♕ Today's Promise: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1
Janice, how did your restoration journey actually begin?
I want to start by saying that since I was always a contentious, bossy woman, know-it-all, among other things (I’m so thankful I am not any longer) it took me a long time to realize that my marriage was in bad shape. The company I worked for also went bankrupt, which further contributed to my stress, complaints, murmuring and disgust for things. My husband, who was always extremely affectionate, loving and patient, started to become strange and cold with me. He’d spend a lot of time on his cell phone and I started to get very bothered by it. However, despite complaining about it, I never touched his things, until one day by chance when I took his cell phone out of the charger to put mine on, I saw an affectionate message from another woman. My world fell at that moment even though he swore it was no big deal and deleted the message.
From then on our marriage was in chaos, the fights were constant until he asked for a separation, saying that “we” didn't work anymore. I, in my foolishness and immaturity, left the house—giving the enemy a key to our front door—quickly entering in to further destroy my marriage. I stayed at my mother's for a month, but we didn't lose contact. I confess that I ran after him, pursuing him, because I didn't know about Letting Go.
After a month I came home and saw his message again with Other Woman. At this moment I went into total despair, I felt used, ridiculed and everything ugly that you can imagine. That was the week we would have been married for ten years. So, I screamed, I told the whole family, I felt like the victim “the poor thing that always did everything in the relationship and was betrayed.” That same day I moved back in with my mother.
How did God change your situation, Janice, as you sought Him wholeheartedly?
I was totally desperate, because I really saw that my marriage of ten years was falling apart and that despite so much arrogance, I wanted my marriage back. I loved my husband too much. So one night of crying and suffering I started searching the internet for restored marriages. At first I found things that didn't help me much and just made me more depressed, showing me that there was no hope. Until I found the RMI. THANK YOU GOD!
I downloaded the book, How God can and will restore your marriage, but I got irritated, because I could not understand the biblical passages at all and as the book is full of the Word of God, I gave up reading it. But I continued to read the testimonies on the website. Then I started asking God to do that for me too and to please help me to make sense of His Word. I don't know how to explain it, but God took root within me that I should trust Him and not give up.
This all happened towards the end of the year and my earthly husband asked me to spend the New Year at his sister's house in another state. I went, even though I knew my family didn't want me there. I started to be suspicious of everything. Every time he looked at his phone I was in agony. We fought again on the day we returned home, but since I no longer wanted to be ashamed of having to go back to my mother's house for the third time, I went home with him, but we were simply separated inside the same house.
At this point, I started to seek God even more. I didn't believe what was happening to me. I read the testimonies and saw the women talking about the Restore Your Marriage book and I said to myself, “I need to understand what it says....” So I started reading the book again, but this time God touched me, and I understood every passage! Soon I started to see that I had destroyed my home. My heart started to be broken. The problem is that my earthly husband didn't want to hear from me at all. We stayed in the same house and decided that until we managed to sell the house we would live together. It was one of the most difficult moments of my life!
What principles, from God's Word (or through our resources), Janice, did the Lord teach you during this trial?
I always had difficulties with the principle of letting go, but I knew it was necessary. I avoided him rather than always trying to be “around” and I stopped catering to him, fixing meals, doing his laundry. At the same time I began to pray non-stop, as I had lost my job and stayed at home all day. And I fasted too. As I clung to God, reading His Word, my earthly husband approached me. As Erin quotes in one of the videos, I never stopped being intimate with him. I confess that I felt used many times, but I cried out to God to take those feelings away from me because I knew it was the enemy wanting to steal my blessing.
What were the most difficult times that God helped you through, Janice?
It was having to be inside the house with my earthly husband and sleeping in separate rooms. Knowing that he was exchanging messages with other woman. But God helped me and did not abandon me. It was months of crying and suffering. I missed feeling loved, but He supplied everything then once I met my Man in Finding the Abundant Life, I was able to let go because I felt loved. I stopped crying and began to be happier than I’d ever been!
Janice, what was the “turning point” of your restoration?
Erin says that when God’s blessing is close, the enemy will rise up so that we will give up and it is true. I was fine, praying and fasting, enjoying my new Love. I knew that in God's timing He was going to restore my marriage. My earthly husband said that he had no one else and that he just wanted to separate. But I prayed to God in prayer that if there was something or someone hidden that He would show me. And my Beloved is faithful. One day, I woke up knowing that God was at my side and that it was only a matter of time for my restoration to happen. One day out of the blue my earthly husband said he had no more contact with the other woman. I was elated but then...
As I was doing my housework, I thought I should do his laundry, but as I put his clothes in the machine, inside my earthly husband's pants pocket was a receipt from a motel dated on the previous day. My dear ones, I don't want to expose my earthly husband, I just want you to show you how dirty the enemy is. At this moment I was very attached to my Man so I asked Him and He said, “Trust Me. Don’t believe what you see, that is not faith.”
Tell us HOW it happened, Janice? Did your husband just walk in the front door? Janice, did you suspect or could you tell you were close to being restored?
My Heavenly Husband is merciful and soooo loving. After this situation, God spoke to the heart about my earthly husband and he started to incline his heart towards me. He apologized to me and said he was sorry and that I was the right woman for him, the only woman for him. He said that if I could really forgive him that we could move to where his parents lived and start a new life. My friends, my restoration came in the midst of a great tribulation. When I began my journey I cried a lot to God for my earthly husband to say that he loves me again and to begin wearing his ring again (he hadn’t worn it for years). And it’s beginning to happen! He began to say he loves me. And as for the ring, he told me it was too tight on his finger and then told me at the Easter service... "Let's both buy new rings."
Would you recommend any of our resources in particular that helped you, Janice?
Yes. I mainly recommend the book, How God Can and Will Restore Your Marriage, Courses, Devotionals and Testimonies (they were the resource that wouldn't let me give up).
I also must thank Erin from the bottom of my heart for sharing her life with me and with thousands of people who need encouragement and would be lost without the hope she devotes her life to give us!
Would you be interested in helping encourage other women, Janice?
Yes
Either way, Janice, what kind of encouragement would you like to leave women with, in conclusion?
I would like to ask you who are in the midst of the blazing fire not to give up. God is greater than anything you can be feeling. I thought my marriage was hopeless, but with God nothing is impossible. I am now living in a new state, living a new life, but this new life is centered around the Lord. I need to improve a lot, but I know that God will help me. Marriage is something from God, it is not His intention that your family be destroyed. And don't forget, when it starts to get worse—don't stop believing because your blessing is coming quickly!!!
"Wait on the Lord, and keep your way and you will be exalted to inherit the land; you will see it when the wicked are despicable." Psalm 37: 34
Psalm 121:1 “I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
Find more encouragement and overcome the hurdle of #Letting Go and #Contentious by clicking on the #TAG linked to Restored Marriage Testimonies.
Filed under hashtags#: contentious, FAL, letting go, OW, RMT
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