From Dale

Just tuning in? Please start at the original post of this Series on “Surviving Infidelity”: Shattered Hearts, Broken Promises. 

Written September, 2011.

  Hi, it’s Dale. I am here today because I feel I owe you an explanation and an apology. As you guys come here to read about my family every day, you are investing your time and your heart in to our family.

I know I’ve disappointed you. I hate what I have done to Tonya, to our family and our beautiful life. If you’d give me the chance, I’d like to take this opportunity to say I am sorry to you as well. I made a foolish decision that day, but God is a God of grace and forgiveness. And Tonya, amazingly strong Tonya, has allowed me to stay and win back her heart and re-earn her trust.  She is the most Christ-like example I have ever known, giving me grace and love when I deserved none.

I went to the 1st Men’s Encounter  because I knew Tonya wanted me to go. (Click that link, and read the challenge she gave, not knowing what was coming!)  I am so glad I did, because it forever changed my life. God used Encounter to break down walls I’ve had built up around me since I was just a kid and to bring forward my ugly secret. I knew it needed to come out, it was eating me alive. But it was worth keeping the poison in me, because I was so sure it was better hidden than hurting Tonya, if that makes any sense.

This article written by Rebekah Lyons, says it better than I could:

“We become slaves to our secrets.

The thing is, Satan DWELLS in the secret, in the haunting, hidden brokeness. The longer we keep that secret, the more power he has to speak lies into our own identity. We have a crisis of faith; we don’t truly believe that God will hear and lavish us with his love upon our confession. We don’t REALLY believe that we will be made new. So we keep it and hide it and cover it and die from it.

A friend told me recently that she kept her secret of infidelity from her husband for 3 years. Another woman told me recently, she held her secret for 5 years. Another discovered her husband’s secret after 10 years. And yet, another after 18. Overtime, life becomes more about keeping the secret than saving the soul.

The secret often wins.

Perhaps a new day is dawning. Perhaps walls are coming down. Tears are streaming and confessions are starting to pour out like hope reborn. Do you know the main catalyst for this revolution of the heart?

You guessed it. Someone shared their secret.

Someone gave voice to their secret and in doing so, gave permission for another person to share theirs. Naming the one thing that held them captive for years rendered the secret powerless. All at once, the church at large is beginning to echo the chorus of confession. We all begin to bear witness to the bondage that is breaking by secret-sharing. The naming is bringing healing, and healing is bringing freedom. A freedom many of us are experiencing for the very first time. This secret-telling is what’s actually saving us. And this new normal is exactly what will keep us in the light.”

  As I have come out of the darkness, and into the light, the Lord is doing a work in my heart. One of the big things He is working on now, is helping me find my true worth.
My parents divorced when I was 12. I didn’t let it get me down, but I never did understand why my mom left my dad for what to me felt like no apparent reason. What I didn’t know, until recently when the Lord revealed it to me, was that it was going to create a need in me for the rest of my life.

A need to please. A need to fit in. A need to be whatever I needed to be to be accepted, so I wouldn’t be “left”:

If I was with my church friends, I was a good Church boy.
If I was with my party friends, I could drink with the best of them.
If I was with a girl I liked, I became whoever she thought I was, whoever she needed me to be.

What I didn’t know, was I was going to take that into my marriage too. That this need to be accepted, was going to one day be what brought me to my knees before God and my wife, begging for understanding and forgiveness.

Remember that dream Tonya shared with you about the horses?

I loved the line where our mentor said:

A lot of times, when we think of Broken, we think… broken in a bad way.
In the world of horses, if you’re not broken, your value is less. Brokeness is a precious word to the Lord. He desires our brokeness.

I come to you, Broken. Broke from addiction, broke from a shroud of secrecy, broke from lies, broke from infidelity, broke from pride, broke from financial security and self-sufficiency. This entire year has been a breaking down process of ME.

I needed to become a broken vessel before the Lord, so I could admit I needed Him now more than ever in every aspect of my life.

I had to learn the hard way, that my worth cannot be determined by my paycheck.
My worth cannot be determined by what car I drive.
My worth cannot be determined by who I think I am or who I strive to be.
My worth is found in the Lord Jesus Christ….and the blood He shed for ME, a filthy sinner. He would die for ME if I was the only one in the world to save, because I am so very valuable to Him. I am His and He calls me by name.

It kills me that I hurt Tonya in my selfishness. It breaks my heart to see her with tears streaming down her cheeks and knowing that I caused her this unbearable pain. Tonya is a strong, Godly woman. She is God’s gift to me and I blew it. She has been nothing but faithful to me from her first purity pledge at age 13 on….I don’t deserve her, I know this. But she has trusted me with her heart again, and I swear, I will NEVER take that responsibility lightly.

I didn’t even REALIZE that the devil was drawing me away from first my Lord, then my wife, but when we don’t chose God every moment of every day, we automatically default to satan.

Think about that for a moment.

   First I was separated from them by my shame that I looked at porn again.  Then, my pride kept me from seeking help.  Next, came my need to provide for our family with my own 2 hands, not leaning on the Lord at all and then….it happened. The devil got between me, my Lord and my wife, so much that when he laid a trap of lust for me, just 4 short months after I began to look at pornography again, I WALKED right into it.

I Peter 5:8 “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Do you know how angry that makes me? Do you know how STUPID I feel? The Lord has removed the scales from my eyes, put there by the devil himself to blind me. I now clearly see the path of destruction I was on and I THANK THE LORD that He saw fit to discipline me, so I would see the error of my ways before things got even worse.

Listen up, porn is a real temptation. 90% of all men look at porn and struggle with lust. This is real…..this stastistic includes Christian men, we are not exempt. I lied to Tonya and told her it didn’t happen to me because I was a good Christian man, right? It doesn’t happen to family men that go to church.

Guess what, it did. It DOES, all the time. This statistic means 3 out of 4 men in your church pew have a dark ugly secret that needs to be brought into the light.

Do you know that porn latches on to you, even when you walk away from the computer? The jaws of lust keeping you captive without you even realizing it. Even if I didn’t mean for it to occur, even if I wasn’t seeking it out, if a woman with a lustful spirit walked by, my lust spirit attached to her and I followed her with my eyes. Even if I didn’t think sexual thoughts of her, I still turned. I realize now, this is a very real thing that occurs between genders.

Watch a woman sometime, you know the one: She walks by a group of guys in a crowd, waiting for them to roam over her with their eyes before she walks on. She likes it, she feeds off of it. What you see occur is her lust spirit attaching to theirs and vice versa, and once you are aware of it you can actually see and feel it occur. Disgusting.

Praise God after I repented He took the spirit of lust from me!  When a woman walks by, a clanging bell goes off in my head so fast I don’t even have to glance her way. I am thankful my “radar” has been reset, my focus back on my Heavenly Father and my beautiful bride.  My eyes are set to “bouncing” mode, so if a woman comes into my line of sight, I quickly look away.  Men, you may not be responsible for the first look, as media bombards us with images, but it’s the second and third lingering looks that are the problem. When your eyes are set to bounce, you see and look away almost in a split second.  Your trigger finger on the remote gets faster and better as you quickly flip away from images on the screen. This is our call, to be PURE in all things, what better place to start then our eyes.

Wives, pray for your men to be attracted to holiness and purity like a magnet, so that when anything entices us that isn’t holy or pure, we detect the pull immediately and are made uncomfortable enough to completely reject it.

“For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.” I Thessalonians 4:7

The draw of the flesh and the devil’s plans are a lot stronger than we’d like to think. In a moment of weakness, we can end up doing something we NEVER thought possible. Only the power of God, through prayers, can make a difference. Don’t say it can’t happen to you, Tonya and I said the same thing. Satan loves to use this against us as he sneakily gets between us.

One day when we were going to counseling, we found this plaque at a Christian book store. It went along exactly with what I was learning at Men’s Encounter, and I knew I needed it to reside in my home:

What can you do with a dull sword? NOTHING.

This plaque resides on my dresser so I never forget again that I need to daily sharpen my sword in Gods word, so that when the devil attacks, and he will, I AM READY.

Psalms 34:17-19 “Yes, the Lord hears the good man when he calls to Him for help, and saves him out of his troubles.  The Lord is close to those whose heart is breaking.  He rescues those who are humbly sorry for their sins.  The good man does not escape troubles – he has them, too.  But the Lord helps him in each and every one.”

I am proud to tell you that, after last year, I no longer get on the computer to feed that ugly addiction, and I am seeking counsel to make sure this problem doesn’t return. I am putting on the armor and this new purity ring, DAILY. As I leave our home, there it is, on my right index finger.  A constant reminder of my pledge, my 2nd chance at a life of integrity.  It has a cross wrapping around it, and THE ARMOR OF GOD, Ephesians 6:10-15.

4 little Ferguson readers, I stand before you today, broken.

Broken before Christ.

He had to break me to let me see the truth, to look back over my life and have my eyes opened to the lies I was living. He had to break me so I could feel His tender mercies on me, which are new every single morning.

So, don‘t look at “broke” in a bad way, because it’s not:

Broke in Christ is a good thing….to become BROKEN is actually to become WHOLE.

The Lord used Men’s Encounter to break me, to clean my temple, my “house“ if you will…..He stripped me of all the junk I had in there, and filled it up again, with HIM.  He made order of the chaos that reigned there and took control of my life.  I write you today to give Him praise.

I know I don’t deserve Tonya. I know you all think I am a jerk, or worse now, but please, hear my heart on this. Know that if you could see me, you’d see the sorrow written on my face. I was so foolish and so wrong. I knew better, I did and I was stupid. I was stupid enough to think I could play with fire and not get burned.

It’s hard for me to see Tonya hurting, struggling, crying. I have to face what I did to her each and every moment of every day, and it kills me. She is so strong, and I have never loved and respected her more. She is taking the steps of forgiving me, by fighting for our marriage each and every difficult day.

So now I ask you, please, forgive me?

Dale

“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” John 8:36

The Dream

Just tuning in? Please start at the Original Post that begins this Series on “Surviving Infidelity”.  It will all make a lot more sense if you do: Shattered Hearts, Broken Promises. 

For those of you all caught up, this is post 2 for today, please go back and read the first post, “Hearing from the Lord”.

 I’d like to share a dream our mentor had.  He has been praying for us faithfully during his late night prayer time.  I am telling you, this man has been invaluable to our healing process, sharing things he hears during that time that are straight from the Lord, meant to soothe our broken hearts.  Personal things that would only make sense to us.  Man, I love that!

This was sent to us via email on July 15th, 5 short days after the secret comes out:

So, I’m not really a ‘horse’ person, but this dream was about horses. I walked into a huge barn, a really clean barn with stalls on both sides for horses… wood on bottom and bars on top… like you see in the movies.. or my dreams.. haha.

  Stapled on the wood of each door was a picture of the horse, his lineage, all the important info, and a PRICE. And going in, the lowest priced horses were first, up to the highest priced ones at the end. So I’m looking at the horses, trying to figure out how they know how to price them. The first ones are way old, sway-backed, ribs showing, bad teeth……and are for sale for a few hundred dollars.

Then the horses got really pretty, and I was admiring them and how HIGH the prices were getting. I got to the next to the last horse, and it was a BEAUTIFUL purebred American quarter horse… (like I know what that is) with this gorgeous white star on its forehead. It was four years old, and didn’t have a blemish on it. The price tag, $25,000.00. I was walking along with the owner of the horses and I remarked to him that I had no idea a horse could be worth that much.

He said, wait till you see the next horse.

So, next stall. It was a really nice looking horse, but not nearly as beautiful as the one right before it, and it was 10 years old. It had a couple deep scars from wounds, I guessed from running into a barbed wire fence or brush, maybe while it was out working cattle. And it had a brand… which I’m not sure if they brand the really good horses, but I’m guessing not. So it wasn’t the best looking horse.

Price tag, $175,000.00 I gasped and asked the old owner what in the WORLD made that last horse so high-priced.

He looked at me like I should have known and said, “Oh, this one’s broke”.

That’s where he ended.  Totally left us hanging!!!!

On Jul 15, 2011, at 11:21 PM, Tonya Ferguson wrote:

Does your dream come with an interpreter? 🙂 Are you calling me a horse? Is saving my marriage like the pricey old horse? Worth far more than a brand new one? Good night, sweet dreams! T

Our mentor wrote:

I thought I’d let you chew on it tonight (I would never call you a horse, nay). I’ll tell you how I interpreted it tomorrow, although I’m sure the dream was from God, I want to be sure my interpretation is from Him too.

July 16th: A Dream Interpreted

The owner of the horses was God.  The last two horses were pictures of your marriage.  The thing that prompted me that this dream was about you was the word you used in your initial email to me… “worth”… something like, “I guess I wasn’t worth it then, and I’m not worth it now”…  I think God is wanting to show you the value or the worth of you and your marriage.

So… value… In the dream, I was ‘pricing’ the horses.  I stared at the pretty $25k horse, admiring its sleek lines… haven’t people admired your marriage from the sidelines?  And the next horse, although not as young, or PRETTY, was valued at $175k…. which is, not coincidentally, SEVEN times the value of the unbroken horse.  I don’t put a lot of emphasis on numbers, but seven is the number of perfection.  I truly believe that tomorrow your marriage will have seven times the value it did yesterday.  Seven speaks of completion.  Omega.  It’s not completed yet, but Alpha is past.  Omega is coming.

Didn’t your first counselor use the words ‘broken’ describing your marriage? As … broken in a bad way?  Sometimes we think broken has a negative connotation.  In the world of horses, if you’re not broken, your value is less.  Brokeness is a precious word to the Lord.  He desires our brokeness.  I don’t see your marriage as ‘broke’ not like Humpty Dumpty was broke, but broke from a shroud of secrecy, broke from lies, broke from infidelity, broke from pride, broke from financial security, broke from the horrible monster of secrecy, a broken vessel before the Lord, needing him now more than ever in every aspect of your lives.

The scars, battle wounds from being in service.  Dale just received a deep scar, and so did you.  They mark you as someone who has been through the fire and has come out on the other side.  I saw two scars in the dream.  I don’t know what that means.  If I were to guess, it would be a scar on each of your hearts.  The valuable horse was a 10-year-old.  How old is your marriage again?

  Unknown to him, our marriage was 9 1/2 years at the time of the dream.  We will celebrate 10 years this May.

  Dale and I had no doubt this dream came direct from the Father Himself, so we clung to it like a lifeline.  Drawing encouragement from the fact that the Lord desires our brokeness. 

Good, because at this moment, we had nothing else to give Him.

~T

Tune in tomorrow, for a post from Dale…

Hearing From the Lord

 Please start at post 1 of this Series “Surviving Infidelity”: Shattered Hearts, Broken Promises. Everything will make a lot more sense if you do!

Written July 12th, 2011 

  Dale has been staying home with me each day as we cling to each other to draw strength in this ugly time. He did need to go to the office today to do a bit of paperwork before we leave on vacation.  Don’t worry, it’s a different office then the one in which the indiscretion happened, those days are behind us, but it was hard being apart, just 2 short days after the big “truth reveal”.  God is so good to always know what we need. 

Cool story:

Dale went up to his mom’s restaurant today after the office. He is standing there, talking to his mom, when Aunt Lucy walks by.

 “Do you always wear your wedding ring?” she asks.

Dale: “Yes, everyday for 9 years.”

Aunt Lucy: Shrugs shoulders, “Huh.  Well, it just seems to show more today I guess.”

  OH MY WORD, she knows nothing!  The Lord knew I needed to hear that, to have that nugget to cling to.  He knew I needed to know that when satan’s scales fell of Dale’s eyes, his claws let go of Dale’s heart and the ugly veil that had been cast over that wedding ring he wore on his ring finger, HAD BEEN LIFTED as well. 

Praise His name!

July 14th 

I went to my friend Nikki’s site, at Nikki Loves Mike, and the song she had posted made me first gasp, like how did she know? Then BAWL my EYES out, as I listened.

DANCING IN THE MINE FIELDS.

  This song is SO very beautiful and spoke to my heart in a mighty way!  I listened to it no less than 100 times over the past few months!

We went dancing in the minefields
We went sailing in the storms
And it was harder than we dreamed
But I believe that’s what the promise is for

Well “I do” are the two most famous last words
The beginning of the end
But to lose your life for another I’ve heard is a good place to begin
‘Cause the only way to find your life is to lay your own life down
And I believe it’s an easy price for the life that we have found

So when I lose my way, find me
When I lose loves chains, bind me
At the end of all my faith to the end of all my days
when I forget my name, remind me

‘Cause we bear the light of the Son of man
So there’s nothing left to fear
So I’ll walk with you in the shadow lands
Till the shadows disappear

‘Cause He promised not to leave us
And his promises are true
So in the face of this chaos baby,
I can dance with you

So let’s go dancing in the minefields
Lets go sailing in the storms

Oh, this is harder than we dreamed
But I believe that’s what the promise is for
That’s what the promise is for……

—————————————–

Written September 9th, 2011

Remember this post, “With Cherries On Top”?  Things were just going AWFUL! My marriage was falling apart, we had NO money, everything at our house was breaking, but look at God’s provision through that!  Beauty from Ashes, EVERY TIME!

  This is also close to the time I wrote “Broken” because I felt if I didn’t shed some light on what I was going through, it was as if I was deceiving you.  I knew my blog posts were not my best work, I was trying to maintain “normal” unsuccessfully because of my shattered heart, and after I was prompted to post a version of the truth in Broken, I had peace once again.

  Then, amazing things began to happen……

  Instead of judgment from you, sweet, encouraging comments began pouring in.  Thank you!

  Our counselor told us the Lord would rise up prayer warriors for us, people we didn’t know all over the world would be prompted to pray for us.  And wouldn’t you know, that same week I got 3 emails from 3 girls I either don’t know, or hardly know saying things like this:

Hi Tonya – I am praying for you! I dreamed about you Thursday night and woke up suddenly with a desire to pray. In my dream, huge ants were stealing all kinds of stuff from your house, they had overtaken everything and you were powerless against them. I barely know you, but we are sisters in Christ. I just now skimmed through your “Broken” blog entry, and felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to tell you God is even waking up people that barely know you to pray specifically for you.

  Little did she know, that Satan’s “ants” were destroying my home, both physically as one after another item broke, but emotionally to as he tried to destroy what remained of my marriage.  What love we felt from our Heavenly Father as He brought us “God Thing” after “God Thing”: Things that are too crazy and too perfectly timed to be anything but the His mighty hand at work!

  Every time I opened the Bible, verses were flying out at me left and right, grabbing my soul and giving me strength:

Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

II Corinthians 12:9,10. “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

This one is by far my favorite, and our “Anthem Verse” for this marriage we are fighting so hard for. He gave us this passage back in July, and we have gone back to it constantly, personalizing it and taking promises from it. I LOVE when the Lord speaks through His word and a passage becomes SO personal. 

I know it’s long, but well worth the read:

Isaiah 61: parts of 1-11 {Blue is My interpretation}

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. {This is why we are to share our story!}
2 He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come, and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies.
3 To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. {His promise to us} In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory. {A great oak withstands many a storm because its roots go down deep}
4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins, repairing cities destroyed long ago. They will revive them, though they have been deserted for many generations. {Our marriage WILL be rebuilt even though satan tried to destroy is years ago!}
7 Instead of shame and dishonor, you will enjoy a double share of honor. {We can hold our heads proud as we share our story, no robes on shame need to be worn…} You will possess a double portion of prosperity in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours.
8 “For I, the Lord, love justice. I hate robbery and wrongdoing. I will faithfully reward my people for their suffering and make an everlasting covenant with them.
9 Their descendants will be recognized and honored among the nations. {Our kids will NOT take on the sins of their father, they will walk in freedom from this sin!} Everyone will realize that they are a people the Lord has blessed.” {Christ will be seen through this story}
 10 I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. {I will not always wear the rags of Brokeness and the chains of Unforgiveness}
I am like a bridegroom in his wedding suit or a bride with her jewels. {We WILL renew our vows one day, and make a new covenant before God, family & friends!}
11 The Sovereign Lord will show his justice to the nations of the world. Everyone will praise him! His righteousness will be like a garden in early spring, with plants springing up everywhere.” {New growth and new life in Christ is ours!}

I love when the Lord speaks so audibly!  And He hasn’t stopped, even when He was silent to us, He sent us a messenger who said:

 “Even when you can’t feel Him, remember God is moving behind the scenes to prepare you for the next chapter, He will NEVER leave you.”

  It seems during difficult times, the Lord’s voice is more clear than ever.  Probably because I am curled up in HIS arms and HE can whisper in my ear. 

  He began to minister to Dale and I immediately after the truth came out, putting a soothing balm on our open wounds, as He spoke to us via our Daily Devotion book, whose dates matched PERFECTLY with JUST what we needed to hear that day, radio ministries, songs and emails from friends.  All along, asking us to trust Him, to seek Him to let Him have the broken pieces of our lives and marriage……

“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Exodus 14:14

Yes, Lord.  I am still before my God, broken and wanting these pieces of my life to be used for HIS glory…..

~T

The Other Woman

This post will make no sense to you if you don’t go back and read yesterdays first……..

Shattered Hearts, Broken Promises

  When I left you yesterday, I had decided my marriage was worth fighting for, and divorce was NOT an option.

  So now what?! 

Remember, this all was written 9 months ago.  God has been working in our hearts and lives ever since, praise His name!  

  This was written 7/11/2011, less than 24 hours after “The Truth”:

  Dale is letting me decide where we go from here. His desire is to rebuild, start again, with Jesus in the center.  Funny, I thought He was in the center the first go around?! 

  Yes, Dale is still here, sleeping on the couch per his insistence. I told him I didn’t give a rip where he slept, we’d shared a bed of lies for the last 1 1/2 years, might as well share it again tonight, just don’t you dare touch me, I said.  I want to keep up appearances for the children, who come in at 6:15 often.  Destiny was already very tearful tonight, picking up on daddy’s tears. 

  Sleep evades me, my mind returning to the scene he described to me with a woman I don’t know, but HATE, pinching myself to make sure this isn’t a nightmare.  All I want to do is go to bed, curl up next to my loving, faithful husband and fall into a peaceful slumber, but those days are gone.  I have no desire for Dale to touch me in any way, yet that’s all I want, is to be loved on, kissed and cuddled….told that I am good enough, that I am pretty enough, that I am worth being faithful to.

  Questions of that fateful day and the events that took place, bombard my thoughts constantly, until I think I will go insane.  Dale, being the non-detailed person he is, just kinda summed it up and thought this should be enough for me.

It wasn’t.

I needed to fill in the blanks so to speak.  I needed answers to quiet these questions in my head.  I desperately wanted to stop imagining that day of betrayal OVER and OVER and OVER in my head.

  I know what I need to do.  I need to talk to the “Other Woman”.  She owed me that much.  So I ask Dale to find her for me on Facebook.  He was very hesitant, but agreed to try to find her, having no idea if she even had an account.  He has to call the office to “check on a case” to even remember her last name. 

Sick.  

Is our marriage worth so little that he was willing to throw it all away for a nameless one time fling?

  With a few clicks, he found her on my Facebook account since he doesn’t have one, and quickly pushes out the office chair to leave the room, saying he was going to vomit.  Calling over his shoulder for me to PLEASE be careful that I didn’t make things worse for us by doing this.

   My hands are shaking as I sit down at the computer and peering closely at the tiny profile picture to see the woman who I “lost” to.  To see if she was prettier, if she had a better body……seeking answers I would not find in her photo.

  Handing shaking, vomit in my throat, I take my mouse and hover over “Message” and I click.  The words that poured from me are not pretty.   I knew I should seek the Lord about the words I wrote, so I too, pushed out the office chair and walked away, pleading with Him to let me have this. 

Let me push send.  Please.

  After an hour and a few edits to erase some of the ugly, I did it, I pushed send.

Here is what I wrote her:

Hi xxxxxxx, This is Tonya Ferguson. I am sure you recognize my last name, seeing how you screwed my husband last October. Dale Ferguson from ##### ring a bell?  How dare you, Home Wrecker. Guess what? You don’t win. Satan doesn’t win. I do. My marriage does. How does it feel to be used? To have my husband turn his face away from you?  You deserve more. I deserve more. You disrespected me, you disrespected yourself, you disrespected my husband and my 9 year marriage. Did he happen to mention we have 4 kids? 8, 4, 2, and 10 months. How does it feel to have torn our family apart? I don’t know how you look at yourself in the mirror each day. When you see a ring on a man’s finger, BACK OFF. All the wives in America will thank me for writing you this, girls like you, make wives like us SICK. I deserve to hear from you what happened between you and my husband. I want to hear it. I NEED to hear it to move on. Please. Tonya

  She wrote back that very night, begging for a chance to talk on the phone with me, saying she had been waiting a long time to get this off her chest.  I kept feeling like I was going to vomit, but after an hour or so of thinking about it and processing, I decided that I wanted to hear it.  She owed me an explanation.  Plus, I wanted to hear her side of the story to make sure Dale told me the truth.

I talked to her for nearly an hour.

AN HOUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Below is what I wrote in my journal:

  You are never ever going to believe this, but she is a really nice girl. Crazy, but true. I could hear her talking to her little boy in the background, and she was very patient, pushing for manners and obedience from him. As much as I didn’t want to, my heart went out to her and I connected with her: mom to mom.  I actually complimented her, telling her she was very kind and a good momma. Then we got down to business……

I told her that she ruined my marriage and then, I asked for her to tell me her version of what happened that day.

She told nearly the same story as Dale, there were a few details he had forgotten, but close none the less. She apologized profusely the entire time we talked. Saying she was coming out of a dark time of abuse from her ex-husband and was looking for affection.
  We talked further about respect and how she should respect herself enough to say no to cheap propositions. We talked about motherhood and finding Jesus. I told her she should hold out for her hero, rather than to try to find her worth in men or sex. She was so open, so gentle, so hungry for truth.  

  She said that she had started going to her Grandma’s church after what happened with Dale, that it pushed her towards a Savior she needed all along.  She had quit her job soon after it happened, because she just couldn’t stand the hurt and pain any longer, of seeing Dale and knowing what she had done. Towards the end of the hour conversation, I started feeling prompted to offer her my forgiveness.

Seriously, Lord? ALREADY?!  It’s been like what, 24 hours?

I didn’t know if I could do it, but when the Lord gave me the second nudge a few minutes later, I tearfully, obeyed:

“xxxxx, I want to offer my forgiveness to you. I really do. This is what the Lord is asking of me, to forgive as He forgave me.  I think this is a key step in moving forward with Dale and saving our marriage.  Talking to you has made you real, not some evil home wrecker. You are a nice girl who had bad things happen…….and well, I forgive you. I really do.”

She began to BAWL.  Seriously sobbing into the phone, barely able to say the following:

“Tonya, I can’t even begin to tell you….thank you so much.  I am soooo sorry for what occurred, and I can’t tell you how much your forgiveness means to me. I will do anything I can to help you heal from this. Anything! I sound so selfish, but this is so healing for me. You are such a strong woman. I don’t deserve this!” 

  After this, Dale got on the phone, and with tears in his eyes, apologized to her for his part in this. She in return apologized for her part and said she took full responsibility for what happened. He said, no, we both were at fault. She bawled and thanked us for being so gracious to her and kind to her.

  Oh my goodness, a million pound weight has been lifted from my shoulders. This is HUGE in the process. The sick feeling that comes with thinking of her has lessened by a ton…that hatred I felt for this “slut” that ruined marriages, is gone. Having her be a real person, hearing her be a single momma to her sweet polite boy, opened my eyes to the hurt “little girl” she was, just having left her abusive husband. How sad that she was looking for affection after a horrible relationship. Dale seemed safe to her, so she acted…they acted.  

July 12th, 32 hours after “The Truth”

  Despite all the emotion and tears, God is already beginning a work in us. I can feel it.  A mentor of Dale’s from Men’s Encounter called to check on us, and he went crazy and said he couldn’t believe that we had gone from talking divorce to fighting for our marriage in 24 hours! He said that’s like 2 months of marriage counseling already. Then after I told him about the above conversation with “The Other Woman”, he laughed and praised the Lord. He says 6 months of marriage counseling has already been achieved. It was good to hear his praise, and I am thankful.  

But this morning, July 12th, just 32 short hours after my world changed forever, I am struggling with different thoughts:

  Instead of imagining him with this aggressive marriage wrecker, and seething with rage…….I am imaging a different kind of girl.

  Although I am thankful that the venom and churning stomach from my hatred of her are gone, but that wall of anger?  Well, it was offering me protection.  Now, my heart has broken all over again at the thought of them together.  Taking away the anger, left me to feel just how raw my heart is now.  The anger was masking it.   

Now, my chest aches as if there is a knife there, stabbing with every pulse of my heart. 

 Tears flowing with ever breath I take. 

  The part that hurts the worst, the part that makes me sob as I write this, my tears blurring these words, is that she felt it necessary to prove she could be needed by a “Good man”. 

  She said Dale was so kind and respectful in the office to everyone, that if she could “get” someone like him, surely she was of worth, surely she could find value in a man like Dale. It hurts more than I can say, to know that MY ‘Good man’ didn’t turn her down;  he had an opportunity to be Jesus to her, yet allowed satan to blind him so severely, that he didn’t even see the potential of being a light to this hurting woman.

  I wanted MY good man, to say NO to her advances.  I wanted to be the victor that day.  

  Sadly, my “Good Man” stumbled, then fell.  Blinded to the truth, and desensitized to the clanging warning bells by a hidden 23 year long on and off again pornography habit.  He silenced those bells that day and chose LUST.  The Bible is so clear on having pure eyes, the path of choosing otherwise, will always lead to destruction.  Always. Even if you are a “good” Christian man.  You are not immune. It only makes you a bigger target for the devil.

  And so here I stand, feeling as if I have lost everything I held so dear.  Robbed of the covenant of marriage, the sanctity of the marriage bed, and my self-worth.

I am so very broken.  How in the world does someone move on from this?

Oh Jesus, how I need you.

More Tomorrow…

 ~T