Set Off a Forest Fire

“Set Off a Forest Fire”

“Restored Custody”

I would like to give praise and thanks to the Lord for how good He has been to me!!! I was asked to share some recent experiences to encourage and motivate those who are seeking the Lord's will through this ministry—especially those of you who have children.

I wanted to tell you that it took me three attempts to get through RYM and it is because I couldn't take my eyes completely off of the circumstances and keep my focus and heart completely on the Lord. The third time around, I finally made up my mind that I was going to finish the third 30 Day attempt successfully and believed that the Lord would bless me with a major breakthrough between my spouse and I. Yes, my eyes were on my restoration and husband too.

I completed the RYM course and the Lord blessed me in many ways. He got rid to the OW, he opened up communication between my spouse and I and he began to ask me what I want and how I want to do things.

He looked forward to when I sent food home to him with the kids. He made sacrifices as to taking the kids to practices and things to make stuff easier on me. We sit next to each other at our kid's sporting events and share laughs and pleasant conversations. In all honesty, I didn't realize just how much the Lord has done for me and my family until I started sharing these things with all of you.

Let me go back to earlier. My marriage is hopeless without God. I am going to paste the email that I sent to your pastors the night I discovered your website by googling a phrase I no longer remember. Forgive the typos.

My husband has left me in a position to fend for myself with no money or support. He has temporary custody of our kids because he made sure that I couldn't make it to court because I was out of state with the kids. I have been staying with a friend, but that is coming to an end. I have been believing God to allow me to go back home. The bible says that "if a wife separates from her husband that she should return home or not remarry...a husband should not divorce his wife." There is no trust left, there is still love from the remnants of 18 years and three children. I am further along in healing than my husband. My love and willingness to trust is returning, while my husband has set his mind on going on with his life without me and has convinced himself that he will not change his mind. Here is the email that I sent you:

hello! my name is catia and i live in new mexico. i just stumbled upon your website and i was impressed. i have asked god to do the impossible in a truly impossible situation. i have been a true believer for the past nine years. my husband of 13 years (18 years of being together) recently filed for divorce.

Ironically, one would think that i should be the one filing. i have been a homemaker for the past 13 years. we have three children and over the past 2-3 years we have gone through a "Job Experience".... my husband used to be a believer, but with all of this, i just don't know anymore.

we were baptized together and my husband was self-employed but has barely made a dime the last five years. we were forced to live off savings and then the inevitable happened. my husband lost all of our money, through investments, and then we lost our home.

well, that was too much for me. I broke after the foreclosure. I would go into hysterics and started calling my husbands names and obscenities and i was angry and downright vicious. i stumbled around like a wounded bear. i stopped believing in God and then my husband. an in-law bought another house for us to live in, but something about the whole thing just didn't feel right to me and i pitched a fit. my husband kept suggesting this neighborhood because there was a family there that he thought we would really get along with and that it was a really cool area, etc. i was lukewarm and too tired to keep fighting.

shortly after moving in we became good friends with that family. hung out almost daily, the wife and i would cook and bake together, well the inevitable with that happened. because our families hung out and our kids were the best of buds, my husband and the neighbor's wife started committing adultery. i knew immediately. i was so sick of my husband and his failures that i turned a blind eye. then i had a change of heart and i exposed him and because of this he overdosed on pills in front of our kids and was taken to the mental hospital.

during the entire time my husband was committing adultery, it seemed like some sort of spirit had come over him. our daughter had asked if he was possessed. well as you can imagine, i was heartbroken and my soul was broken because he is my soulmate.

things unraveled quickly. i was so wounded and angry and lashed out in every way that i could, but i still wanted to work on my marriage, but he told me that he couldn't live any of this down and that i would never forgive him. he also said that i was crazy and he didn't want to be married to me anymore. i couldn't believe my ears...

after he was released from the mental hospital my husband and that other woman got back to their adultery again and my husband began to treat me like i was scum on the bottom of his shoe and i would fight back but boy did we both suffer, not to mention the kids. they were even using the kids as pawns to meet up. it was a real mess. he has made it clear that he does not want me. and i have been fighting like a wild cat to hold my family together. please understand that i do love my husband and he loves me, we're just not in love anymore. i hang in there because of our covenant and i want my biological family to stay together and be rebuilt according to God's plan. can you help?

i have been in agony since all of this has happened. I left my husband in july and he sounded so pitiful because he wanted me to bring the kids back home (didn't want me). so I returned with the hopes of reconciliation. but things only got worse. I was convinced he was loosing his mind. he was paranoid and delusional and completely irrational in his thinking and behavior. he was hiding keys and medicine bottles in a safe he had hidden in the house. we were living in a house of horrors. i was so worried abut my husband because he kept threatening me with divorce and kicking me out of his relative's house. I finally had him recommitted to the mental hospital. he had blocked my communication with his relatives so i was left on my own. the next day, his father, who is an attorney, got my husband released on an outpatient basis and they went to and filed divorce papers. my husband stayed away from the house for a couple of days and showed up with his father and a witness from the courts to watch him pack his stuff while my husband and his father announced in front our children that he was divorcing me for committing "perjury." i had never heard such a farce in my life. and the damage done to our kids... so the next day, i packed up my truck with as much as i could and took my kids and went back to my home state. we were settling in and thriving. then i was served with divorce papers with a demand for me to show up to court 17 days later. it was impossible for me to make it. i had sick kids, etc. because I didn't go, my husband won temporary orders by default. i filed for a motion of rehearing because i was blocked from our finances and it took me a little longer to get an attorney. that's when my husband came to where we were and snatched to kids out of school with the sheriff and it caused them so much trauma, our daughter has been having stomach problems and was being treated for depression. she sneaked an email to tell me about it. her dad told the kids they cannot talk or interact with me without his permission. this is an impossible mess. you know, i was really believing for this marriage until i started to fathom the things that i am writing right now. i have suffered extreme mental and emotional abuse from that man and he accuses me of being the same way.

i have been asking god to just stop the divorce and deal with us while his covenant is upheld. we have no history of any of this stuff. i believe the financial pressures did us in. in the mean time i realized my husband was seeking legal counsel behind my back. he would tell me that he didn't know what he was going to do and start blaming me for everything. i also discovered that he had gone to our children's school and had started to build his case against me to convince them that i was unstable.

so I'm writing to ask, do you really think i should keep believing for this? maybe my husband is right. maybe we should do our own thing. i am appalled by all of this. an hour ago i was praising god for our recovery, renewal and restoration.

my husband insisted that i didn't work and that he had everything under control, every other week he was going to have a $15 million IPO. my downfall is that i was seriously in love with my husband and believed everything and anything that he told me.

this same relative who bought the house has been taking care of us for the past 3 years, and his family, has taken all accountability and responsibility from him and had justified his behavior. they have only listened to his side of things (lots of lies) and have blamed me for everything. we are a mixed couple and i know that even though they expressed love and kindness to a degree i was always tolerated for the sake of my husband. they got him a nanny for the kids. yes, that relative is wealthy.

i just wanted my husband to be the man and me take care our kids and our home. i wrote a letter recently to that relative asking her to pray about her involvement in our marital affairs. i assured her that i was not what i was being made out to be and that the family really needed to look at the fact that my husband isn't well. i asked her to pray about things and to keep her house and her money and for his family to back off and to let us figure things out on their own. i told her if they really wanted to help him then suggest marriage counseling or going back to put his family together.

sincerely,

videogirl

Many of you are probably thinking that no one's situation is like yours...you haven't read anything that compares. Here is some food for thought...allow me to share with you a big part of why it took me three tries to get through and why I am grateful for how much He has already restored. I have to admit that things between my spouse and me are good. Communication is so much better. Negative emotions have pretty much evaporated on my part and he is doing so much better. He is pleasant to me and answers questions instead of grunting at me. I even get smiles sometimes. We have increased phone conversations and when occasionally have long ones, we end up having some good laughs together. My husband has been opening up to some things going on in his personal life and he has gotten so much better about making me feel welcome when I am at the house.

A couple of times I even caught him peeking around the corner at me. I pretended I didn't see him. We were at one of our kids sporting events and I was talking to an old friend. My husband was standing on the other side of that friend but didn't see me yet. When he realized it was me, he looked at me as if I were beautiful. Please forgive me for not sending in any praise reports that I have had over the past few months. I do believe when the Lord is ready for me to submit them, people will be wowed and inspired.

For the past week, the Lord has been giving me scripture telling me that I am married. However, he blew m socks off yesterday. I was SG in terms of employment and I cried out to the Lord to send me a solid Word that would help me. He showed me Psalms 107:20 NASB. I prayed that scripture back to Him and about 40 minutes later, I had the urge to pick up my bible to meditate on a promise. I never made it to that scripture. Instead, my bible opened to Isaiah 62. The word "married" jumped out at me. (To speed things up), the Lord said that He has changed my name and delights in me and that "my land" is "married". I am blown away!!! I just switched from NLT to NASB in March 2014. this is what the NASB bible says:

It will no longer be said to you, “Forsaken,”

Nor to your land will it any longer be said, “Desolate”;

But you will be called, “My delight is in her,”

And your land, “Married”;

For the Lord delights in you, And to Him your land will be married.

Why this scripture is so special is that I had read some marriage testimony a couple of years ago and the Lord had given the woman this scripture and soon after, her marriage was fully restored. I had never seen that translation before—so I said to myself, "If the Lord sees fit to give me that same scripture then I KNOW that my marriage is fully restored.” The other thing is that the biggest promise that I have been truly meditating on are twin scriptures Jeremiah 30:10-11 (NLT), 17-18. Verse 17 states that I was an outcast, whom no one cared about; the Lord has turned things around in the spiritual and natural. I am expecting that suddenly any moment.

Things are not perfect, but my thinking and demeanor had changed so much. It is funny—I am right back in the same crisis as a year ago with no job! Now, I don't care. I have faith in God to guide and provide. I do love to minister to women with marriage difficulties, but in all honesty, I haven't had many opportunities lately.

All I can say is God bless, Erin— I am finally got it! I simply seek the Lord and trust Him with everything. I have learned to cease from striving. I wait on the Lord!!!! I have no interest in discussing things with anyone. I don't want others opinions. When I first applied for an ePartner—I was like, great!!!! It didn't take long to figure out that I didn't need one. I have no interest to pick up the phone. I quit a minimum wage job last year, which I loved and thrived in, to take this last position because I was listening to "other people" telling me I had to take care of myself. I felt pressure because I have been staying with a friend and I naturally wanted my own place. The Lord had me where He wanted me and I blew it because I was trying to figure things out. I got the new job and none of its promises manifested, I ended up making far less money because I got out of God's will. God's plans are bigger and better. I learned my lesson and now, I wait on the Lord.

Erin is so anointed and she is so correct in her teachings and I truly love you guys. I noticed a few weeks ago that I hadn't met the conditions of God's promise to me until recently. "Do not be afraid or discouraged..." I have learned that while I wait, He works. This time last year, I had taken my attention off of everything and the Lord was moving the OW clear across the country. My guess is that the Lord is using this crisis to send me home. Praise God! He has been so faithful. The other thing is that He would tell me each place that I would land before I got there and that is exactly where I would go. I do believe that I have taken possession. I'm going home. No more wilderness wanderings (yes, I have a filled out my journal about all of this). These past few months, the Lord has given me and my mother dreams about reconciliation and they have all been prophetic. We both have similar spiritual gifts. I cannot wait to submit my restored marriage testimony.

The other thing is that the marriage stuff really isn't my focus. I find myself shrugging my shoulders on stuff, where in the past I would've been upset. I am so excited about the love I know have! I hear the Lord and He sees and hears me. Ladies, this goes for All of us!!!! That thrills me—my relationship with the Lord. I must have finally gotten with His program because He delights in me. I am thrilled and so in love with the Lord. God is working and He won't waste my prayers. I do believe that I will be your next restoration testimony. Whew!!!! So sorry. Excited to have contact with the ministry.

Something else I need to confess. I did something "out of love" (I believed my husband's behavior really did warrant what I did) and I put my spouse back in the mental hospital. Sadly (because I didn't let God do it) it was twisted around and set off a forest fire, and to retaliate, my EH and his entire family, including the OW, did their best to take my kids from me.

They were able to get a phony arrest warrant issued from another state to have me expedited out of my current state and it included about 15 trumped up charges on me stating that I was a drug dealer, I was armed and dangerous and a whole bunch of other things that I didn't even know existed.

They thought that no one would ever help me or believe me and that I would lose everything and everyone that was dear to me. From the world's perspective that looked like a real possibility. I was in jail for 10 days and the first three days I didn't even know why.

Without knowing or asking, my employer and his wife immediately hired an attorney and the Lord used them to clear me from everything. It turns out that I was arrested over a $3.98 prescription, for a "controlled substance." The day I got out of jail I went home and that same bottle of pills was in my bathroom drawer over 1/2 filled with the same pills in its original container, which was prescribed to me by my husband's first cousin (an ER doctor) who had written an RX for me 2 years prior on a family trip. He told me to fill out the RX pad and he would sign it.

Well, I did and attempted to fill it when the pharmacist noticed it wasn't signed. So, we tried to reach the "Dr." by phone and he didn't answer—it was no big deal to me. He simply called it in that evening to another pharmacy. I thought that was the end of the story. That small thing was what the enemy used as a trump card to destroy me. My father in law is an attorney and I am positive that he was used by the enemy too.

Soon after the Lord released me, as I sought Him, things began to go not so well for any of those who so diligently worked against. As it is written one reaps what they sow. Believe me when I tell you that the Reapers have caught up with the Sowers.

[Keep in mind, anyone who knows me knows that I have never participated in drugs, smoking or heavy drinking. Praise the Lord- I have never had the appetite for those things.]

And as He says, all things work together for good. Remember how I said there was no one for me to minister to? Well, that's why He put me there. While in jail, I ministered to the women there and 98.9% of the women were in jail due to a man they wanted back—me included. The Lord used me mightily as I soon recognized He sent me there on assignment, to share the truth I had learned from this ministry and how I ended up in jail. The confirmation was these women told me later that they thought I was an angel and that what I said to them was an answer to their prayers.

While in jail, I was torn. I felt a deep sadness over how much hatred my EH must have had in his heart towards me. I found myself asking the Lord, “Do you still want me to believe You for this marriage?”

So now let me tell you the details and how God brought me through this. It was clear even to the arresting officers that something was amiss. I was held in some observation room all by myself for about 4 hrs. I knew I hadn't done anything and I knew the Lord was with me, so I just fell asleep. Finally, around 3 AM I was led to my cell and something in my spirit said whatever cell that you get that's how long I would be in jail. I was told I would be on the second floor so the first cell I saw was 3. I smiled to myself and said, " I can handle 3 days- Jesus did!" The guard then told me that I would be going to cell 10. Gulp!!!

On day 10 we were put back in our cells to prepare for dinner. I thought to myself, “Lord, I know that I heard You correctly. The courts closed 30 min ago and now we are on lockdown for dinner. How am I going to get out of here now? You said, 10 days!”

Lo and behold, about 30 minutes later my name was called to go home! No one knows how or why this was done!!! The next day I left town to start my new job, while my attorney showed up to court not knowing where his client was or how I got released.

While in jail, I read this little book called, “Those who trust in the Lord will not be disappointed.” To this day I lean heavily on that biblical promise. It works!! I also give testimony to this.

It was on my third day in jail that I cried out to the Lord to tell me why I was in jail. I knew I hadn't done anything. About 15 min into prayer, I heard this small voice STATE THE LEGAL NAME of my RX. Then it all came to me what had been conspired! I knew the Lord had His plan for me being there, so I submitted to Him and He has consistently blessed me and helped along the way.

I need to tell you that when I was released from jail, it was as if everyone in the cell block knew before me that I was leaving. When my name was called and I stood in front of the cell window so that the guard could see me.

I saw all of the women on both floors standing looking out their windows waving and crying. There wasn't a dry eye in the place. They were applauding me and wishing me well. I could hear them through those thick, concrete walls. This is when I knew that I had to trust the Lord no matter what things looked like. I'd gone where He wanted me to take the Good News, to free all of those women who were obsessed with a man, so they could hear about a Man who would love them.

After I left, just last week I had only a little money in the bank and I had to choose to get my car payment to prevent repossession or pay my rent. I made the decision to pay the car and trust God for the rent. I kid you not-Jesus walked on water that day. I paid my car and 15 min after I got home the leasing office called to tell me that my rent check came back as a closed account. I just told them that I would take care of it and we figured out that I had given them the wrong checking account—an honest mistake. I got on my knees to pray.

Thirty minutes later I remembered that I had promised the Lord that I would begin checking my bank account daily. Lo and behold the $500 that I had taken out was in my account!! There was no record of the car payment. The car transaction had cleared my account the day before. It was not a pending transaction-the balances reflected as much.

So I got up, went to the bank and got a money order for my rent. I wasn't about to trust a debit card or another check transaction. Praise God! He got my rent paid in full and my car payment made. My little mind was swimming for days.

I know this is long, but what I want everyone to take away from my testimony is that it is crucial to share your faith with your kids. My kids cherish and honor me, especially now because of all that has happened and in their eyes, I have not wavered in my faith.

Also to focus on Him and move through the courses so you are ready for what may be up ahead. And that no matter what, God will use whatever trial for GOOD if you trust Him to see you through. If you don't share your testimony with everyone around you, helping other women, He will be sure to put you where women need to hear it the most, like He did with me.

No matter what, the most important thing to know is that God is faithful and pours out His unfailing love on all of us through His son our Heavenly Husband.

TRUST HIM. BELIEVE HIM AND KNOW THAT HE IS THE GOD OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.

~ Catia in New Mexico