I carried twelve credits per semester and worked a 4pm to midnight shift at the agency. I enrolled in college for a Bachelor’s degree with a minor in writing. I thought if I had to continue working, I needed to get out of the advertising industry. The place was a horror, but I couldn’t be picky.
#Praying for widows and orphans full
I got a full time job in what I called the Ad Agency from Hell. When my Judas left, I was a single mom with updated skills and six years of experience in graphic art. Even though I really didn’t want to re-enter the workforce, in doing so, the Lord prepared me for what was ahead. Self-taught, I joined the design staff shortly after. My boss allowed me to learn graphic design on their office computers. Unequipped to revive my art ‘career’, I was hired as a proofreader at a small community newspaper. My degree in Advertising Art was twenty years old and computers had taken over the design profession. Homemaking gave me all the creative outlets I craved, but my husband admired those career moms. It can only be read backwards.” I remember wrestling with going back to work six years earlier. John Flavel wrote: “The Providence of God is like Hebrew words. I prayed he would have a change of heart and told the kids to pray for the same. I needed to stay afloat and pay the mortgage. I filed for a legal separation to protect myself and ensure that he’d give me monthly support. I played games like revenge dating, hoping he would be jealous. The body that only craved liquid dinner after work – wine that calmed me and helped me forget. The body that shed fifty-seven pounds so he might love me again. I’d get up for work to discover her curled up in bed, unable to go to school. My daughter was 13 and she suffered most. My sons were 21 (away at college) and 18 (a senior in high school). Thus began the four worst years of my life. On a frigid day in January, my husband left our home for his new apartment in the city. The words of his mouth were softer than butter, yet war was in his heart, his words were more gentle than oil, yet they were swords. I felt secure in his love, never doubted it. He bragged about my cooking, my frugality, and my decorating skills. I thought my family life was near exemplary. They witnessed his affection for me in public. I graced the bleachers in my frumpy sweats and a t-shirt. Those women who came to the games late, stylishly adorned in career garb, trendy haircuts and make-up. I felt that resentment while watching our boys play Little League Baseball.
“Now you’ll have to work full time,” he sneered. My heart was in the home while his had been far away. I thought about the long years spent here raising our three children.
“You can have the house.” He’d already divvied up the goods with devious calculation. Wasn’t our long history together precious to him? Being in love was juvenile euphoria and hormones. But I loved him with an abiding, comfortable love most long marriages enjoy. They echoed in my brain as I drove to work.įleeting thought: All I have to do is glide over into oncoming traffic and close my eyes. “I’m not in love with you anymore.” The words pierced my heart like a knife. Names are changed to protect privacy.ĭecember 30, 2002. My prayer is for this post to be an encouragement to women faced with infidelity, abandonment, divorce and the despair that goes with it. I pray that readers can see evidence of the Lord’s mercy and long-suffering toward me through His miracles and kind Providence displayed while I forged through deep waters. While this blog’s focus is on remarriage after divorce from a Reformed perspective, I thought it appropriate to post my testimony of God’s care during the time of my separation, divorce and eventual relocation from New York to Indiana.