So many times during my 7-year journey of waiting for my husband to come back to his senses, back to our marriage, and back to God, I stood firm on what “I believed.” I stood rooted in a belief that every time my husband ended the affair,  he was done and would not hurt me again. I stood rooted on this belief that his being sorry for hurting our marriage was enough to keep him from doing it again, that he had learned his lesson.

I believed our love was enough, that our marriage was THE most important relationship, and it was enough to keep us together and him out of trouble. 

I Was Wrong

I was wrong in my belief, God knew it, and He had to change what I believed in by allowing that belief to expose itself.

The reason I believed it was enough was because the love I held for my husband was enough to keep me faithful. And this is a very dangerous love because it interferes with the first Commandment. 

 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Mark 12:30

You see, I believed in the kind of love we desire and are created for, a love that would protect you, keep you safe, stable, faithful, and would never leave or forsake you, I just failed to understand that we are created to love and be loved by God, and believed that we are created to first and foremost find our person that becomes our whole world.

And what we believe in affects how we stand

When we believe in something, it shapes our thinking, how we react, HOW WE STAND, and from there…..how we move forward. 

If you believe that your spouse is unfaithful because of you, and if you fix yourself, all will be ok again. Same as if you believe your spouse is unfaithful because they met this person who captivated and snared them, and if that person would go away, all would return to normal.

While some aggravate and affect our spouses, all of these beliefs are not the real reason why unfaithful spouses occur. It’s a lack of relationship with their Savior.  When we have a relationship with the Father, we are protected by certain things, which I will call fruit.

There will be fruit when God is first in our life, when we love Him first, as we should. The kind of fruit that is filled with knowledge, faith, trust, and wisdom!

Fear of the LORD is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment. Proverbs 9:10

 Read Ephesians 5 from beginning to end. It starts with, 

 Eph 5:1 Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. 

And ends with,

31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

My Belief

My belief was all centered around everything but the Father’s relationship being important. And no matter how much I tried to change my belief, get it from my head to my heart, I could not. I knew God was supposed to be my first priority. I knew that I was supposed to want and desire for my husband to love God above all else, but I didn’t. And that was because I wasn’t there myself. 

Each time my husband turned away from his sins, and turned back to me, our marriage, and our family, I believed that this would be the last affair and it would not happen again -until it did. Over and over, it kept happening, and that is what shook, rattled, and knocked me off where I was standing on what I believed.

So while it was the absolute most shocking, hurtful, and painful thing I went through, I am glad it happened to me. It HAD to happen to get me out of my darkened state and into the truth. God had not been first in my heart until I was forced by my husband’s affairs to let him go. Each time he did it again, something in me changed in my belief. Each time he failed at being faithful, something in me gave way. Slowly I transitioned away from him being my everything to God because God was faithful, stable, unwavering, unconditional and motivated by love. Everything I wanted in my husband, I found God was offering. I just had to learn to let that transition happen. And It happened because my husband failed, over and over and over. And if my husband had NOT failed, I know I would have stayed right there in that place where God was not first, but my husband was. So now you understand. My husband HAD to remain snared, in order for ME to wake up! 

“Awake, O sleeper,
rise up from the dead,
and Christ will give you light.” Eph 5:14

 I will tell you that while I watch Standers go through this with their spouses AFTER they think they are restored, only to find themselves back in the storm, a storm that never really left, they were just  in the eye of the storm, I see many quit, but then some stick with it and get to that awakening that changes them forever. 

Some wake up without ever having those ‘false starts.’ Some transition during the long seasons of no contact or times when things stay stuck, and no change is happening. But I have not seen these changes occur if they quit or move on to someone else. It happens AFTER that relationship fails, and they find themselves questioning everything. 

So many Standers are standing in that darkened state of mind, where their marriage, that relationship is first and foremost, and God is just Someone to help them get back what they lost. They knock and keep knocking on that door, asking, “Save my marriage.”

I explain what happens while we are standing there knocking. It’s EVERYTHING! It’s why God keeps us standing out there, knocking for our marriage to be saved, why our spouses keep breaking our hearts repeatedly, because it helps us Knock with a New Sound. And when God hears that new sound, of us knocking because we truly, honestly, sincerely WANT Him above all else, that is when the door will open! And when it does, your life will radically change. 

Having your spouse come home unrepentant, work on the marriage, only to reveal that snare was dormant and never left, will test everything you have not to want to quit and give up. But it’s going to reveal and expose your own heart. Why you believed that your spouse wasn’t cable of hurting you again?

Why do you believe that loving us is what keeps people from sin? I believed that keeping my husband in ‘fear of Sheila’ was going to keep him in line and prevent him from ever hurting me. We believe in ourselves and leave out God! 

And that is what God is working to change in us. We believe we hold the power, and if only we treat them right and love them best, they won’t turn away from us. I recently did a video on how we are under the misconception that we have more power in our consequences than God. All these beliefs are wrong!!

Nothing but loving God first and foremost in our hearts is going to bring the fruit that we so desperately desire. 

Take some time to study this passage from Jeremiah 17

5 This is what the LORD says: “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength and turn their hearts away from the LORD.

6 They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness, in an uninhabited salty land. 

7 “But blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence.

8 They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.

9 “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?

10 But I, the LORD, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”

While I wish I could write that perfect article, record that perfect video, say that most needed thing that helps those transition to where they need to be, I know this can’t come from me. It has to come by way of having that experience with God because it needs to be personal. I can tell you that if you keep going, it WILL HAPPEN! So keep going.

Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger