Mrs. DM tells me that this was her favorite picture of me from my dating profile. It was taken in the Summer or early Fall of 2012 a few months prior to my divorce.
After months, years, or even decades of emotional beat-downs, faithful spouses often struggle in knowing their incredible worth. We discount our gifts, abilities, and precious status in God’s eyes.
Faithful spouses, you are an incredible bunch!
The stories I hear and the people I have met through this ministry confirms this fact to me. I continue to stand amazed at what God does through faithful spouses. You are overcomers!
A single mom going back to school and getting a degree.
A minister losing his job over his wife’s cheating yet finding a new, fulfilling career despite all the unbelievable opposition.
A jobless seminary graduate discovering his calling and moving on his own across country to start a vibrant professional career.
These are just a few stories of which I am aware. Despite what cheaters might think or hope…
Faithful spouses don’t fold under life’s pressures…we reload!
This brings me to the second point of my posting today:
I continue to be amazed by how foolish cheaters are.
They squander such riches for fleeting pleasure. That is not to say that the marriage was flawless or the faithful spouse was perfect. No one is. However, it is clear to me from talking, corresponding, and otherwise interacting with countless faithful spouses that cheaters truly undervalue what they have. They are blinded by the wickedness in their hearts.
Beautiful people–inside and sometimes even outside–are discarded for fantasy relationships–for that is what affairs are–and loving family are destroyed for pure selfish reasons.
In other words, the truly lasting things of life that a person can count on for comfort on his or her deathbed are foolishly treated like trash by a cheater. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure…as the saying goes.
Just because you have been discarded by a cheater does not make you trash!
You have to remember that they are wearing sin-goggles, and such goggles distort all that they see. It is not wise to base your value or worth from such an impaired person any more than it is wise to ride in a car with a drunk at the wheel.
Your life is worth more than that. Take the keys back.
Faithful spouses,
it is time you drive and open your own eyes to how incredible God has made you!
Because, I guarantee that you are an amazing group of people. So, start embracing that!
YO! DM! LOVE this:
“Faithful spouses don’t fold under life’s pressures…we reload!”
‘Tis true! I did, my father did, my son did & so did several others I love that have survived & THRIVED despite the filth thrown at us by these clueless cheatin’ fools! We are the best of the best of the best, Sir!
Yep, they are truly fools to not see the ‘amazing’ right in front of their clueless, blinded eyes.
Hugs & Love to you and yours as we all ForgeOn!!!
YES!
Cheaters with character disorders will project their self-loathing onto their faithful spouse. This makes them feel good enough about themselves to cheat. My ex-husband traded in everything he had – marriage to me, home and car – for a woman that he is not even in a committed relationship with. He is now living with his elderly mother. He seemed to experience no grief at all when it came to losing me. The only things that worried him were no vehicle to continue to date the other woman and not knowing where he will live after his mother passes on.
I am sorry to hear your divorce with Ex-Mrs. DM, Pastor DM….
(Pardon my grammar please)
God has redeemed that awful experience…so, no worries.
Thank you for your kind words. I went googling this afternoon wondering if anyone was ever talking about faithful spouses feeling forced to stick with a marriage by spiritual leaders and Christian communities assuming that there was more that I could have done to save my marriage even though they haven’t heard anything more than that I am divorced without taking the time to hear the whole story. And why should I be accountable to tell the whole story to everyone I encounter? It would not be edifying to anyone.
“Faithful spouse” even feels encouraging. I don’t begrudge my married friends their celebration of long years of marriage, but when we clap for long years of faithfulness, I feel sad that no one valued my faithfulness for my now “would have been 30” years of marriage. I tried to stick it out for years post-adultery but the wave of alcohol, drugs, lies, pornography, more adultery…….irretreivably harmed those kids I was trying to save. (There, felt compelled to tell some back story and feel decidedly unedified!)
We did move away, I went back to school and am now trying to start a new career, but am finding there is no real place for me or my hurting kids in the church. In one of my classes my professor and classmates were proposing that kids from divorced families should “be over it” in some short time. (Two weeks one girl said.) No, it is still painful to not have a dad as the years go by, every time that a dad would be helpful or nice.
Anyway, thank you for the props, it feels very good!