♕Today's Promise: "It is better to live in the corner of the roof than with the quarrelsome woman in the same house.” Proverbs 25:24
Kiara, how did your Restoration Journey actually begin?
It all started when I left the door wide open in my marriage and the enemy took over me, my life, and my marriage. It began because I was not happy the day after my huge expensive wedding. An old "friend" noticed me pouting and started up a conversation with me. At first I wanted nothing to do with him, but later in the evening after drinking way too much, he approached me asking if he could contact me after I got back from my honeymoon. It’s so insane thinking about this now and I would be horrified if any of my friends told me they’d done this.
I was thirsty for praise since my fiance (now my husband) and I fought the entire time we planned this big outrageous wedding. I wanted my dream wedding and he refused to pay for it. This guy said everything I wanted to hear, he did everything I liked and things that my husband had never done and refused to do. How foolish! I was completely blind and in the hands of the enemy who was leading me slowly off a cliff. It is so true that the enemy did come to steal, kill and destroy us.
So I got completely involved with this OM (Other Man) at my own wedding. Immediately, I started to despise, to humiliate my husband. I did everything to embarrass him. What a fool, what a horror show I had become. Every time my husband approached me to try to find out what he’d done, what we could do to mend things, I distanced myself until I asked my husband to leave. I didn't want him anymore. Dear brides I beg you never to send your husbands away. Trust me, it will end in disaster!
My husband didn’t go right away, not until he was overcome by weariness and he "let me go"! He said that it was okay, he would leave the house, and that I was free. The next morning on a Sunday, I woke up to my husband packing his bags to leave the house, as we had agreed, but even though it was everything I wanted, everything I had wished for, it seemed that something inside me was happening. God already started to touch me at that moment, but the enemy was there in full force. I thought to myself, “This is really it, my husband is about to go,” and then he left and my world collapsed.
How did God change your situation, Kiara, as you sought Him wholeheartedly?
As the days passed, the enemy saw that he started to lose, because I started to see my husband differently. I started to see him with different eyes. I started to be jealous of my husband who began dating right away. I told him to find someone and he did. It was easy. He was attractive and a really nice man. At the same time, the OM (Other Man) started to become uninteresting to me. Not so funny is that I started to disgust him. When I’d reach out to get together, he made excuses to not see me. Glory to God, He put a hedge of thorns around me, and I started wanting to go back to my husband, “It was better for me then than now!” I started to wish for my family, my marriage as I never felt before. I started to see how wonderful my husband was to me and to our daughter.
God took me to the desert and spoke to my heart, gave me a broken heart, filled with His Spirit. It was completely wonderful. I had not sought God in a long long time as you may have guessed. But when I was broken, I started to pray and ask Him to bring my husband back, because my family was very important to me. How wonderful God is. I began to desire it so much that I had never felt anything like it before.
It was then that my husband and I went to the same party, from our mutual friend and when my husband arrived, he was radiant, wonderful, we talked all the time and we ended up leaving the party together. We stayed together that night, but I didn’t let him sleep at home (yes, another mistake). He wanted us to sleep separately, but I thought that my husband would feel like coming back faster, making it too difficult to not come home, and we stayed together in a way as we had never been.
The enemy didn’t let it go and he increased the destruction due to me acting in the flesh again. After that night, it was my husband who said he didn’t want me back! And that’s when the huge fight started, the contentious woman was back worse than before because I just couldn’t believe my husband didn’t want me anymore.
What principles, from God's Word (or through our resources), Kiara, did the Lord teach you during this trial?
It was when I started to insist too much on us reconciling after my husband returned home, against his will. The fights started to happen daily, and I ended up destroying my house with my own hands. During one of the fights he decided to go sleep in his parents' house and took our daughter to sleep with him, because as it is written: It is better to live in the corner of the roof than with the quarrelsome woman in the same house.
So I went to the computer that night and researched marriage restoration and that's when I found the RMI website of this wonderful ministry!! All Honor and All Glory to You Lord for having directed me to this wonderful life saving ministry. That night I immediately started reading the book How God Can and Will Restore Your Marriage. Oh my Lord, what an incredible and wonderful book. Thank you Erin for writing this essential book for our restoration. And I really saw who I was, a quarrelsome woman, contentious, irritable, manipulative, suspicious, my daughter's boss not her mother, the spiritual leader I’d stolen from my husband. I was jealous, eavesdropped on everything. I even hired a detective to follow my husband for a month but by the grace of God I found nothing. “Blessed is the man who does not walk according to the advice of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the circle of scoffers.”
What were the most difficult times that God helped you through, Kiara?
The most difficult times were fights, as I fought in the flesh, and only afterwards did I realize that this is a spiritual battle.
Kiara, what was the “turning point” of your restoration?
Thank God I had the opportunity to read this wonderful book, I thank Erin and this ministry, and reading about my sin did not get out of my head. God showed me there at that moment what I had to do. I started seeking God with all my heart, and so I gave up my life and trusted in His word that says, “Whoever hides his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and abandons them finds mercy.” And this is what I did, I told my husband my adultery, and he forgave me!! All Honor and all Glory to You Lord, and after only a week after I read the book my marriage was restored. I’m embarrassed to say it’s only now after close to two years that I had a friend suggest submitting my testimony.
Tell us HOW it happened, Kiara? Did your husband just walk in the front door? Kiara, did you suspect or could you tell you were close to being restored?
The day I confessed to the adultery I confessed everything to my husband with many tears on both our parts. We agreed that we needed to make God first in each of our lives and first in our home. My husband began attending a church and a men’s fellowship while he suggested I remain at restoration fellowship to be taught by other women.
As much as I walk in the valley of the shadows of death, I no longer fear any harm, because the Lord is with me, He is the first in my life, today I seek His face, today I have more intimacy with my HH (Heavenly Husband) and I give thanks and praise all the time, because I never ever want to go through any of this again! He wants me closer to Him, and to let go of anything that concerns me. Today what’s most important is just me and Him and nobody else do I need, no other man. All I need I ask Him, I seek Him, and He comforts me, I cuddle up in His arms when I need a hug. All His love I give to my husband and daughter.
Would you recommend any of our resources in particular that helped you, Kiara?
I started course 3 the day I was restored and as of today, I have been through almost all the Abundant Life courses, all the Living Lessons and lead a Wise Woman to friends who hear about my testimony. Today I recommend and also do myself is to read the Psalm and Proverb everyday, read the Bible, I pray fast on a regular basis, and most importantly, I learned how essential it is to tithe. When I began to tithe to my storehouse, my own home became His treasured house! I must continue to give back to this wonderful ministry that feeds me spiritually.
I read the encouragement daily, I read the testimonies, I watch the encouragement videos again and again. And when I'm not feeling well, I also read the book Prison to Praise after I learned to Praise God in any and all situations. Trust God and His Word. Make your 3x5 cards, they will help you a lot. I apologize for my testimony coming so late, but it is so wonderful to talk about that which is everything to us, my husband and me. I am delighted to be able to give my testimony and I apologize for not having sent it before. Hallelujah.
Would you be interested in helping encourage other women, Kiara?
For sure! I’d love to start ministering online after having women in my home.
Either way, Kiara, what kind of encouragement would you like to leave women with, in conclusion?
May you never give up, and even after your marriages are restored! Remember, what God has united, do not separate. Don’t follow in my foolishness by making your husband leave. Just know that He is working, and His plans for you are much bigger and better than yours and believe that His work will be complete, leave it to Him to do. “Like streams of water like this is the heart of the king in the hand of the Lord, who inclines him to all his will.”
Seek God with all your heart, do not go back to being a fool, because with “wisdom a house is built, and with understanding it is established; and by knowledge the chambers of all precious and delightful riches will be filled.” Don’t ignore others who need to know the truth, help encourage other women to seek God for their marriages if they have not yet been restored. My prayer partner and I long to have a ministry in our inner city to be able to help more women, the ones who live in poverty due to lacking knowledge that I have been given. I know He will grant this desire to us at the appointed time.
Find more encouragement and overcome the hurdle of #Contentious Woman and #Letting Go by clicking on the #TAG linked to Restored Marriage Testimonies.
Filed under hashtags#: contentious, EH, ePartner, FAL, fasting, HH, letting go, LL, prison to praise, Psalms and Proverbs, RMT, RYM books
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You'll find this in By the Word of Their Testimony (Book 10): "Blessings will Come and Overtake You"
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If you or your husband has returned home, submit your testimony so we can begin to encourage you to continue your Restoration Journey and invite you to our Zoom Fellowship for restored brides.