OK, let me run by you what happened in my life. I was married to my high school sweetheart when I was 24. Eighteen months later our only birth child was born. I found out later that before this child was a year old my husband had started a series of affairs and 'encounters' that went on for about 17 or 18 of the 20 years we were married. In the meantime, we adopted five other children, all special case. He was head usher in the church and star of the church baseball team. He was loved by many people and his reputation in his work as a contractor was such that people would wait five years for a house by him.
In 1991, July 4, he told me he was leaving. He told me he wanted to spend time alone with the Lord. Within a week he was living with his latest model. He did not pay child support until the judge forced him to a year later when the divorce HE filed for was finalized. I pleaded for him to come back. The children needed him and I still loved him. He refused counselling after the first session with me. After the first year of his absence, the children did not hear from him again.
When he left, the six of them were ages 6 to 17. That was 1991.
I didn't even talk to a man except on a professional basis for years.
In 1998, Barry Setterfield asked me to edit a paper he was writing. I refused as his field was not mine in science. He already knew about me and my work as an editor, however, and was pretty persistent. So I accepted and the result is here:
http://www.setterfield.org/vacuum.html (it went through a later revision, thus the later date).
During that autumn, one of my sons had to be arrested. Barry, 12000 miles away in Australia, prayed me through it. One daughter was raped. Barry prayed me through it. Sometimes he would leave me in tears with my sides hurting from laughing at his crazy humor. We talked about our mutual faith and about the frustrations and difficulties in caring for an autistic relative (his sister and my youngest son) full-time. By that winter, he had become a friend and brother in Christ close to my heart. He had never been married and never planned to. I had been divorced and was not sure it was right for me to be remarried. And since we were 12,000 miles apart, no problem!
Problem.
I was starting to love and appreciate deeply someone I had never seen. He started talking to some pastors he deeply respected about our situation. I did not start asking until much later as I had no intention of getting that serious with anyone!
Look at 1 Corinthians 7:15. My ex may have claimed to be Christian, but his lifestyle and decisions declared otherwise. He left. Thoroughly and completely. About a month after our divorce was final, he was married to the lady he ran off to be with. He didn't even tell the kids ahead of time to prepare them. We found out by accident after. The Bible says I was not bound. What does that mean? Partially bound? Not able to be married again? Totally free as if I had never been married or was widowed? If one is not bound, one is not bound, period. I was not bound to that marriage and was therefore free as any single person is free.
Barry and I were married on October 21, 2000. God has used this marriage as one of the most enormous healing things I have ever seen for me, for the kids, and for others who were so stunned by the divorce years ago.
My oldest son has now told us he is no longer afraid to get married; he has seen what a godly marriage is. Our oldest daughter is already married but spending great amounts of time here some days, literally soaking up the sort of home life with a loving father that she never knew. Even my youngest, my profoundly retarded and autistic son, walks up to Barry and drapes an arm over his shoulders or hugs him.
There's a lot more in terms of the good this marriage has done. There is a lot more in terms of the emotional hell I went through, as well as the kids, for twenty years of marriage to a person who was two people -- the outer hypocrite and the inner run-around.
God has indeed restored the years the locusts ate. I have NO doubts about the blessings on our marriage or that it was fully in God's will. I did not know my heart could open like this again. I did not know what a good marriage was like. I did not know I could love or be loved this way. I did not know I could be so full of joy and thanksgiving every day of my life.
