Forgiveness

    I don't recall the exact date. I think it was right around Labor Day, 2007. I know I have the year right, because I clearly recall my youngest was an infant at the time. Even if the date is fuzzy in my mind, very few of the details are. In a way I wish the details were not so clear in my head. It might be easier to live with if I didn't remember it all so well.

    Yet I know it is a day that I will never, ever forget.

    I had slept alone part of the night before. My husband was taking over leadership of a mid-week adult Bible study at our church. He was excited about it and wanted to prepare well for it. So he had stayed up, working at the computer the night before, looking on-line for Bible study resources. Just what time he went to bed I couldn't say, and he was gone before I woke up in the morning—off to his daily shift at a local factory. I am pretty sure it was a Friday morning. I seem to recall being excited that he was off that weekend, a rare treat at the time since the shop was busy and he was required to overtime many Saturdays then.

    When I got up, I fed all three kids. The two oldest got dressed and went into their toy room to play. The youngest, about 3 or 4 months old, was playing on a blanket in the center of the office floor. I settled at the computer with a cup of coffee, ready to start my day.

    To my surprise, the internet browser was open. My husband hardly ever left it open. There was a small smile on my face as I clicked the icon in the task bar to bring up the full-screen window. My husband had told me he thought I should be more considerate about sharing the computer and not leave my work open. I knew I was going to have to tease him for having done the same thing. The smile and all teasing thoughts faded quickly when I saw the images that filled the monitor. I don't know what the website was called, but it had nothing to do with a Bible study. I'll admit that I don't know the Bible as well as I should now, and I knew even less then. But I had enough Biblical knowledge to realize that pictures of scantily clad women touching inappropriate places on their bodies were not something that would be shared in a Bible study.

    About a week before that when I had settled in to use the computer an X-rated pop-up interrupted me. I remembered asking my husband about that, and he swore that he had not visited the site and had no idea how it had gotten there. Not a big deal, I figured. It was a one-time thing. And I knew that I had recently downloaded a file from the internet. Perhaps that pop-up had been connected to it. The images I was seeing made me question that. Had the pop-up been because of something that I had downloaded or had it come from something that he had been looking at? With a shaking hand, I clicked on the browser history. I prayed that I would find nothing incriminating there. I knew what sites I had visited and hoped that I would only see those sites and a few Biblical research sites in the history. Sadly, that is not what I found. Sure, those sites were listed there, but so were a couple of sites that I found more than questionable. I didn't even have to click on them. Their titles and web addresses were enough to let me know what sort of "entertainment" they provided.

    I felt like I had been kicked in the gut by a horse. This was not the first time we'd ever had an issue with pornography. It had been nearly 2 years since my husband told me he thought he might be addicted to pornography. He went to counseling for it—I even went with him once or twice. I thought that we had gotten beyond that. I didn't think it would be a part of our marriage ever again.

    Yet here it was, rearing its ugly head again. Only this time, it felt about a million times worse. Not only was my husband not satisfied with me and looking at other women, he was lying to me about it. I felt totally inadequate, unloved, and unlovable. It was a struggle to not fall apart. My boys needed me. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't just curl up into a ball and cry. I needed to do something. I just didn't know what to do. My first thought was to pack a bag for the boys and for me and run to my mother. It took a lot of convincing from Mom and from my best friend for me to not run away. They said that no matter what he had done, my husband deserved to know why I was leaving. They said it wasn't fair for him to come home to an empty house. Like I cared about what was fair! It wasn't fair to me that he was looking at that crap and lying to me about it! That he used preparing for a Bible study as a cover made me sick to my stomach. Why should I have to put up with that junk? It wasn't until one of them said, "It's not fair to the boys to whisk them off without letting them say good-bye to Daddy," that I calmed down enough to stay home. What my husband had done hurt me deeply; I didn't need for it to hurt the boys, too. I decided that instead of just running off and hiding, I was going to confront him about this. I did pull out suitcases, but I didn't fill them. If he denied what he had done, if he lied to me about it again, I was going to pack up and leave. I was determined that I would not live with the lies.

    This was the time when I was really beginning to take my writing career seriously. Some days, my husband would come home from work and wonder what I had done all day. He was frustrated with not seeing the proof that I was working. So I had started to make a list throughout the day of all that I accomplished. I would write down the chores I had done, what writing pieces I had worked on, and how many words I had written on each one. That particular day, I wrote done every little thing that I had done, including fixing breakfast and lunch, serving breakfast and lunch, cleaning up after breakfast and lunch, and how many diapers I changed. When my husband got home from work, we sat at the table and he looked over my list. About halfway through it, he said, "Isn't this a little ridiculous? I know you are feeding the kids and changing diapers." I just asked him to keep reading. The last thing I had written on the list was something like, "Deleted x number of pornographic websites from the browsing history." I knew he had read it when the color drained from his face. He looked at me with that deer-in-the-headlights look, the look that said, "Oh, crap, she knows!"

    To his credit, he didn't deny anything. He still maintained that the pop-up from a week before wasn't from him, because he didn't go to sites that showed what that pop-up did. Eventually, he said that he supposed it could have been from one of the sites he went to, because he was looking at sites then.

    I felt like I had been cheated on. Matthew 5:28, "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart," came to mind, as did every time my husband ever called me beautiful. I'm a big girl. Always have been. I don't look like the skinny girls in magazines or the perfect-bodied women on those websites. If he had to go looking at that, how could he really think that I am beautiful?

    When we went to bed that night, I didn't want to be near him. I wanted to throw his pillows and blankets down the stairs, lock the bedroom door, and sleep alone. That's not what happened, though. Instead, I lay still and stiff on my side of the bed, tears running down my cheeks, praying for help from God. And I heard this voice say, "You love him. Now hold him."

    No way!!! I shook my head and kept praying. I asked God what He wanted me to do. The thought, "Go to him; hold him," kept coming into my mind. It was about the last thing I wanted to do. He didn't deserve to be hugged and held by me! If he needed a hug, he could just go get one from one of the bimbos he'd been looking at online! I wasn't wasting my hugs on the cheating pig!

    But the thought wouldn't go away. I wanted to God to tell me what to do, how to handle this situation. And He wanted me to hug my husband. I tried to ignore the thought and go to sleep. After all, I was exhausted from all the crying I'd done that day. But sleep would not come. Eventually I sighed, rolled over, and reluctantly rested my head on my husband's chest. He whispered that he was sorry, his voice letting me know he had been crying, too. I didn't say anything to him. I couldn't talk. He slipped his arm around my shoulders and rubbed my back. I wasn't sure I wanted him to touch me, yet I couldn't pull away. At one point, I did tell him, "I am not doing this because I want to. I am here because God wants me to be."

    Why am I telling you all of this today? Because of what I read this morning in The Love Dare. Today's lesson was about forgiveness. The challenge is to intentionally forgive your spouse for a hurt you have not given forgiveness for. I couldn't think of anything at first, not until the memory of that day and night came into my mind. We've worked through it, and even helped our church sponsor and plan a Holy Homes seminar with Clay and Renee Crosse. I was ready to give up and walk away, but God gave me the strength to stay here and fight. Our love survived. End of story, right?

    Wrong. I realized this morning that I haven't completely forgiven him for that. I don't bring it up often. It's not something that we talk about. And I say that I trust him now. Yet I am not sure that I completely do. His computer is still in his office, in a different room than where the family "hangs out". In the past 4 or 5 months, he has gotten good at going in there in the evenings to do Cub Scout work or his Bible study. When he says he is doing Bible study, the thought of that day in 2007 comes back. I sometimes wonder, "Is that really what he is doing?" He's given me no reason to think that he is looking at that again. And he knows where I stand. I told him that I have taken a zero tolerance policy about this. It's me or the porn—NOT both. Still there is a part of me scared to death that he is going to do it again. I often find myself on edge, ready to fight him over it.

    Lord, I ask You to help me with this. Help me to forgive, to really forgive and forget the pain that this has caused. I know my husband loves me, I know I love him, and I know that You love us. You have helped us through this rough period in our marriage. Please, Lord, help me to let it go so that I am no longer afraid to trust. Thank you.