I was 22 when I was set free the first time.
My life was out of control. It felt like every decision I made was a bad one. My “rock bottom” occurred when I went through a devastating break up with the first guy I thought I was in love with.
My step-brother and his best friend were my best friends at the time. Their lives were radically changing while I was wasting away in self pity. They started going to church and talking about Jesus. My step-brother said he saw this Jesus in a dream, and He offered him a golden heart if he followed Him.
I don’t remember all the details now, 20 years later, but I decided to follow Him too. I confessed my sins, repented, and started living differently. I thought.
Looking back, I realize it was a shallow, conditional relationship, on my part. I “agreed” to follow Jesus since He seemed safe. I thought that if I read the Bible, prayed, and went to church that I would be SAFE. INVINCIBLE.
It was this false sense of who Jesus was and what He would do for me that led me to marry my ex-husband. Invincible, to me, meant divorce-proof. I actually said, out loud, to close family and friends that “God will take care of everything.” I thought of God as the boisterous genie in Aladdin, except he had limitless “wishes to grant,” IF I did my part. I didn’t realize that God isn’t our puppet master.
My mom saw the red flags and warned me. She put HUGE ORANGE CAUTION BARRELS on my path, but I stubbornly knocked them down and allowed my false sense of who God was to pierce the barrels with my ignorance.
We dated for one month before we were engaged, and six months later we were married. One month after our wedding day, I was pregnant. 9 months later, pregnant again, and then again, and then one last time.
Free will, no strings for the imagined puppet master, a broken childhood, and several other unknown reasons drove my ex-husband to commit adultery. It destroyed me…
Overcoming Obstacles 