Because He lives I can face tomorrow….Gosh I love that song! Because He had a plan all along, I believe with my whole heart that God led me to this very moment. My heart is grateful each day that I wake up and each day I get out of bed with a new beginning.
Asking my husband to leave was surprisingly easy for me. It may have been a mixture of God’s discernment and a mother’s intuition; deep down, I knew that I needed to protect my girls at this point. As the days turned into weeks, a sense of foreboding had settled in my heart, and although I didn’t have any solid proof, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my husband was hiding something significant from me. There was a weight in his silence, a tension in our conversations that felt increasingly heavy, as if he was concealing secrets far more troubling than mere digital affairs. My instincts screamed that this was more than just infidelity; it was a threat to our family, and I had to act decisively to shield my daughters from whatever darkness lay ahead.
My girls were all teenagers at this point. Our oldest was 18 years old, our middle was 16, and our youngest was just 13. The girls all understood the underlying reason for asking their father to leave our home, and they were very supportive of my decision. At first, I felt a wave of guilt wash over me because I didn’t want them to see me as weak or unforgiving of the choices my husband had made, but I also knew it was crucial they understood that no man should ever treat them with the disrespect that comes with infidelity. The girls were perceptive; they knew what he was doing and why our marriage was spiraling toward its inevitable end. Despite my better judgment, he chose to confide in them about his actions, which was a decision I found incredibly distressing. In fact, we had previously agreed not to divulge the details of his relationship with the man he was involved with, believing it was far too complex and scandalous for their young minds to grasp fully. I felt they deserved to hold onto their innocence for as long as possible, but in a moment of thoughtlessness, he just blurted it out! I was left in shock, my eyes wide as saucers, feeling like my heart had been ripped out. The gravity of the situation weighed heavily on all of us, creating an atmosphere filled with confusion and a profound sense of betrayal.
The girls started to grow their own judgment of his actions. They were in disbelief of his choices. No one had any suspicions that he was gay or bisexual as he was one of those rough and tough men, a blue collar man and wore steal toe boot every day. In my opinion, exchanging explicit videos and pictures of yourself with another man kind of puts you in that category of being gay or bisexual. I had asked him why he sent those images of himself and what he got out of it. His answer was that he got a thrill of other people looking at his erected penis and he enjoyed others watching him pleasure himself. I don’t really understand this thrilling life style especially choosing other people over your own wife. My main concern is how do you get that involved with another man claiming to be best friends doing the things he was doing and not know that your boyfriend was an evil monster that preyed on children. But I had no proof and the detectives found no proof of any child pornography crimes committed by my husband. So I had to keep hoping that my intuitions were just the result of my disgust about the whole situation.
As the weeks went by, our oldest daughter was getting ready to graduate high school. We had established a routine from December to about March so that the girls could see their dad. We agreed that he would come to the house 2 days a week to visit and have dinner and we left it up to the girls what they wanted to do on the weekends plus we had high school softball to work around as well. Everything seemed to be working out and everyone was adapting to this new normal. By March, I was starting to venture out of the house a little, making lunch or coffee dates with friends. My friends and I discussed my situation, I had a couple friends genuinely concerned about how the girls and I were handling the “new normal”. I was actually really good emotionally and happy with my decision, but I was fearing the road ahead about how I was going to get by financially. After all, my husband left me with $0.00 in my bank account.
Lets back up a little…
My husband’s infidelity wasn’t the only thing that had been revealed in October; it felt like the entire foundation of our life together was crumbling beneath my feet. I had started digging into things around the house, compelled by an instinct I couldn’t quite shake. Once he had left, the emptiness of our home pushed me to search for anything I could find that would show me who this man truly was beneath the façade he had constructed. Most of our bills were on a paperless system through his email, which added another layer of difficulty to my investigation. With a mix of determination and dread, I made a couple of phone calls, one being to the bank where our vehicle loan was managed. To my disbelief, I found out that the loan was thousands of dollars behind, a staggering amount of about $2,500.00! I learned that he had been put on a payment plan to tackle the accumulating late fees and overdue payments, having deferred the monthly payments five times without my knowledge. This troubling discovery led me to reach out to the car insurance company, only to learn that our coverage had been canceled due to non-payment for three consecutive months! It felt as if each revelation was more shocking than the last, and I was left reeling. I then proceeded to make all the necessary phone calls, contacting our electric, gas, and local trash companies, as well as the city for our water and sewer services. To my horror, I discovered that ALL those bills were hundreds of dollars behind as well, he was on a payment plan with each of them which is nothing got shut off. It felt like a cruel joke, a dark drama I never wished to star in. How could I have been such a stupid woman, so blinded by trust that I hadn’t seen the warning signs? The betrayal struck deep, not just from his infidelity but from the financial chaos he left us in, leaving me to sift through the wreckage of our life together. Still to this day, I have no idea where his money was going to, I would assume the obvious.
Now that I was technically on my own, my husband didn’t care much for the fact that my life didn’t revolve around him anymore. He started accusing me of going out on dates with men instead of believing that I was just enjoying some much-needed girl time with my friends. I really didn’t care much what he thought, so I started living life for me and the girls, savoring every moment of our adventures together. Spring came to an end along with high school softball, and as we transitioned into summer, our daughter’s last year of travel ball began and he started turning into a very mean and abusive person. I began to notice subtle changes in his demeanor; the once-familiar warmth faded into coldness and hostility. I knew that he would at some point start blaming me for the choices he made during our marriage, projecting his own insecurities onto me. But I never thought he would turn our girls against me, using manipulation to rewrite my devotion to them, painting me as the villain in a story I had no intention of being a part of. It was heartbreaking to see the confusion in their eyes as they struggled to understand the fractured family dynamics, and I was resolute in my determination to protect them from his tactics while nurturing their spirits and reminding them of the love that still existed between us.
First he started with our oldest daughter; she has given me permission to tell a part of the story that is hers. He started to fill her head with lies, insisting that I was sleeping with a different man every weekend and that I was being neglectful of their needs, all of which deeply hurt me. These accusations were not just random; they were calculated and targeted, designed to sow discord and fracture the relationship I had so carefully built with my daughter. Then he moved on to accusing me of being controlling, claiming that I would never let her grow up and live her life how she wanted to. I could see the rifts forming between us, that neither of us knew how to bridge, widening with every conversation that turned into an argument. I knew he was doing this because the relationship between my daughter and I got very complicated, especially as she struggled to balance her feelings about loyalty to her father and her love for me. She began to tell me that she was 18 years old and could do whatever she wanted, convinced that she didn’t need to ask for permission; her newfound sense of independence felt more like rebellion than maturity. This boldness was alarming, as she assumed that I would be acceptable with her boyfriend at the time sleeping over in her bed, an idea that was utterly foreign to the values I had instilled in her. I was appalled at her demeanor, as if my daughter, with her bright spirit and caring nature, had vanished, replaced by someone I barely recognized. It was hard to swallow the thought that the trust we once shared was deteriorating so rapidly; every word that left her lips seemed to be laced with the poison of his manipulation. We had always had a great relationship, built on mutual respect and understanding, and she was always very respectful of our rules in the household, which made her sudden shift all the more painful. I found myself lost and confused learning this new way about her; at first, I couldn’t figure out why she was so against me, as if I were the enemy in a battle I never wanted to fight. My heart ached for my daughter back, our friendship and our bond were being shattered, our once easy conversations now replaced with silences filled with tension. She started to uninvite me to her travel softball tournaments, which had been a cherished tradition for us, and if I showed up she ignored that I was there and wouldn’t even talk to me as I sat by myself on the sidelines, an invisible spectator in her life. Her dad was the head coach during her last year of softball, so he had all the access he needed to her; I felt sidelined in every sense of the word. He filled her head with lies and pretty much convinced her that I didn’t love her anymore because my friends were more important, twisting my actions into something they were never meant to be. He used every typical manipulation in that book to get her to turn on me and it was working, leaving me heartbroken and desperately wishing for the days when we could talk openly and honestly, before the web of deceit had tangled our lives so tragically.
My soon to be ex-husband’s plan started working beautifully, first our oldest daughter and then our youngest daughters began to follow suit, and it felt like my world was crumbling around me. I was losing my girls to their dad, who cheated and lied his way through life, leaving me feeling betrayed. All I knew to do was get on my knees and pray for strength and clarity in this trying time. It was in June that their father introduced the girls to his girlfriend, a woman he had known for about two months. He claimed that he was in love and that she was the best thing that ever happened to them, as if he could simply replace the family we once had with this new person. At first, the girls told him that they weren’t ready to see him with another woman, but he eventually forced them to meet her, disregarding their feelings and concerns. We had only talked about how to navigate our divorce; we had once settled on a disillusion, so I went ahead and paid for a disillusion, hoping to keep the process easy. However, while trying to work out the details, this man had really started to turn into someone that I didn’t know anymore. His demeanor had turned hateful, and his demands were becoming so unreasonable that they began to make me doubt whether this process wouldn’t turn into a full-blown divorce and custody battle. He had started to convince the girls to live with him, enticing them with offers of no rules and no boundaries, which felt like he was waging psychological warfare on them. He even bribed them with a swimming pool, promising that their friends could practically live there too, turning their heads with promises of endless fun. My oldest daughter had barely spoken to me, as she was living with her boyfriend and his family during the summer months, seemingly oblivious to the turmoil she was causing. Even though she never came home unless she needed clothes or something from her room, I still sent that text and left her voicemails, pouring out all the love I had for her. I wanted her to know that I loved her despite everything her father was telling her, that our bond couldn’t be easily severed by manipulation. I soon came to discover that her dad was convincing her his words were the truth by copy/pasting my text messages and sending them to her. He took everything I said, twisting and rewriting my texts to make it seem as though I was the one saying horrible things about her to him. He baited me into a sense of helplessness, and I fell for it, believing I could still reach her. I found out when she accidentally let it slip that dad was sending her these text messages that painted me in a negative light. I looked straight into her eyes and asked, “Do you honestly believe that I hate you and would say those horrible things about you? And do you truly think that I don’t love you at all?” With tears welling up, she looked back at me and said, “Yes, Mom, Dad showed me everything.” My heart shattered at her words, and I responded, “Okay, if you believe those, then I don’t know how else to fix what’s been broken. If our relationship is over, then tell me right now because I have no idea how to bring you back.” I then walked away, feeling the weight of despair heavy on my chest, with nothing more left to say to her. I went home that evening and I dropped to on knees on the kitchen floor for what seemed like hours praying. I poured my heart out to God that day and every day after that asking Him to bring her back to me and back home for good. From that day forward every prayer I prayed, I asked God the same thing every moment I could get, “My faithful Father, Open her eyes to the deceit and manipulation.”
In the meantime, I was still persistently asking this man, the father of my children, for help financially. I was raising the girls on my own and trying to keep up with all the house bills. I thought it was only fair that he should also take on part of the burden, helping to ease the weight on my shoulders during an already challenging time. However, he refused me at every step of the way, leaving me feeling more isolated and overwhelmed. I began to assume that his newfound love was influencing him significantly during our divorce, offering him terrible advice that only seemed to drive a wedge between us and create more conflict. As time passed, I soon figured out that she wasn’t as nice a person as he believed; beneath her charming facade lay a manipulative character. They were constantly fighting, and her volatile nature led her to use his past infidelity with me as a weapon, hurling accusations of cheating back and forth like a game of emotional tennis. While this could have possibly been true, at the time, I found myself detached, caring little for their turmoil, and I have to admit it was somewhat amusing to me. Most days, I would simply sit back and observe the chaos that unfolded around me, chuckling quietly at their absurdity. The kids started to witness small disagreements between them, observing their arguments explode out of nowhere, often escalating in intensity. The one thing the girls had never been exposed to was fighting between parents; we had spent 18 years together, hardly ever raising our voices or arguing about anything significant. This situation was uncharted territory for them, making them feel out of place and taken aback by the constant bickering and hostility. It turned out that his newfound love harbored a deep dislike for the fact that we weren’t officially divorced, and she took every opportunity to express her frustrations, often directing them at him.
Around August, Travel softball had come to an end, marking not only the conclusion of a very disheartening. My oldest daughter was now moving in with her dad into his newly rented house, a place that felt foreign and unsettling for both her and the rest of us. As she gathered all of her belongings, I watched her leave the house she grew up in, seemingly without a single regret, her determination to start anew evident in her stride. This girl truly despised me and had embraced every word her dad was telling her, weaving a narrative that painted me in an unflattering light. Our younger daughters were still living with me but had plans to move in with their dad as soon as he could accommodate their needs in his house, a move that felt like a betrayal. After softball, the two girls at home had time to rest after a busy summer filled with laughter and camaraderie, so they hung out with friends and enjoyed their time off before school started back up. As days turned into weeks, they started to open their eyes to the reality around them. Their dad hadn’t called or texted them in weeks, an alarming absence that did not sit well with them, sowing seeds of doubt and unhappiness. That’s when they began to share with me everything their dad had told them during their earlier interactions, and it came as a shock to realize the extent of his manipulation. I helped them to understand that his enticing offer for them to move in with him was less about family and more about avoiding his child support responsibilities. In the wake of this realization, I soon filed for divorce; his counter-filing came around the same time, which felt like a swift punch to the gut. His documents included shocking claims that I was a cruel, abusive, and neglectful parent, asserting he deserved full custody of the girls. Out of concern, I asked the girls if they were telling their dad these things, and they shook their heads, puzzled by why the documents contained such harsh allegations. Because my girls were older and mature enough, I knew they could handle the truth, so I explained the distorted picture their dad was trying to paint for the court, unveiling his true intentions. In an act of courage, they confronted him about it, only to hear him dismiss their concerns as mere scare tactics employed by his attorney, claiming he had no control over what was written in those documents. Even though they had been manipulated against me, they understood deep down that those accusations were never true, and that’s when they decided to stand their ground and fight back against the narrative he had created.
By this time, he took none of my phone calls; all communication was done by text, which created a sense of distance that was hard to ignore. He started to fight with the girls constantly about everything trivial and mundane, turning moments that should have been filled with laughter into battles of wills. Our girls were 13 and 16 years old at this time, navigating their teenage years and trying to use relentless “parenting power” to assert control over them. He kept using phrases like “I’m the dad, and you’ll do what I say,” as if that alone could command respect and compliance. In reality, our girls had never been unruly kids, nor were they showing any real defiance toward anyone; they simply wanted to be heard and understood. Once he realized that his manipulation was unraveling before his eyes, he started to unveil his narcissistic character, and the girls saw right through him, recognizing the emotional games he was playing. His plan with them had backfired spectacularly, and he was spiraling out of control, unable to manage the very relationship he had tried to dominate. This timing was around October, nearly a year now that we had been separated, and the weight of that separation was becoming increasingly palpable. With school starting and routines acclimatizing to new schedules, life was quite busy; my youngest daughter’s basketball team consumed our evenings—practice every night, homework that seemed never-ending, and of course, dinner preparations that felt like yet another chore in our hectic lives. We were trying to keep some semblance of normalcy amidst the chaos, but each day felt like a new challenge.
Now that we had filled with the court for a full-blown divorce, the custody battle had begun. The court appointed a guardian ad litem to represent the interests of our children, a role that I had hoped would bring some clarity and fairness to the proceedings. Don’t get me started on that woman. She may have started out reasonable and seemed intent on doing her job fairly, but as the case stretched on, she didn’t end up a favorite person of mine. The court awarded him parenting time that seemed generously skewed in his favor, allowing him time from Friday night after school until 6 PM, Saturday morning to evening, and the same for Sundays. The girls voiced their opinion on overnight stays with him. They had grown increasingly uncomfortable and anxious about staying the night with him, as week after week unfolded. The strain of the fighting between us, coupled with his lies presented in the court documents and the manipulation they were witnessing, prompted them to establish specific boundaries that they felt were necessary for their emotional safety. The court agreed to uphold those boundaries, which was a small relief, but it didn’t erase the unease surrounding the entire situation. The guardian ad litem and the magistrate ended up going to the school that year to speak with the girls alone. Against my better judgment, but told that this was a necessary procedural step to facilitate an honest dialogue with the children without the influence of both parents around. However, I later learned that the girls felt disappointed by the meeting. They conveyed that their conversation with the officials entailed nothing about exploring the reasons behind their feelings or addressing why they were scared to spend the night with their father. Instead, they were infuriatingly told that they had no choice but to see their dad. They faced the premise that they should act like brats, nor were they allowed to isolate themselves in their rooms during his visits—a directive that felt patronizing and utterly dismissive of their genuine feelings. It might be just me, but words like that, particularly to a teenager grappling with such complex emotions, are not the way to foster trust or openness. That meeting ended up being the last and final interaction my girls ever had with any court official. They gained no trust from the guardian ad litem or the magistrate, leaving them feeling abandoned and unsupported. Meanwhile, their dad walked away from the courtroom with a puffed-out chest, metaphorically speaking, convinced that he had the court firmly on his side. It did seem that way for much of our divorce, as I was awarded no child support and no alimony, despite the significant financial strain I was under. The courts claimed that all the bills were equal between his house and my house, yet the reality was far from that. I was shouldering well over $1,000.00 in bills each month, plus the additional needs of our children, making it clear that the division was anything but equitable.
Walk By Faith Not By sight 