“I felt like a used piece of tissue paper. Just thrown away in the trash.”
– Vineyard pastor
The quote might not be exact.
However, I will never forget the idea.
This brave pastoral spouse shared to a young Vineyard Church about her experience of being sexually assaulted. She vividly described how she felt the next morning–i.e. used and discarded like a piece of disgusting trash full of boogers.
Her description resonated with me as a faithful and abandoned spouse.
Used.
And discarded with disgust.
It is hard to feel otherwise after trusting someone for years only to be rejected while she engaged in sex with a different partner.
The reality is the adulterous, abandoning spouse threw away gold!
They are the fools, not the faithful spouses. It might seem to the world or even to the faithful spouse at the time that the faithful spouse is worthless, but that is trading in worldly wisdom, not godly wisdom (I Cor 3:19).
That said, I do not want to minimize the feelings.
They are real.
And painful.
It is okay if you, too, resonate with this quote.
But remember, you were purchased with God’s own blood (I Peter 1:18-19).
You are incredibly valuable.
However foolish your adulterous (ex) spouse treated you, God gets the final word on your worth.
Never forget that.
*A version of this post ran previously.
I have a question I hope someone can answer. 3 weeks ago I found another phone number under my private fb settings. Right under my number. Private settings for fb. I wrote it down and deleted it from my settings. I called it. Imagine my surprise to find out ( voicemail) it was a woman I know from the church we left 1 1/2 years ago.
I didn’t even know her number or ever call her. I told my husband much later that night. He just said it was odd.
I get up next morning and go to check the weather on his phone. Her name comes across the bottom of his phone in typed blue letters. I slide to get off weather and her name disappears.
I ask him about it. He doesn’t know. I don’t look at his phone again until we are out later and our daughter texts us she made it to work. I text her back and click on safari to see what had been on.
Only one thing. The gmail site from that morning. We use our sons email. He says he doesn’t have one.
It looked to me like he forgot to delete it after signing off. There was no address on it.
He is the only one that has access to my iPod which has my email to sign on- all the time. Just not the password.
Why would her name come on first thing in little blue letters? I have Never seen that happen before. Could they have emailed each other in the morning? He was up before me.
Is it possible she was just being snoopy and managed to hack into my account? It’s not even the person I suspected him having something with a couple years ago.
I did call her and ask her why her cell number was under my privacy settings. I had actually gotten a notice from fb the end of Jan. Asking if that number was me. I had written it down but never. Called thinking it was just some hacker.
Found same number…. hers… 3 weeks ago under my settings.
She said she had no idea. Of course! I wasn’t nasty but wasn’t super friendly.
How does that happen?
I don’t know, but it sounds fishy to me. Trust your gut/Holy Spirit. All the times I thought my ex was cheating in some kind of way (emotional or physical) — he was. My gut was always right. The Holy Spirit alerted me to something way back in 1992, even before we were engaged and my now ex-husband lied about it. My gut was screaming at me that something was “off”. I believed his lies and continued to do so for the next 22 years. You are going to drive yourself crazy being the Marriage Police and I say that with with kindness. 🙂