About 2 years ago, I felt really difficult to please my husband. I tried to assist him at work and took care of our household. I felt that he was drifting away to seek his own desire as he stopped contributing financially to family but started buying a lot of things for his own enjoyment. He seemed to be angry at me most of the time. I tried to talk to him, but he just brushed me off with ‘nothing’s wrong’. Sometimes he was more cheerful when we talked about other subjects but when it came to family issues, he refused to talk or just busted into anger. I also made many negative comments to catch his attention to making sure he knew I needed his love. But this caused even more tension between us.

 I had never seen anyone who can be so easily triggered and be so angry that I was really scared and hurt at his explosion. There were times when I was in his car and he drove really fast and very close to the car in front and he turned into a scary monster that I suspected whether there was demonic spirit in him. Sometimes I felt maybe he wanted to kill me by trying to cause an accident. Yet I just couldn’t understand what was wrong with me that make him hate me so much. I couldn’t feel any love from him. I went to Focus on the Family for counseling support.

After some questions on myself and my husband’s background, my counselor told me that my husband obviously was holding on a lot of pain from childhood, and it just started growing and growing without his own control of awareness on it and any trigger would unload all the accumulated anger. I was totally alone and I was breastfeeding my daughter so I just focused more on my baby. Then it came to a time when my husband just ignored me totally at home and in public. I felt totally rejected as he smiled while talking to someone and when I talked to him, he would brush me off with a blunt face. The worst times were he never even looked at me when we eat together. I screamed to God asking Him why this was happening to me.

Slowly I too lost my faith on God seeing my husband being a Christian and yet so cruel and unloving. I then left my job to join another company (I was in the same company with my husband) thinking it would solve my problem since I outperformed my husband. I thought that could be the reason. I carried so much worry about the future since my husband was no longer contributing and we have a baby. I started loosing respect for him too for not being a spiritual leader and responsible husband. I blamed him on my spiritual failure. Since he ignored me most of the time, although we still go church and cell meeting together, our minds and spirits went separate way. We were physically close yet we didn’t feel for each other anymore. I thought it was getting better since we seldom argued anymore as we didn’t talk.

One night, just four days before I due to travel for a week for job training, I discovered my husband’s affair with a lady. I saw all their conversation on-line expressing feelings for each other, they even shared they have lost feelings for their spouses. Words I longed for from my husband, he had given to another lady who had not done anything for him. I was shocked by the truth, so shaken that my whole body went cold, and my mind blanked. I didn’t know what would be the next change. I thought the worst, I visualized myself as a divorcee and a life without a husband and a father for my girl. I asked God why, how could this happen. My pain was so overwhelming that my tears just flow non-stop for 48 hours. I couldn’t sleep and eat and had to call off from work. When I confronted my husband, he told me he has no more feeling for me, he told me he wanted a divorce. I was in deep emotional pain, I bottled down some liquor to help me sleep, but I ended up more depressed. I just prayed to God, “Please take my pain away, please help me, I can’t take it anymore”.

My sister took me to Pastor James, and he gave me the verse “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds (James 1:2)”. That time I didn’t understand why God said to be joyful when it is most painful period. Pastor prayed for me. I felt a sense of peace and relief.. Just half way through my 1st session with Pastor James, my husband smsed me telling me he wanted to see Pastor James. This was a miracle. I was so surprised as he had always rejected the idea of counseling. As he joined us, Pastor James led him to some questions on his childhood and shared with him on the sin of adultery, anger, ego and pride as well as generation sins. My husband confessed all the sins identified and Pastor led him to prayer to break ties with all sins including the unrightfully relationship and asked god for forgiveness. Then we went through a series of sessions of counseling to heal our relationship and forgiveness to each other and to others who had hurt us. Pastor James also guided us on God’s designed role for husband and wife in marriage and identified ways of expressing love to each other. We then realized we had actually forgotten how to love each other the way we used to.

I started walking closer to God, praying for my husband everyday. God kept comforting me and reminding me to be patience by His words. I lost patience sometimes when changes were not as I expected. Then God told me to wait and be patience, and not to interfere with His plan on my husband. With God’s strength, I was able to forgive my husband which I never thought was possible. But I was still finding it difficult to trust him as it consumed a lot of my energy and time checking over his phone and laptop. I told God, “I can’t do it, I just can’t trust him again”. God kept His promise, I slowly saw changes in my husband: he started calling me more and shared with me about his work and enjoyed my company. He started giving contribution and working harder on his job. He made effort to spend time with me and our daughter and express his feeling to us. He also became very committed in serving in choir ministry. God has answered my prayer on trusting my husband fully again when my husband stood in front of church sanctuary to share his testimony on our marriage reconciliation. I realized God has given me a new man, the same man with all the qualities I married him for, completed with perfection and refined by fire to remove all the flaws.

Today, I finally understand why God said “Consider pure joy when you face trials of many kinds”, the pain that we both experienced is necessary for molding us to be better characters. And we start to find God’s purpose for us being to testify God’s amazing power on transforming a person from his/her non-perfect pass, restoring broken relationship and healing emotional pain. We now find our purpose in giving hope to couples in middle of marriage crisis. We are now drawn to couples in need, and tell them not to give up hope on their marriage as god has a better plan for them.

Christ takes each sin, each pain, each loss,
And by the power of His cross,
Transforms our brokenness and shame,
So that our lives exalt His name.
– D. De Haan

This writing from RBC devotion comforted me one day during my healing process when I questioned God why I need to go through this pain. This answered my question that my husband’s sin and my pain, will arrived at the same destination, to be transformed so that Jesus’ name be exalted.

To all our sisters and brothers,
With love,

James & Kah Yi
10th June 2009