My relationship with God was restored after I salvaged my marriage.
Hello, Mrs. Ester
I’m writing to you because I would like to share my testimony and my faith experience with God after getting married and joining the Work of God.
I've been married for a year and seven months, but the first eight months were full of horrible experiences and tough challenges. There was much weeping and pain from my part during those first months but my husband’s reaction was to be cold and indifferent; he acted immature and insensitive towards my feelings. No matter how hard I tried, he always seemed to disapprove of everything I did. I always idealized getting married to a pastor because I thought that meant we’d have an unshakeable marriage. From the time we began dating, and that lasted three and a half years, I thought we’d have a stable marriage because we were both born of God.
However, this situation completely took me by surprise and instead of having my focus turned towards pleasing God, I began paying attention to the pain building up inside my heart. I asked God for help, but I didn’t know what step to take after that in order to change the situation.
I thought: How could he pretend to be so respectful while we were dating, but now, he doesn’t respect me as a wife or show any type of affection towards me? I felt cheated by God because I always asked Him to show me the right person to marry. And where was He now? I thought this way because I was far from Him.
Truth is, my husband was and is a man of God, and must have been very disappointed with me as well. One of my biggest mistakes during this time was to have trusted everyone around me, because within five minutes of conversation, I’d already be spilling out my problem.
One morning, after spending a long night crying, I asked God for a permanent solution because I couldn’t take it any longer. We were supposed to have a meeting that Thursday for pastors and wives, so I asked God to use the bishop to speak to my husband. I hoped he’d hear the bishop, since he wouldn’t listen to me whenever I pressed for change.
To my surprise, the message of that meeting was totally directed at me. The bishop spoke about wives who were transferred to other countries but because they hadn’t been born of God, they’d fallen into depression. Can you imagine how shocked I was to hear that?
I thought: Now my husband is really going to think I'm demon possessed because I’m always crying about everything! But God was at that meeting; He was answering that morning’s prayer by showing me that I was the real problem.
Even though I felt crushed after that meeting, something different happened. As we were leaving, my husband didn’t seem to be so turned off by me anymore! He seemed to look at me with love and compassion.
The Holy Spirit must have touched him to help me. He had love in his eyes. He went to church and I went home. On the way home, I began thinking and came to a decision. I was going to change and that would cause everything else to change.
The first thing I did was to restore my communion with my 1st husband, the Lord Jesus, and work towards changing my attitude. Some time went by but nothing changed, he continued to act immature and hurt me with his actions. But, this time something was different: I was prepared to act mature towards him. I understood that until now, my actions were only making things worse between us and, above all, displeasing my Lord.
During my change, I learned how to be a submissive and respectful wife, because how could I demand him to respect me when I confronted him head-on in order to get my point across?
Nevertheless, I only began truly trusting in God after I stopped searching for my answer in a man. Now, it was me and God, in the battle to overcome this situation. I became a woman of prayer. I no longer looked for a shoulder to cry on. Whenever, I was faced a new challenge, I turned to prayer and asked for God's direction. Instead of arguing or crying, I learned to choose the right time and the right way to talk to my husband. I learned to depend on God and He showed me the way. This caused my internal change to become more apparent.
My husband no longer acted cold and indifferent. I no longer had to beg for his affection, like before. He began opening up and allowing me into his life, in response to my submission and surrender to him.
Today, I know what it means to sacrifice in exchange for a happy marriage. And that can only happen after you surrender your whole life to God. During some time, I was the only one in the marriage sacrificing, but God honored me. Through my commitment to God and daily prayers, I can do all things.
My prayers can even impact his ministry. Although he’s been doing the Work of God for 9 years, my husband’s meetings were very bland. But now, through prayer, he took a leap of faith in his ministry and even he’s been more applied on building a closer relationship with God.
God has been blessing his ministry more and more each day. I am no longer spiritually sterile; I’ve been bearing fruit as well. We continue having our daily battles, but now there is inner peace, and our union is turning into a delicious puree.
God bless you and the bishop for all of your guidance and Mrs. Cristiane and Mrs. Viviane, who also guide me through their weekly articles.
A kind hug,
(It was a pleasure to meet you last Thursday).
Elizélia Jardim
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