticed that he was really starting to struggle. I told him over and over that if he didn't watch himself that he was going to fall and fall hard. I watched his relationship with God go down the toilet and the way that he treated me and our children was horrible. I told my husband it was like watching him die. I was coming to the end of my rope and wanted to leave but felt that God was telling me that was not what he wanted me to do. We would have some good days but they were very outnumbered by the bad ones. By January I thought I don't know if I can stay a moment longer but once again I felt God very strongly saying no. In February my husband told me that he needed to talk with me and told me that he thought it would be best if we separated. It shook me up pretty bad because I knew that was not the answer to our problems. It hurt me so bad because I saw it as him wanting to give up and be able to get out of our marriage. I told him that I would not comply and that I would absolutely fight him on this because I knew it would only cause more problems. So I started really asking God what is going on and show me what to do because I do not want to loose my marriage. It was and still is absolutely precious to me. So I started hitting my knees everyday with the prayer of God change me. I don't know what you want me to change because I am already trying to do everything I know. During this time my mom started her chemo and our daughter was having many many doctors appointments. She was about 4 months pregnant at that time and it was considered a high risk pregnancy because of her age, history of seizures, and other problems. One night in January we had to rush her to the hospital because we tought she was having a heart attack. Thankfully that was not the case but her heart rate was well above 200. We found out that because of her pregnancy her heart would race. We had never known before but she has an irregular heart beat and it would make her feel like her heart was racing and stopping at the smae time. We also at this time had to take her to several specialtist to make sure there were no brain tumors. Her vision had dwindled to 1%. I had to pull her out of school and begin homeschooling her because she just couldn't cope. That meant that I had to read everything to her and basically guide her everywhere she went. The list goes on and on as to what that kid had to go through. So now we're in March. My husband is acting more and more strange and a$$holeish. He had started working out at a gym that his friend owns. He would come home in the morning after getting off of work and go and work out. Sometimes for two hours. This drove me nuts because he would also coach our sons wrestling team after school. He was absolutely exhausted and was just a jerk all the time. On Easter he gets into a big fight with my 13 year old son. The next day he goes out looking for apartments. I begged him not to go and he said you are still my wife and I am still your husband. This does not mean that I don't love you and we are getting divorced we just need some time apart. Well after he left I was just hysterical. With everything that I was having to deal with how could he do this? Once again I hit my knees. My husband came home later that evening. Tells me he loves me and that he doesn't want to go any where. So we try it again. By this time I start wondering what in the hell is going on could he possible be having an affair. That's pretty much all there was to it. I looked through his phone once found nothing and just dropped it. I felt bad for even wondering. April 2 was our anniversary and he of course went to the gym that morning. I had bought him a gift and a card. I wrote in the card the passage from Ruth, ya know wherever you go I will go etc. He comes home I give him the card and the gift and he seemed totally umimpressed, almost like it bothered him. That hurt!! In April we start marriage counseling with our pastor and his wife. Three weeks into our counseling I come home from church. I go into our room where he is and he asks me how much do you think our marriage could survive? I ask him like what? He drops the bomb. He tells me that he had been having an emotional affair with some woman. Instantly I felt like he had punched me dead in the face. I started asking him questions but the only thing he would tell me was the womans first name. He told me that they had only been around each other a few times and that nothing physical had happened. He also told me that he had ended things in January. Even though we were both a mess we went to our meeting with our pastor and his wife that night. We told them what had happened and they start asking questions because my husband would not answer mine. It was really a big mess. They showed my husband and myself so much love and yet they were very firm with him. They flat out told him that they did not think that he was being honest and that they did not think that he had ended things with her. He of course got very angry and said that none of it was true and then he threw me under the bus and told them what a horrible wife I had been. I wanted to slap him. Our pastor's wife told him that she and I had had many conversations and that allthough I was not perfect it was not cool because the picture that he was trying to paint wasn't right. Well we limp through the next few weeks and it was hell. One minute my husband would be very loving and kind and the next a total jerk. I have to say that at this time I told him some very personal things about my past that I had never told anyone about. My own sexual sin (not an affair) but very painful stuff for a husband to hear. It hurt him very much to hear it and it hurt me to tell him. He told me that he did not want me talking to other people about it and we stopped, at his request, going to M couceling. Well our relationship did start getting better. We started doing more things together and talking alot more. It was still very hard but I thought we were making strides to recovering. The beginning of June his boys, my stepsons, came for a visit and it was very hard. My husband worked third shift and still had moments of insanity. Our daughter was about ready to pop, my husband's grandfather was very sick and I had major issues with my oldest stepsons attitude and behaviour. The month of July my husbands grandfather was doing horribly. My husband was spending alot of time with him at the nursing home where he lived. Thursday July 17 our granddaughter was born. Sunday July 20 my husbands grandfather passed after dieing a horrible and painful death. Tuesday July 22 my oldest son did something very painful that involved my best friends family. A few days later my husband had to go out of town with two of our boys to the funeral. A few days after that we had to take our son down to the police station where he was arrested and taken to the Juvenile Detention Center. That was horrible! So we come home and I am thinking that I am just going to die from all of the pain. I can't do that though because I know I have to be strong for everyone else. Our son went through a very difficult time as did we. We were abe to visit him daily and talk with him but he is a very tender hearted boy and the other kids there treated him very badly. We had no idea when he would be coming home and were really looking at him being released to a treatment center for at least a year. August 25 I get an email asking me if I know just how many affairs my husband has had. I tell my husband about it and say if there is anything that I should know he needs to tell me. I am crying and freaking out. He reassures me that he has no idea what it could be about. He calls OW and asks her if it is her. He calls OWH husband and asks him the same. They both say they have no idea. The emails come daily several times a day. At the end of that week my husband breaks down and tells me that he had tried several times to break things off with her and that all of this time he had continued to talk with her and that they had had sex once. I went outside and barfed all over our patio. I then walked around our neighborhood at 3:00 in the a.m. hysterical. I came home laid in bed emotionally sick. I couldn't even open my eyes at that point. He told me on Sunday and on Monday after me asking him not to he went with a friend to help him do some things. I got angrier then I think I have ever been in my life. All I could think was you tell me all this and then you leave to help someone move a pool table. By the time he got home I was in a rage and I let him have it. I told him that never has anyone ever hurt me the way he had. The one person that I was supposed to be able to trust with everything had taken a big dump on me. I told him that I didn't see anyway that I could stay in our marriage and that I really wanted out. We actually had to leave and do something together and while we were out I guess I treated him with alot of respect and when we got home he told me that it had touched him deeply. He asked if we could talk after dinner. We did and he told me so much, the truth finally started coming out. He knew her from high school. The previous December they had run into each other while we were out Xmas shopping for our kids. He had called her and that was pretty much all it took. He had previously looked at porn from time to time and that had really helped him begin to destroy his boundaries. He told me that he was not in love with her but at one point thought he was and then realized that he was in love with the way he allowed her to make him feel. He wanted to of course be able to end things with her without my finding out. I asked him how things were supposed to look as far as me being able to even live in the same house with him much less trust him. He was the one who came up with all the ways in which he could possible meet my needs and start over. He started doing everything new without me even asking him. It was as if in an instant God had given him a new heart. Never when I asked him anything did he ever get angry. He let me express my anger and ask him anything I wanted to. For the better part of two weeks he arranged for our kids to sta with family and friends so that I could greive. One of the most imprtant thing that he kept saying to me though was that I WAS NOT TO BLAME!! He told me that for all of our marriage that I had been a wonderful wife and how blessed he was to have me and that now that the fog was clearing he couldn't beleive that I had stayed after all that he had put me through. We ended up going to the police about the emails and they were able to do very little. My husband confessed to our pastor, my parents and the OW husband. My husband, OWH, and myself all sat on our porch and talked about what had happened. NOT FUN EVER!!!! There was so much that I found out from talking with my husband that hurt so much. All those times at the gym, they were together alone. Coaching our sons wrestling team, her son was on the team also. She would go to all the practices and she and I were both at the the meets together. She knew about so much of my families private business and she would send me these emails talking about it disgised as a man. The betrayal and pain goes on and on. Where are we at know? Like I said our daughter had her daughter in July and the baby has just been a huge blessing in our lives. Our daughters health is doing much better but I am still homeschooling her so that she can raise her daughter. Our son was allowed to come home to us. He is in very intensive therapy and we have had the privelage of watching his relationship with God just take off. That kid is an inspiration to me. Our younger son still really struggles but is doing better. I didn't mention it before but we have a four year old who is just a fun little kid. My mother is still battling cancer and things have not gone the way we hoped but she is a believer and I know that is she does loose this battle she will be with the Father. Now, my marriage by the grace of God and our willingness to obey Him has become everything that I prayed it could be for so long. I will not say that it still does not hurt because it does horribly but by my husband's tender care of me and our children there has been a tremendous amount of healing. In other post I mentioned what the other women is like and she is nothing short of a hot mess a real bunny boiler! I pray every day that she will stay away but I know the time is coming when we will run into her again. I said in previous posts that she is awaiting sentencing on a felony charge and I am praying that she does time instead of get probation. She is extremely emotionally immature and is just convinced that the time will come when she and my husband will be together. All this even after my husband has told her that he wants nothing to do with her and that he is the most blessed man for having me and will never want to jepordize that again. If you have made it to the end of this post I thank you. I still can not beleive the miracle that I have been blessed to witness and experience in my family and marriage. Like I said I still hurt and I do have triggers and bad days but I get through them. God can take the biggest pile of @#$% and turn it into roses!

weebeastie, can I make a suggestion? Please break your post into paragraphs so folks can read it. You will probably get more responses, also, if you cut it way back. Some will take the time to read such a long post, but many just don't have that time. So if you can get the idea across with half the words, that might get you more responses.

Will do! I didn't even think about it just wanted to get it down. Thanks for the suggestion.

Wow. As selfish as this may sound, stories like yours sure put my problems in perspective.

I can't imagine the pain you must have felt.

I will certainly add you to my prayer journal. God bless.

Boy...whoever has this woman's voodoo doll...please stop poking it!