Standers,

When your spouse considers coming home. When they give you the indication that it’s a possibility, PLEASE don’t take charge. Please don’t run to set up marriage counseling. Don’t start to ask them all the hard questions. Don’t take the lead.

Over and over I see spouses want to come back and have to face the task of fixing their relationship with God, AND their marriage at the same exact time. The Stander quickly puts all their demands on the spouse. They want accountability, answers, marriage counseling. They want promises. They want to know what happened, why it happened, and reassurance that it will never happen again. Throw in the fact that their kids are still angry, the inlaws are still unforgiving, and your spouse is tormented daily with the fear of failing, and always being told it would be so much easier to just go back to where they came (other person) because it’s going to be impossible to fix everything they broke.

Please, resist the urge to be in charge and make yourself be secure. Now is not the time to leave the refuge and shelter of God and step out from under His wings and try to take matters into your own hands. MANY spouses come home and need time to really work out that heart change repentance they began. They need time to deal with the shame, guilt, condemnation and learn how to battle the fear through bravery and courage to keep doing the right thing.

They need YOUR reassurance that you are so rooted and grounded in faith, hope trust in GOD that they are not going to break you if they mess up.

The first year my spouse came home, I made it very clear to my husband I was a fragile egg. That if he even thought of messing up I was going to break and he was going to be responsible for it. I was so insecure in my relationship with God that all I was doing was scaring the crud out of my husband and putting intense pressure and burden on him. I made myself very unattractive to him through my insecurity and demands for him to be trustworthy.

I was driven through intense fear to always make it known how fragile and on the verge of a breakdown, I was. That was control and manipulation in a form I had never known before. I really believed that I could control my husband’s desire and impulses to sin, if I made myself a severe enough consequence. I was happy to share with him how sick from fear I was. How often I had nightmares. How I didn’t sleep and how the stress was making me feel like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. Instead of getting the desired results where my husband desired to do better to SAVE me, he resented me and RAN.

During this time of Standing, you can’t fake a serious relationship with God because the moment your spouse comes home, the TRUTH Will come out. If you don’t know your Savior now than that is going to be real evident when your spouse comes home and you quickly try and make them your savior. When you right away need to trust them, need them to heal you, need them to be your security. ALL the important things that you should be doing right now in your relationship with God so when they come home, you don’t need your spouse to fill God’s shoes!

I am going to share with you something really important. YOU are just as much being restored to a right relationship with God more than your spouse. For some of you, this storm was JUST as much about YOU as it was about your spouse. We come to the Lord and want to use Him to get our spouses home, but what God does is USE that to create a relationship with us He never had.

So many are just as lost and blind with scales over their eyes to the fact that God means nothing more to them other than a thing to be used to get what they want.

Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger