Words fail my overwhelming sorrow today. What I had sown many years as a non-believer, I now reap as a Christian. After ending my own adultery four years ago and suffering through a long period of deep depression, I started attending a little church with my wife. She had found this church during my adultery years and tried so many times to get me to go. My first day there over a year ago was when one of my daughters was to be baptized. It had a profound effect on my life. I didn't know the Lord had a plan and purpose for me. The Bible school teacher sat down next to me after the baptism and actually began talking to me, ME the most wretched of all sinners. Who was this guy? Soon we became good friends and I found myself being drawn by the Lord through my Bible studies for his class. My new friend helped lead me to the Lord. Then, "Yea, mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me" (Psalm 41:9). A few months after I accepted Christ, he and my wife committed adultery. My wife confessed to me less than three months ago.
Although adultery can never be justified, it is easy for me to understand my wife's falling into this sin. She was always (since a child) committed to the Lord and to our marriage, so she submitted herself to over 30 years of my godless abuse. Then she died with my adultery, but lived again to find romantic love with someone who understood her pain. They were both "vulnerable," I am told. His marriage was also in trouble. "We're trying to work it out," he told me. I related this to my wife not knowing I was opening doors. I had withdrawn emotionally during my depression often going months without making love to her, or offering any emotional support. I was dead to her and, therefore, our marriage was dead to her, finished. She was free in her heart to love another. Do you know about the condition of our hearts?
But suddenly, I was given a new Heart and a new Spirit. I began to realized all my failures, all the suffering I had caused her and my family over the many years. My sin was ever before me, crashing down my foundations. When I came to accept Christ, my wife had already withdrawn her love from me. I didn't know it. She seemed strangely distant, quiet, nervous, yes, but I found myself fallling even more in love with her than I knew possible. My life completely changed. But why can't I reach her? Why can't I tell her that I have also come to know the Lord? She sees the changes in me. We are both silent.
When she finally disclosed her true feelings to me and her "relationship" with her lover, I couldn't get angry. I knew they were wrong, that their love for each other was a sin, but I understood. I understood because of my own adultery the joy and love she felt for him, the no-demands "freedom" he offered her to be herself. I was not angry at first, only sad and hurt. Of course I wanted to save our marriage. I loved her, I loved my family, and I loved the Lord. I told them they could continue phone contact. I knew how difficult it was to quit and, besides, I had lost all moral authority to say "stop."
We went to our pastor. He had already heard rumors of their relationship earlier and had already gone to the man to ask him to stop all contacts. He quickly told us also that all contacts must stop. But, you know, the lies started, the deceit, the coverups. Emails, phone calls, calls just to listen to his voice mail message. One excuse and another. Our pastor, a church elder, and I all met with the adulterer to confront him according to Matthew 18. He only admitted as much as I knew of them at the time. There was no regret, no repentance. In the weeks to come, I would soon learn much more from my wife about the extent of their adultery. More devastation, more hurt, more anger. If she can not talk to him she will leave.
Now, sadly, the Bible school teacher has abandoned our church. My wife received a phone call from his wife and my wife knows for the first time the hurt she has caused (he denied his wife was hurt, of course). Despite the excruciating pain it will cause her to turn away, my wife has agreed not to contact him "for as long as she can" in order to "give his marriage every chance." His marriage. She says she will stay in our marriage but she can not even think about opening her heart to me again. Our marriage. Death sounds preferable to her. I rememeber the apathy. "Just leave me alone!" This "new creature" drives her crazy with my new attention and affection for her. She says I am trying to manipulate her, the pastor is manipulating her, I have turned our children against her, we are all trying to control her, pray her into a box where she has no choice but obedience. "No one understands her pain and despair, except her lover," she says.
But I do.
