Ed and Kim-In His Time! Marriage Restoration Testimony

His timing. 

How many times have we heard those words and wondered really what they mean?  I think I have learned what they mean. Five times we tried in our own strength, in our own time, to reconcile.  But, the last time…well, that was HIS time. Let me tell you what I mean…

My husband, Ed, and I had been married for 24 years.  We weren’t high school sweethearts, but we had met just out of high school.  He was 19 and I was 18. We dated, but only for a few months. He broke up with me and eventually he moved several states away.  I didn’t think too much of it except he was always in my heart and mind. However, life went on. We both lived with other people.  We started our lives on totally backwards paths. We were walking the very wide path of life. Both of us were lukewarm Christians all our lives.  Both at this point in our lives were more interested in the “New Age” movement, and it was always about what made US feel good. Eventually, we found each other again, and dated, moved in together and soon got pregnant.  Marriage took a back burner, as we lived our cohabitating lifestyles. Really had a backwards view, huh?

Five years later, I really decided I wanted the “wedding I always wanted”, and he agreed.  I think he will tell you he went along with it because he just thought that’s what he was supposed to do…not because he was deeply in love and was dying to get married!  When we went to get our marriage license, the court clerk asked for our drivers licenses. We both handed them over with matching surnames. At that time, just going to the drivers license office, you could just tell them what name you wanted to use, so I had changed my last name to his a few years prior to our wedding.  She told us that she couldn’t give us a license unless she married us right there. So she did, right at the desk, and back dated our “wedding date” five years prior. Not the best way to start a married life together. It was certainly not a wedding with God in attendance (although I know He has always been in it), no matter where we were.  A few days later, we walked down the aisle and did have a pastor marry us. We married in our back yard, and it was lovely.

We struggled in our marriage.  God was NEVER in the center. He wasn’t my best friend, nor did He even get the same respect a third cousin would get!  We were a young, struggling family. Financially, spiritually, you name it. We struggled. Twice during the first five years before we got married, my husband had left the relationship.  Twice, I was a single mother, as we had one child. But, even then, God kept bringing us back together. You would think that He would have gotten our attention. Nope, we kept living very worldly lives.  However, things started getting better. Financially, we were doing better and better. We ended up getting pregnant again. We had another son. Things were actually becoming easier in our marriage. We had a good marriage.  Our kids were happy, although they struggled throughout their tweens and teens with anxiety and that was stressful for our family. I thought we leaned on each other and we were doing fine. We started taking vacations, just the two of us.  Something we had never really done, and we loved it! We finally started being a couple, as we had always been a “family”.

Our 24th anniversary, we spent a wonderful vacation in the Dominican Republic together.  We were even entertaining buying a condo there to vacation with our family. That was in April, 2015.  By May, 2015, my husband was gone.

I was devastated.  I was in the middle of the construction phase of building out a new restaurant, but I could do nothing to prepare for that restaurant.  To be fair to my husband, I asked him to leave. I had so much pride at that time in my life; I remember saying something like, “if you don’t want to be here, I don’t want you here”.  I remember sitting in my car outside the restaurant, staring at the brick wall, and uttering the words that changed my season from sunny to very, very dark and cold.

He took me up on my request and left.  He was gone that afternoon. He initially checked into a hotel, but within a week, he had moved in with another woman.  He was texting back and forth with a woman he worked with since the beginning of May, and this is the woman he moved in with.  In my anger and confusion, I hired a private investigator because the things he was telling me were not adding up. I used the PI, but God convicted me of this nonsense, so I stopped all further contact with the PI.  However, this PI was the way that I learned of what he was doing…who he was living with, and who she was. Still wasn’t the right way to go about it, and God has taught me so much during this storm, and the last 4 ½ years, in general.  This was only one of the first things that He taught me.  

After the initial bombshell that landed about my husband moving out and moving in with another woman so quickly, I didn’t know where to turn.  I was a Christian, yes, but I didn’t understand that God truly had this all worked out. I didn’t understand the magnitude of what the cross truly meant, and that the love of Jesus was real.  I had to learn all that, and it took a good while. The beginning of my “stand” occurred as I stood in a Christian book store (God had this orchestrated all along) and a tiny book caught my eye.  There was only one copy, a miniature pamphlet, really. It cost me $3.95, and it was the best investment I have ever made in my life, as it was the initial push to becoming a stander! “How to Save Your Marriage Alone”, by Ed Wheat, was shouting to me!  I thought, “Why yes, I am going to have to save my marriage alone. There isn’t anyone else standing here that wants to help me, so let’s do this.” Right there in the book store, God spoke the first words to me by leading me there in the first place, and secondly, by guiding me to this tiny giant of a book.  

I went to work.  Reading, learning, crying.  I had to learn what worship and praise were.  I had to learn that Jesus loved me so much that He would bring me to my knees so that I would learn who He was.  I learned my worth: not determined by if my husband loved me or not, but that my Daddy loved me period. I grew up without my dad in my life.  I would see him from time to time, but I never felt like he loved me like a daughter. I felt like I was a weekend chore whose box had to be checked.  I had two other step-dads in my life, but was always in their way. So, my Heavenly Father had to really get down to the nitty-gritty inside of me and teach me that He was all I needed.  Even if my husband never came back home, I would be ok because I had Jesus. You know that “childlike faith” that He asks for in Matthew 18:3? “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” 

That’s where I had to go…I had to believe and trust and hope like a child. I took everything in the Bible as truth and His word.  “You said…” was my go to statement. And I believed it. 

Standing on His promises was truth to me. I believed He would do what He promised. Did I waiver and doubt? Yes, I did. But, I would soon get right back up and say, “But, You said…” 

I opened my eyes and my heart to see God’s hand in everything.  Godly people, His word, music…they were all catalysts for His message.  I was getting it into my soul and my spirit that I was loved by my Creator!!!  That is an ongoing process even now, but the first year and a half were learning months.  It was like at a year and a half, I finally “got it”. I spent the first year and a half talking to others about my circumstances; counselors, mentors, coaches, friends, and one day it finally hit me: I am supposed to be COVERING my husband!  I had failed at this important role. I let my husband down, my family down, and my God down. I needed to cover my husband and stand in the gap. No more victim!! I put my head down and learned to pray FOR my husband. Not for him to come home (although I didn’t not want that), but for his heart, and his well being.  For his integrity and his chains to be broken. For freedom, for him to become the man that God designed him to be. I was truly standing in the gap for my husband’s brokenness. I wanted my husband to have a relationship with God more than anything. More than my loneliness, more than my fear, more than what I wanted.  

Let me address those first 18 months.  My husband and I tried to reconcile. Five different times.  Five false starts. Every time, I was filled with such hope, but then I was crushed and had to build myself back up again.  God wasn’t in the middle of those five false starts. I was not healed. I was not ready to be the wife he needed. I asked questions every single time.  I put boundaries down, I did so many things I cannot begin to say that were wrong for us. I was still so broken…I wanted my husband to heal my heart. He couldn’t because he was so broken.  Neither of us were ready. I needed my heart filled and then I needed Jesus to continue to pour His love into my broken cup. I needed my cup to truly overflow. Until that happened, I couldn’t love my husband because he would take what I had in my cup.  I had to love from the overflow of the love of Jesus Christ. I say to standers or anyone who might be hurting, to just let Jesus love you back to life first. I think that is where I needed to be to not be angry or judgmental or accusing towards my husband.  There was no other way for me. Jesus was loving my husband through me. I don’t know how else to say that.

Ed left in May, 2015.  In September, 2016, we had our last “false start”.  He began talking to me about grand plans of building a house on a lot he had purchased while we were separated in North Carolina.  We spent a couple weeks discussing the style of the house, what we wanted together in the house that would be custom built. I believe this false start only lasted a couple weeks, when he lied to me about what he was doing one evening, and he was actually with the other woman.  Somehow it was revealed to me, and I asked him about it the next day. He admitted it, and when asked why he did that, his response was that he was just “being selfish”. That stuck with me, and it was true. I think it’s true of all prodigals. They are being selfish…just walking the worldly path, and doing what they want to do…not caring about or considering the carnage that is left behind.  Just living their life totally for them. I do not think he was really considering the way I felt knowing that he had lied to me, because he had learned to compartmentalize those feelings and thoughts. Otherwise, it becomes too painful for prodigals to admit what they are doing to others. They have to shove those thoughts away and pack them in their own boxes or else it brings shame and guilt. 

After this last false start, he decided he was done for the last time. He had to do something about this, and he went on his search to find a lawyer to divorce me. I had made it clear many times, that if that’s what he wanted to do, I knew I couldn’t stop him; however, I couldn’t participate in the divorce, because that would go against what I had learned and now firmly believed in. “God, You said what you joined together, no man could separate.  My husband can try, but it’s just a piece of paper in a court. Not what you say!!” A few months later, I was served papers that described his intentions to divorce me at my home, and it hurt like crazy. I had to remember and remind God of what He said though. I took the papers and hid them under a recliner in the farthest part of my house where I didn’t have to see them. Silly, but that’s what I needed to do! After those papers were served, I didn’t hear another thing about them.  I guess ignorance was bliss in those months.

It was early May, 2017.  Our youngest son was turning 18, and he wanted to go to Colorado and hang out with one of his friends.  So we traveled to Colorado from Texas and spent a few days there. I got the boys their own hotel room, and I got myself a separate one!  Who wants to hang with two 18 year old boys??? I remember one day sitting in my room alone crying out to God. I couldn’t believe that my husband was not there celebrating our kiddo turning 18.  It was unimaginable to me. I said specifically to God, “This marriage looks impossible, God! Totally impossible. I don’t see a way for it to be restored, but I know you have a way. But I just don’t see it.”  It wasn’t long until I started getting emails from my husband with a different tone to them. Nice. Gentle. Sweet. Not really flirty, but friendly. They were like a sweet salve to a nasty wound. They became more frequent and more personal.  I will never forget one of the lines that he wrote, “I hope I’m not given up on.” I replied, “Never.”

By late June, my husband was home.  The other woman was gone out of his life for good.  At least from my husband’s perspective. They still worked together, which was very, very difficult for me.  But I just prayed and let God work that out. Do you know it wasn’t but a couple weeks later that my husband told me that she gave her notice and left the company.  Thank you, God!!! My husband was nothing less than willing to let me know if he had talked to or bumped into her at all. However, my husband also chose to work more from home (thankful that in his line of work he was able to do that) to lessen the interaction.  God knew just what my heart needed.

Let me touch on what my husband says brought him home.  Besides him knowing through hindsight that he nor I were ready during the five false starts, it was the changes in me that made him sit up and take notice.  I run a couple of decently successful restaurants in the Houston suburbs. Our ABC affiliate did an interview of me talking about what my restaurants are all about.  They are not just a place to eat, I actually consider them a ministry. I have scripture on the walls, and sticky notes written by customers, covering the restroom walls that are encouragements to anyone who reads them.  The ABC station ran a 3 ½ minute spot during their evening news about how Jesus’s presence is alive and well in my restaurants, and how my restaurants are positive places in the community.

My husband, Ed, tells the story of sitting on his couch at the time, and with the other woman, watching this news story.  He says that he recorded it and played it back over and over. Watching for what? He saw Jesus in me, that’s what he was seeing. I was full of joy and love and hope, and he saw that in me. That’s why I say it is so important to let Jesus love you back to life. He was scared at first, because he thought it was just a plot to get me home.  It was not. It was the way that I learned to live my life. Ed learned to trust me. I learned to love him. Unconditionally love him. He came home broken, leaving a life that he had re-built for himself, and knowing there were lots of bridges he had burned. But God has overcome those.  

He got his divorce.  In February or March, 2017, the divorce was final.  I had absolutely no idea. I didn’t show up for court, and in Texas, I didn’t have to.  When he came home in June, he told me we were divorced. I was so hurt. But I stand behind the fact that it was just a governmental paper that a judge signed.  I was still married in the eyes of the Lord. My husband has been home over two years. Our youngest son welcomed him home with open arms (then, he was 18). We have a 27 year old son that has just started talking to us.  He was so angry that I let my husband come home, that he felt like I chose sides. He hasn’t completely forgiven us, but he is taking steps I never thought he would take. It was like I had two prodigals. I use all the skills and tools that I learned while standing for my husband and my marriage. 

Unconditional love is the key to me. Loving from that overflow. The scripture that I have on the wall of my restaurants for the whole world to see is the scripture I have stood on throughout my storm; with my husband and now with my son. God told me it was a promise for my family, and I believe it.  He WILL do it again! “They will be called oaks of righteousness.” Isaiah 61:3.

 I am waiting, Lord, as “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”  Psalm 27:13.

Love. Kim