Your marriage needed a hero .... you showed up !

I think so too pep...
I think he saved his wife from the depths of [email]he@@[/email] litterally and figuratively.........

evilness and the devil thrive on this earth.......and isidiously worm their way in places one least expects...I guess that's what makes it sooo evil.....

ARK

Bob. Because of what happened to you, do you know how many people you've helped??????????


BTW. I remember you every day when my computer asks me for a password a hundred times a day. It says:

Squid proxy caching....

and ... he was also THE HERO to OM's relationship and to their young son.

Amen!

Bob, when I had my A I was not yet a believer. God used my internal battle to pull me toward Him. He sent me messages in the way of Dr. Laura, Christian radio programs, my now church family who was praying for me and eventually the astounding ability of healing through prayer of my lovely, beautiful Wyatt.

i'm wondering if Bob is thinking.... "but I was never asked if i wanted to be that hero!!!"

Maybe telling you is not part of HIS PLAN...

Maybe HE'S telling you right this minute through US....

Maybe HE's telling you in ways you are not ready to hear...

This is where the faith and trust come in...The faithful believe that WHATEVER is happening for YOU is FOR THE GOOD...

I hear you wanting it YOUR WAY...

He is not going to speak to you YOUR WAY..it's HIS WAY....

I'm Al Gore. Susan is Tipper...

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

I agree with you there Bob. The act of those things is not of God....nothing good or in our best interest about it. There is nothing God would want to teach us thru that. Meaning we should never have to go through that but if a spouse chooses to walk that way in our marriage, He only gives us a way out of the marriage if we want it, or lets us choose to stay and hope for recovery. I like fast recoveries by the way. If I had a spouse who is an unbeliever, how much harder that would be, but there are directions in Gods word for that also. First of all we are not to get hooked up with unbelievers, if we do, we may pay the price of a miserable marriage even if adultery is not committed.

Lady

Thanks for your support. But I am still confused.

I am having trouble articulating what I mean.

I am saying that God has a plan for us , and if that plan is not best served by meeting our immediate needs or wants, or by our prayers being answered in the way we hope, then it will not happen.

See this here...I struggle with this...
I don't think bad things happen via God to teach us something we need to learn....
I think bad things happen period..

some are really really bad.....

I don't believe any marriage out there needed infidelity...
that it is a good thing in and of itself...

I believe that it is a direct result of free will ....and it is only with free will that we can truly choose to love on this planet...

but what I do believe is no matter the horror....no matter the atrocity God is always there.....

What I fear is God's focus on doing HIS thing when it is so contrary to what He nows I would desire.

see I don't know if I believe in God's Thing....
God's thing to me is to love and perhaps be loved no matter the circumstance....

even this sermon that prompted this....it doesn't say lean on God...it says believe....

ARK

Believe WHAT Ark??? THIS is my frustration.

I BELEIVE in the existence, presence, and love of God. I believe in my gracious salvation. What the sermon you posted triggered in me is a wondering of how we are expected to LEAN On God, either UTTERLY for our healing, like the man in the sermon, or for protection or advancement.

THIS is where I do not see God as a 'daddy'. My dad would NEVER have let ANY evil befall any of us that he had ANY control in avoiding whatsoever.

God aparrantly allows such to happen. This is why I have an OT view of God the father, rather than a manifestation of loving Jesus the godhead.

A prayer to God to protect our loved ones from harm is no more effective than doing nothing, right? If God does not prevent evil befalling us as a result of prayer. Why pray or expect intercession?

MAN I am clumsy at articulating myself today. I need a holiday.

Bob,





I think I know what you mean....

you are confused about God period.

You thought as your Father he would protect you from the very things that have hurt you the most, therefore you turning into "ye of little faith."


Sometimes we suffer from the blows from others.

Sometimes we just have to suffer for His names sake.

Taking both patiently is not easy.

Lady

oooooohhh

Suz is gonna *snort* at this !!! LOL <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Bob: Ahhhhh... now I know why I was supposed to read this thread. I'd been wondering. Not that I don't love Pep, but she hardly needs my input. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

We have so many things in common, and yet your perspective baffles me. A capricious God, doing His own thing without regard for how it affects us? I don't know that God.

The God I know knew me before I was formed in the womb. Knew me personally and intimately; the strengths I didn't know I had in me, and the weaknesses I wanted to never have to face. He knew my heart, empty and aching for the attention my Dad couldn't spare me, and that I would give that heart, to the point of idolatry, to whatever man first gave me that attention and acceptance.

This God knew my husband, too. Saw him broken inside by the lies and sins of his father. Saw my husband's image of Him become twisted into a selfish, self-righteous, dictatorial bully like his earthly father. Saw him run from Him in fear of his sin being seen and sent to ******.

He saw us as we were: lost, a million miles away from Him and running as fast as we could. He saw how we would hurt each other. But He also saw that in being broken like that, we would finally come to Him. He saw our suffering. But He also saw how we would end up helping heal each other. He saw our weakness and sin. But He also saw the untapped strength and grace in us.

I'm four years out from d-day now. I have the perspective to see I was never alone, and none of my suffering or tears was a waste. So much good has come from it all. I have no illusion that our sins were "good" or "intended," but in the words of Joseph "What we meant for evil, God turned around and used for good." In all honesty, me, my husband, and our marriage had to be broken to be healed and made whole. And it's soooooooooooo good to be whole, hon. I can't describe it. The difference between now and before my marriage was tainted and my heart broken is an unfathomable gulf. I look back at who we were and how we were surviving (because you couldn't really call it living. This is living.) It's amazing.

God is like a master chess player. Only instead of being able to see enough moves ahead that He always wins, he sees enough moves ahead that we always win in the long run, if we trust Him. Unless we're determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Unless we forfeit and give up.

My mother was diagnosed with cancer. Like you, I prayed that it was something else, pneumonia, anything. But it was cancer. Like you, I prayed she would survive. She didn't. I thought only 51 was too young for my mother to die, just as 72 seemed too short a life for your father. She died just after midnight on her birthday, two weeks before Christmas, two months before my daughter was born.

And now, it is nearly two years later. I miss my mother terribly. But everyone in my family was drawn closer to God by her illness and death. My mom was an amazing, sacrificial woman; but in a lot of ways, that kept many members of my family from growing. Our relationships with each other were "stuck" and unhealthy in a lot of ways. Her passing forced us to face each other and ask and give forgiveness to each other. Some of that process is still going on.

I've been doing a contemplative prayer online for about a year now at a site run by Irish Jesuit priests, www.sacredspace.ie. I highly recommend it. The second part of the prayer asks for the freedom to give God free rein to work His will in our lives.


In the last four years, I have become a woman I could not imagine being four years ago. Four years ago, I struggled with having enough self-esteem to believe I was worthy of a secretarial job. Last year, I took a leap of faith and started my own business after getting two promotions at my job. Four years ago, I kept everyone at arms length. I mistrusted everyone, and my #1 priority was protecting my heart from being broken, so I had no friends. Now I have the most amazing deep, connected, honest friendships. I have leaned on others' support and been there for them through their trials, and it's made my life richer than I could've imagined. Four years ago, my husband...

Oh my lord, I can hardly reconcile he's the same person. I look back at my very first posts here. He wasn't just dishonest and disrespectful about the affair. That was his basic mode of operating, period. His word meant nothing. His family was the lowest thing on his list of priorities. His "relationship" with God was a joke. And now--he's a miracle. He has clawed his way up to personal integrity hand over hand, and he never stopped trying, even when he failed a few times and I'm sure the Devil was screaming at him to give up. He has earned more trust and respect than I ever gave him before all this. During my mother's illness, he was my rock. He's become a devoted, involved father.

Oh, Bob, I don't know this God you talk about. This distant, cold, aloof Supreme Being. My God is like that parent standing on the sidewalk the first day of school, biting His lip as His kids get on the bus, praying that they make the right choices. Being there later when they inevitably don't, to help pick up the pieces and make sense of life again. Just being there, period, no matter what.

I pray you can see Him, too, eventually.

JP, Ark, FF , LW thanks. Strangely I think you are all supporting my postulation in a odd way.

You all have faith in Gods ability to turn ill for the best, but none of you expect Him to intervene in order to prvent an evil befalling you.
I do too. So did Job. So leaning on God means trusting him to mke the best of a bad job rather than expecting Him to deflect evil from our life.

JP YOUR perspective baffles me, as mine does you. A loving parent waiting on the sidewalk at the first day at school wouldn't let their child be smashed by a drunk driver then help turn it for the best afterwards like the God you describe to me would. He would HURL himself in he way, snatch their chold back, do ANYTHING to avert danger to their child.

I think I am angry that God allowed my marriage to become soiled when I had specifically offered it up in prayer to his care and protection repeatedly for many years.

I'll get over it.

JP, awesome awesome post. Bob, I do believe you are just at a point that you need to cry and rage a little at the Lord. Go read the psalms by David where he is raging and hurting. You will find comfort there.

Time and perspective, Bob. Time and perspective. What you now see as being mangled by a drunk driver and permanently crippled, you may someday look back and see very differently.

My toddler got a sound spanking for trying to run out into the road. From her perspective, what she wanted was entirely reasonable. She just wanted to walk for heavens sake! We'd spent months trying to get her to walk, and now that she could do it, we were stopping her. What's with that? From her perspective, what I did was unconscionable! It was quite literally the worst pain she'd ever experienced!

Know that I know how intense the pain of betrayal is. I remember literally lying on the floor breathless and sobbing. But after even just a couple of years, my perspective is different. What you may see now as a random act of violence, you may later see as the birthing pains of a better self, or the surgical pain and scars that freed you of a spiritual cancer that might have afflicted you for decades otherwise.

Time and perspective.

Bob,

"I think I am angry that God allowed my marriage to become soiled when I had specifically offered it up in prayer to his care and protection repeatedly for many years."


I think I know something about what you just wrote. I have been there. I once languished in that desert for a time. I was more than angry with God. I gave up on him.

Bob, I am a sinner. I can be willful, self-centered, obnoxious, lazy, impatient, judgmental and quite often downright holier than thou. I know very little about God’s plans for any of us. And you know what they say: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Further, I don’t write well and this may come across wrong. So take what you need and leave the rest.

After FWW’s first A I prayed and prayed to God He would not let this happen again. I was in total please protect Me mode. And let Me tell you, I never let up. These prayers became part of my daily routine. (They became rote after a while.)

After DDay 1 of her LTA my pleas became more, what is the word I’m looking for here, adamant, insistent? Perhaps pathetic is closer to the mark. I redoubled my efforts at meeting W’s ENs and I redoubled my efforts to pray God into submission to Me. No opportunity escaped my notice to remind God what I wanted Him to do for Me and My marriage. I asked God for nothing else for years. Only that He not let W have another A on Me.

The night of DDay 2 of the LTA I found myself doubting the existence of God. I actually said out loud, I no longer believe. How could He let this insult happen to Me after I prayed and prayed ever single day for years that this very thing would not happen to Me again. The only answer that came to Me was that I had been talking to the void.

Of course, after I sobered up a bit (I rarely drink, so it did not take much) I very much regretted my denial. Over the next week or so I regretted it more and more. I began to hurt more because of that statement of mine than W’s LTA and all the years of lies and deceit. I could actually feel that void for the first time in my life. It had nothing whatsoever to do with FWW or her A.

I was very afraid but I asked God to forgive me. I cried in church many times. I begged Him to let me take it back. I said over and over I didn’t mean it. And then, for the first time since W’s first A, I finally and irrevocably put everything in His hands and really meant it.

It worked, Bob. I have more peace now than I have had in years. I am much closer to God. I feel his presence more than I have since I was a child. I again talk to God like I did when I was very young and used to talk to Him as if he was my invisible friend. I get answers I trust now, too.

If you look back over what I wrote above you will see Me maybe a half dozen times in those first paragraphs. Now, finally, I no longer think I, Me, Mine so much. I do not know what is going on with God any more than I ever did. But at least I have learned that prayers that effectively ask God to take away my wife’s free will for My sake are not going to be answered.

It took St Paul a genuine 2x4 and another two years seclusion in Damascus and constant listening to learn what God wanted of him. Please give yourself some serious time.

With prayers,

Roger that!

SNORT! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Susan <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />