I Wouldn't Trade the Pain

We looked forward to the upcoming weeks with so much anticipation and expectation. A Life Action revival summit had been scheduled in our church—a church we felt desperately needed revival and renewal. But little did we know what God had in store for our lives and our home.

During those two weeks, God revealed many painful truths to me about myself, my walk with the Lord, and my relationship with my husband—things about the past, the present, and my future.

One unforgettable night during the summit, my husband, in the presence of a godly counselor, confessed to me that he had been involved in homosexual relationships before we were married, and that he had continued one of those relationships even as recently as a month prior to the summit.

In some ways, that night seems like it was a lifetime ago; at other times it seems like only yesterday. The devastation I felt was only one of the many emotions I would go through over the next several months, yet the sympathy I felt for him on that night was overwhelming.

On the one hand, I just wanted to take him home and tell him everything would be okay. But my anger told me it would never be okay, and our relationship was doomed forever.

Thank God that He had a very different script for this chapter in our lives.

For the next several weeks, I lived on an emotional roller coaster. At times I felt a sense of exhilaration that my husband was free from a secret he had kept buried deep inside all these years. Then, just moments later, I would feel overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal, hurt, anger, and an inability to ever trust him again.

The one constant thing was an unexplainable confidence that God was in control. I held to the promise that He would never forsake me.

The Bible came alive to me for the first time in years, and I found such assurance and peace through His Word. I remember feeling so alone—a sense that no one else could ever understand or relate to what I was going through. I felt sorry for myself.

Then one day as I was reading in Deuteronomy, I came across this verse: "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid . . . of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you" (Deut. 31:6 NIV). I began to cry, as I had so many times before; but this time the tears were tears of joy and hope, not sadness and despair.

I realized that my loneliness could be replaced with the strong love of the Lord—a love that would never change, never leave, never cheat, never judge, never criticize, and a love that I could always trust. He would go with me through all the doors I would walk through over the next several months, and when the way seemed dark and lonely, He would be there.

I remember telling the Lord that I accepted the circumstances He had given me, even if I would never understand all the "whys." Thus began the healing process, and the ability to forgive. The definition of forgive is "to cease to feel resentment against; to pardon; to give up resentment of or claim to requital; to grant relief from payment."

This was a pretty big request.

How could I forgive someone who had hurt me beyond anything I could ever imagine? How could I forgive
someone who had broken the deep trust I had for him and destroyed all the purity of our relationship?

I learned that the key to forgiveness is not something I had on my own, but that Christ could forgive through me. Forgiveness came when I realized who I was apart from Christ.

God revealed so many things to me about my own life that were just as sinful as what my husband had done. I realized that God looks at all sin the same, and for me to judge one sin as being greater than another . . . well, I was playing God. God is not partial, and He hates my sin just as much as He hates my husband's sin. I am a sinner saved by grace—nothing more.

We are all sinners, with the same choice to accept Christ or reject Him. If I truly accepted who Christ is, then I had the ability to forgive.

It was not an easy process, but it was a growing one. My relationship with the Lord began to grow, and so did my relationship with my husband. We sought Christian counseling to help us work through some of our difficulties, and we began communicating on a level of love and unselfishness.

The months that followed were hard, but they began bringing us closer than we had ever been before. We wanted to share what Christ had done. He had turned a devastating situation into a lasting relationship of love and fulfillment.

We agreed to hold each other accountable, and through that accountability grew a new sense of trust.

A year after our experience, God showed us one of the "whys" of what we had gone through. A very close friend of ours came to us out of a sense of despair because he was involved in a similar situation and needed help. He didn't know what we had been through, yet through our own experience, we were able to help him and his wife begin that road to forgiveness and healing.

Through these past five years, God has continued to bring into our lives people who need us. Because of what we went through, we've had the privilege of seeing marriages and relationships miraculously healed. I would be wrong if I led you to believe it's all been wonderful since those first few months. Occasionally I still struggle with distrust, unforgiveness, anger, betrayal, and all those emotions I went through in the beginning. There have been moments when I wished he had never told me.

But I wouldn't trade any of the pain for the freedom my husband gained from his confession and for the victory he experienced over his sexual addiction.

I wouldn't trade any of the pain for the times we've been able to share our experience with others in order to help their relationship.

I wouldn't trade any of the pain for the renewed relationship I have with my Lord, my husband, and our children.

And I wouldn't trade any of the pain for the life-changing opportunity I have been given to walk the pathway of forgiveness.