Date Other People

Date Other People

When I contacted RMI I had only been married a few short months. I had fallen into and was deeply distressed because soon after we were married my husband began staying out all night with his friends. When I tried to confront him about it, he basically ignored me and soon he became aggressive that led to ongoing abuse. I was shocked the next time I confronted him about not coming home because he told me we really needed to start dating other people!

That's when I knew in my gut he was actually seeing someone else and that the friends he said he was going out with was another woman. I had no idea how involved he was with her. Let me also say that right after we married, we stopped going to church, so when I knew I needed to pray, I felt too guilty and unworthy for God to help me. I didn’t know what else to do or where to turn. Then two days later (after my husband said we should date) I went to a conference on home schooling.

What makes this so God is because we had no children. So I couldn’t understand why I'd even gone, but just when I decided to leave and began getting up making my way out the back, the speaker began to share her testimony of her restored marriage. That's when I knew that the Lord had heard my prayers and sent me there to get help. When the speaker finished, I almost ran to the product table and bought both How God Can and Will Restore Your Marriage and the women’s workbook A Wise Woman. I realized that night that my marriage had been built on sinking sand and it had fallen. My only hope was that it wasn't too late.

It took every bit of faith and diligence to not give up over the next several months, when life got worse not better. My husband filed for divorce against me. I could tell that my husband could not deny the changes he saw in me but he still did everything he could to push me away. He began dating a new woman, just about almost every week (and we were still living together). He'd flaunt them in front of me and call me on his way home after his late date to tell me all the details I DID NOT WANT TO HEAR! My EH's goal, he said later, was to make me hate him, and I have to say had it not been for the grace of God and the Love of my Heavenly Husband, I would have. But His love was stronger and that's what I used to love my husband with despite how he was treating me.

When the time came I refused to contest or fight my husband about the divorce and that made him frustrated so he dropped the divorce. He told me he “felt guilty" because I wouldn’t "fight back.” A few months later, after he dropped the divorce, it was a tragedy in my husband's life that the Lord used as his “wake-up call.” My husband's best friend took his life. After the shock of his suicide, my husband called and said he was so sorry for all of his unfaithfulness to me and to our marriage and our vows. Of course I forgave him and asked him to forgive me for not being a good wife to him.

It's been more than four years, and we are are still very "happily married” and to add to our happiness, God blessed us with TWO precious little girls. My husband and I make sure to take time to spend together. We pray together and we both agree how wonderful it is to know that we are together forever and that neither of us ever thinks or speaks of leaving as we used to. The Lord is at the center of our marriage and in our home.

~Renea in Montana, RESTORED

UPDATE: Renea and her husband were one of the first RMI restored marriages. Their girls are grown now and recently they renewed their wedding vows in the church where they'd first gotten married.