Part Three – Grounds For Divorce

 

In the weeks following my husband’s confession of his affair and pornography addiction, somehow I began to make big decisions, get groceries, pay the bills, and claim back my home all with a clear mind. I really have no idea how it all happened other than by the grace of God interceding on my behalf.

I was very scared of what was to come. I would get out of bed every morning to nurse Scarlett, and then I would sit in that rocking chair in her room trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next. Each moment felt excruciating.

I was also still so humiliated. I didn’t walk into the grocery stores around me for nearly three months (thank you, clicklist). I didn’t go to the Target by my house alone for a whole year. Instead I would drive 30-40 minutes away to a Target far enough where I felt comfortable to take my time and not be anxious about running into someone. I just wasn’t in a strong enough place to handle much in that first year.

I was at a major crossroads. What Cameron did was grounds for divorce. This phrase came up with almost everyone I talked to during those first few crucial weeks. I was constantly reminded. I respected myself and therefore I had no idea how I could make anything work BUT divorce.

Then there was God. I felt him begin to impress on me in those early weeks exactly what he had in mind, and it was this: “As long as Cameron moves forward in marriage recovery, I want you to move forward also.”

To my surprise, it didn’t feel insensitive. It didn’t make me feel hopeless. It didn’t sound harsh. His words felt gentle, convicting, and hopeful. And somewhere in the depths of my despair and crumbling resolve, I found just enough faith left to say, “Okay.”

Help began to pour in with our counselors, friends, parents, and mentors. We began to have clarity and direction that God was leading us to an intensive in the mountains of North Carolina called His High Places  (HHP). Cameron would go first on his own for two weeks, and then I would go for a week by myself.

Thankfully HHP was willing to accommodate not only me but my four month old baby who was still nursing every three hours as well as my mom who was all too willing to play nanny for the week. What an absolute gift.

I remember the drive there very vividly. We had finally reached the mountains and were only minutes away but then had to slow way down because the fog had become so dense. I could only see a few feet in front of me as I drove. It felt as though the weather was aware of the internal condition of my mind and heart.

Suddenly in what seemed like a great omen, the fog opened up and before us sat a large, welcoming cabin. When we walked in we were greeted with soft music and a warm fire. Something inside of me wanted to immediately break down and cry out of pure relief. I felt safe for the first time in weeks.

My counselor was an amazing woman in her 70’s named Anita, and she could not have been a more perfect fit to guide me through this crazy process. Every morning she showed up to my room in her perfectly color-coordinated outfits and kept surprising me with her vibrant personality and quick wit. Not only did Anita and I share the same Myers-Briggs personality profile (that’s a lot of points in my book), but she seemed to have a wise, Biblical answer for every single one of my billion questions I brought to her that week. My pain and my story didn’t scare her one bit.

Anita and her husband Sam had started this ministry in the seventies and they were some of the sweetest, wisest people I’ve ever met on this planet. They had just spent two weeks getting to know Cameron and they were quick to share encouragement about him with me. Sam said, “All we truly ask of people when they come is that they are open, humble, repentant, and ready to do the work. Cameron demonstrated each of those things during his time here. He did the hard work.”

I admit it gave me hope. But I still just wasn’t sure I could make it work on my side. Cameron could repent all day long to me, and I still felt completely lost as to how I could ever put the pieces back together in my own heart. 

I remember my first morning there very vividly. Anita and I sat at a small table in the corner of the room I had just slept in. She got out her Bible and laid it on the table. The rough edges from constant use were barely holding it all together. She re-applied her lipstick while I nervously drank my coffee.

We dove right in.

Through tears I told her exactly where I was at. I remember sharing the whole story and saying, “I feel like God wants me to stay in this marriage, but I don’t know how. I respect myself too much. I have boundaries, and he broke them. I made a covenant with him and he broke it! I do not tolerate unfaithfulness. He crossed the line, and so that’s just the end of the road for us. If I stay married to him than it feels like I’m saying that infidelity is something that I tolerate and I DON’T! I don’t know how to stay true to myself and stay married to him, even if that’s what God is asking me to do.”

It was a weepy, angry, messy mouthful.

Her first response was so tender and full of compassion. She was quick to join me in my pain and in my anger. She validated the heartbreaking way that I had been violated, manipulated, and betrayed. She put words and terms to emotions I didn’t even realize I was feeling. Her wisdom brought so much clarity and comfort to my aching heart.

Finally, there was a moment of silence where I just let everything she shared sink in. Then she gave her second response.

She looked at me with her 70+ years of wisdom and a fierce love of Jesus shooting straight into my soul as she said, “You’re not here to be true to yourself. You’re here to be true to the Lord. And what Jesus did on the cross is what changes everything here. In a world that teaches you to only be true to yourself, Jesus wants something greater for you than that.”

I knew what she said was straight from God himself. Her words pierced me. I felt my anger and my thirst for justice begin to melt just a little bit.

This was where I realized the power of the cross. What Cameron did was so horrific, evil, and deadly to me, to himself and countless others. It was unacceptable. Despicable. Unfair. It deserved HELL.

And yet, in God’s eyes, if Cameron was committed to the renewing of his mind through the Holy Spirit, he could actually walk away a free man. A changed man. A new man. The man God had created him to be. And if I were to stay in my marriage, that’s who I would be married to.

This honestly blew my mind. I’d always believed in God’s grace for everyone else, but what Cameron did was too far. How could THAT possibly be forgiven? And not only forgiven, but redeemed to the point of a new chance at life? It was so counter-cultural. It went against everything my flesh was screaming inside. In a world that is consumed with justice and fighting for self, Jesus offers a different system. One that is governed by grace and forgiveness. Anyone who accepts Christ receives these things. It doesn’t make sense, and that’s why it’s so radical.

That’s the true, outrageous gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was becoming very real right in this moment. It was being played out in a way I had never understood before now. I had to decide if I was ready to put my money where my mouth is about what I believed. And that meant addressing the concept of forgiveness.

Day after day, hour after hour that week Anita and I made our way through the really murky waters of my heart. My soul slowly began to feel like it could breathe again. That Wednesday we spent the whole day just focusing on forgiveness and what it truly meant. I had it all wrong.

Learning what forgiveness truly is and isn’t was a huge turning point for me.

I had the misconception that forgiveness meant that I was letting him off the hook, or condoning what he did. I also thought it meant that I had to “feel good” while I did it. I was wrong about all of this. Forgiveness is ultimately surrendering the need for justice to the only One who has the authority to judge. It allows us to break the hold our offender has on us. By the end of the day, all my defenses had broken down, and after writing out each offense that had been committed against me by everyone involved, Anita and I slowly and tearfully prayed our way through each one. Right there at that little table with this wonderful woman as my witness, I prayed out loud and forgave them for each offense. I think this process took several hours, my list was so long.

That week at His High Places changed everything for me. For us. It didn’t fix all of our issues in just a couple weeks, but it did become a very powerful place for us to start. And that’s exactly what we needed – a place to start. It was a place of hope where the power of the Holy Spirit collided with incredible wisdom and resources. You’ll hear more about Cameron’s experience there in part four.

When I got home, one of the first things I felt I needed to do was put my wedding ring back on.

I knew we had a long, long way to go and so much work to do. I was still scared. I still wasn’t sure it could work. But I knew I had to try, and putting that ring back on was my promise to try.

Cameron also moved back in at that point, but he stayed in our guest room for awhile. I wasn’t quite ready to have him in my intimate space. One counselor told us to only do what the most uncomfortable person in the relationship is willing to do. So that’s how it went, and I called the shots for a long time after that.

The next thing I did was figure out my longer-term boundaries. It took me awhile to really learn how to do that and what that even looked like because I never understood them before; now they are just a part of our normal daily life. And I made sure Cameron understood that if he ever lied to me again, I was done.

We also both joined recovery groups, one for men struggling with unwanted sexual behavior, and a support group for the partners of these men. These groups were such a gift from God and I will soon be sharing all of their wonderful information. I looked forward to my women’s group every single Tuesday night. It was hard work, but it was there that God began to free me of the shame that I felt so buried under. In the presence of these broken and hurting women, I began to feel “normal” again. They weren’t judging me. They weren’t shocked by my story. They didn’t hate my husband. They all just hugged me through my tears and cheered me on, each painful step of the way.

We were also both in counseling almost weekly during this time. Financially we just about went broke from all of it, but I still don’t have regrets about that. The thousands of dollars we spent on counseling, retreats, conferences, and our time at His High Places was probably the best money we’ve ever spent on anything.

Well, that and IVF (See also: infertility)

It’s impossible to summarize what our recovery journey has looked like in just a couple of blog posts. Typing it out makes it all seem so simple, but let me tell you those first few months after we came back together were UGLY. I remember losing control and throwing things. Sometimes he had to just walk out the front door and leave until my trauma episode was over. Out of nowhere I’d find myself igniting and just screaming at him. It was awful. The PTSD was a nightmare to live with and still continues to be at times. His depression and mental illness felt impossible to overcome many days. It was HARD. I can’t express that enough.

But it’s been so worth it. And we are looking forward to sharing even more about it in the coming months.

I also want to say that for any woman who’s been through what I have or who may find themselves in an unhealthy relationship, forgiveness should not be dealt with hastily. Here’s why:

In the sexual betrayal world, forgiveness is frequently misunderstood, and has often been spiritually abusive to women going through betrayal trauma. 

For example, I know women personally who were encouraged way too quickly to forgive, and in the process, their trauma and their pain were completely overlooked. I can’t express how damaging this is to women who are at such a pivotal point. It ends up pushing them further away from God and true healing. Forgiveness in these situations needs to be handled with the appropriate understanding of this kind of trauma. 

Each addiction/infidelity story is very different and requires different things to find true healing and redemption whether in the marriage or after it ends. So if you haven’t been through it and you’re not a trained counselor, please try not to give advice. Instead help them get to someone who’s qualified to speak into the situation.

So many things need to be in place to move forward in forgiveness and reconciliation. I’m a huge advocate of boundaries, hard work, counseling, and true repentance. Lysa Terkeurst says that trust can only happen with time plus believable behavior—and that’s exactly what I’ve seen with Cameron consistently now for two and a half years. He has completely owned his mistakes, continues to do everything he can to make them right, and has shown his ability to make sacrifice after sacrifice for the sake of true change–many of them highly inconvenient and humiliating. All for the sake of making me feel safe again.

In my opinion, there’s nothing more manly than that.

As his recovery continued to develop and his mind and heart changed, his empathy for me was able to grow. His heart is so much softer these days and he’s now able to see me and my pain because he is no longer so consumed with shame and hiding and defending himself. He’s cried for me many times. To this day, things will happen that will remind him of his betrayal, and he will tearfully grab my hand, look me in the eye and say, “I am so sorry, sweetie.” It means so much to me every single time.

I struggled for a long time with what people thought of me and my decisions regarding my marriage. The opinions of others made me second guess myself a lot. But eventually I began to realize that I wasn’t weak for staying in my marriage. Instead it actually required incredible strength to stay. Strength that God was slowly beginning to pour into me. Staying married to Cameron didn’t at all mean that I was tolerating his actions. Staying married to Cameron meant that I would actually be stepping more fully into what I truly believed about God. It meant that I would be extending the very same supernatural grace and forgiveness to my husband that Jesus had extended to me. It meant that by fully embracing the truth of this radical gospel, I was accepting the power it had to transform hurting, broken, addicted people like my husband.

The love of Christ was giving us both another chance at this.

Yes, I had grounds for divorce. But God had so much more in mind for us than that. And I’ll never forget the morning about a year into our recovery that God so gently said to me, “Karissa, you’re not just fighting for your marriage. You’re fighting for Cameron.” These words from the Lord broke me and empowered me all at the same time. God didn’t need me to save him or fix him, but Cameron needed to know he was worth fighting for.

What an honor it is to be trusted with such a precious mission.

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Tomorrow is our last post of this mini series! Click here to subscribe so you don’t miss Part Four from Cameron.