An excerpt from When Wedding Bells Stop Ringing by Jessica B. Smith

Chapter 6: When It All Fell Apart

When we left off of my own personal story, I had two kids (my daughter prior to marriage and a son by my husband). We had just lost our home, we fought like wild, caged animals, and we were living apart. My husband and I were able to overcome our issues and we reunited. It was still an upward battle, but I was determined to fight more in the spirit than in the flesh. So I knew that this was going to be a hard battle, but with God, all things are possible.

We moved into a mobile home in a trailer park, and a few years later, I ended up pregnant again. For a while, things seemed better, but it didn’t take long before our marriage took an even deeper nose-dive. I was fighting a losing battle and my marriage was sinking faster than the Titanic at its final moments.

Shortly after giving birth to my third child, I found out that my husband’s nightly absences were not just from hanging out with his boys and having one too many drinks. I found out that my husband was having an extramarital affair. By then, we had been married for four years. To date, it is one of the most hurtful, soul-injuring experiences I’ve ever had to endure. How did I find out? No, he didn’t tell me. Things just weren’t adding up.

We were no longer intimate. He stayed gone from the house more than he stayed at it. I spent countless nights in my bed alone. His behavior changed and as an intuitive woman, I became suspicious and began to investigate like only we women can do. I found her number and her address, contacted her, and the other woman admitted to everything. Of course, he denied it all at the time. That night, I had an Angela Bassett Waiting to Exhale moment. I started a barn fire in front of our house. But I didn’t use wood or trash. I used his clothes, every piece of it: hats, shoes, pants, coats, shirts—you name it, it went up in flames. Whatever I didn’t burn, I bleached.

After that, I was certain that I didn’t want to be with my husband anymore. Four years of hell? Four years of pain, strife, struggle and hanging in there, and he would do this to me? I felt embarrassed, humiliated, betrayed, insecure, devastated (just to name a few of my conflicting emotions). And just when you think it can’t get any worse, it did. He looked me in my face and admitted to me that not only did he care deeply for this woman, but he wanted to be with her exclusively. He wanted to be in a relationship with this woman, and he no longer wanted to be married to me. His confession knocked the little breath I still had right out of my soul. I mean, my God.
Talk about kicking a dog while it’s down.

According to my husband, our marriage was over. According to me, I still wanted things to work. Now, of course, some people might ask me why did I still want it to work after all the hell that I’d been through with him. At that time, the major reason why was because of the investment I’d made. Six years of investing in that relationship, four of them through marriage, and I had yet to see a return. I wanted an ROI (return on investment). Because if I did not get an ROI, to me, my investment had been wasted. The second reason why I still wanted it to work is because I know what God had told me, and this? This was not what God had told me. This was a fiery trial that had come to try me. It seemed like up until this point, the devil had been throwing rocks at us (pebbles, then stones, then cinder blocks, then boulders, then buildings, then glaciers). But this time, the devil pulled out the big guns. He said, “I’m not gonna throw anything at them. I’m just gonna set the whole thing on fire.” And that’s exactly what he did.

I knew what Satan was doing, but my husband seemed oblivious to it. And at the same time, I couldn’t make him want to be with me. So you know what I did? I went on with my life, allowed him to do whatever he was doing with her, and waited patiently in prayer for God to knock some sense into my husband and restore my marriage. Well...at least I thought that’s what I was waiting for. Not knowing that in the wait, God was doing something in me that had nothing to do with Jonathan Smith. Something happened to me in the wait. And that was my ROI (return on investment) right there. And I didn’t even realize what was happening to me in the wait until afterwards.

In the wait, I prayed more. I started off praying for my husband’s deliverance and praying that his mistress would release my husband and praying for peace during this hard time in my life. But somewhere in the wait, I started telling God that I don’t like the Jessica who cusses when she gets mad and can He please burn that thing out of me. Somewhere in the wait, I started telling God that I don’t like the destructive Jessica who destroys everything in her path when she gets upset, and to burn it out of me. Somewhere in the wait, I realized that I hadn’t forgiven my father for abandoning me as a child. And I asked God to help me forgive my father, not with my mouth but with my heart. Somewhere in the wait, I realized that I was still holding offense against my mother for not holding in confidence personal, intimate details about my marriage. I asked God to show me how to forgive her.

Somewhere in the wait, I realized that I don’t like messy-house, can’t-cook Jessica. Somewhere in the wait, I read more of my Word. Somewhere in the wait, I prayed more earnestly to God from a place of transparency. Somewhere in the wait, it started to bother me that I don’t fast the way I should as a woman of God. Somewhere in the wait, I realized I had petty moments and some false humility—I wasn’t as humble as I portrayed to people. All of this happened to me in “the wait.”

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