After a few months of talking to each other, he told me God had revealed to him that I was his wife. I laughed it off. I asked what God was wearing the day he revealed me to him. He was serious. He needed an answer, so I asked him to give me time to also put it to God in prayer. It didn’t take much time until I had a response from God.

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP CHANNEL TO RECEIVE ALL STORIES IN YOUR INBOX

So the two of us met through prayer. We reflected in each other’s mirror when we looked through them. We dated for several months before he told me he had never known a woman in a sexual way. I said, “So you haven’t done it before? I’m the one you’re going to use for practice, right?”

That wasn’t a problem at all. To love is to learn. To learn is to make things better, so I was very sure we were going to do very fine. He would wake up at dawn and call my phone, and we would pray. After prayers, he would share the word of God, and the two of us would meditate on the word before the day began. We called it arming ourselves in the Lord.

When we got married eight years ago, we didn’t stop praying. Even when I was too tired and sleepy to pray, he would put his hand on me and pray until I had no choice but to join him. I don’t know what changed along the line. Maybe too much intimacy made him see the world in a different way, or we simply became complacent, believing God would be there for us all the time. We stopped the little things: prayers, interceding for each other, and maybe stopped learning.

My husband had all of a sudden become a tough guy who said things he didn’t use to say and behaved in a way I didn’t know him to. I also kind of enjoyed it as long as it wasn’t toxic. One night, I had woken up from sleep to get water from the fridge when I saw his phone ringing. He had slept with his phone in his hand.

The name on the phone was Rejoice. “Who is this person calling my husband at this time of the night?” I wanted to wake him up to pick up the call, but I decided he’d rather do it in the morning. When the call ended, I saw notifications on his phone. I took the phone and went through them. Some were messages from the same person who called.

Once I read, “I’ve been thinking about you all night” from Rejoice, I told myself this was going to be interesting. I scrolled until I got to the start of the thread. They had started talking that same night, but reading through the messages told a different story. It was like they chatted every day, but the messages got deleted.

Every line of the message, every inch I scrolled, made me feel like I was dreaming. It was a mixture of shock and disbelief. I couldn’t believe my husband would go as far as involving himself with another woman. “This is a man I met very green,” I said to myself. “Why is he showing the little I taught him to another woman?”

They had spent nights together when I was home thinking my husband had traveled out of town to work. They had visited hotels and fun places I only knew the name of but hadn’t seen. Rejoice was indeed rejoicing over the sexual prowess of my husband because she talked about it at every inch of the thread.

My heart was breaking. I was trying very hard not to cry, but the tears fell even before I thought of them. I tapped him to wake up. Immediately he saw his phone in my hand, he jolted and screamed, “Shit!” and then buried his face in his palms while repeating, “I’m sorry, I know I messed up. What was I thinking?”

I said, “Anthony, there’s Rejoice? Since when?”

He couldn’t answer. All he did was say sorry repeatedly like a broken record. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know what came over him. I wanted to know if he loved her. Most importantly, I wanted to know if he still loved me. He said they started dating when I was pregnant. I responded, “I was pregnant, but I still didn’t keep myself away from you, so why?”

The more I sought answers, the more my sore got bruised. I stopped asking and decided to pray until I could sleep. I prayed while crying. He joined the prayers. He told me his spiritual meter was low, which was why the devil could get to him the way he did. He begged me to forgive him so we could go back to where we used to be.

I’m not a difficult person. Once I pray about it, I’m fine. In the morning, I told him, “You’re going to stop talking to her after telling her it’s over. I want you to call her right in front of me, on loudspeaker, and tell her it’s me you love and that you can’t continue the relationship again.”

While I was giving him instructions, he was already tapping his phone, looking for Rejoice’s number. Before I ended my speech, his phone was already ringing. The lady answered with a smile in her voice, “Hey babe, you left me han…”

My husband cut through and said all that I told him to say and even added more to make it more dramatic. I was even feeling bad for the lady. He said, “My wife is here and she’s listening. I’ve begged for forgiveness from her and from God. I’m sorry if I hurt you, but this can’t continue. It will break the sacredness of my marriage.”

Rejoice breathed heavily three times and then cut the line without saying a word. I’m a woman. I understood what that meant. We prayed and thanked God for victory and also asked for his direction and strength for the road ahead.

A couple of weeks after this incident, my husband came home one afternoon with a big white sheep and said, “I bought you this. You’re going to slaughter and eat it all by yourself. I’m pacifying you for the pain I put you through.”

I didn’t know what to say. “You’re a forgiving wife. We still have this marriage because of you. You deserve better than this, so please accept my living sacrifice.”

Now I broke into laughter. If I was harboring any kind of pain or doubt, that day, they all melted from my heart. If I was scared he would repeat his mistakes, that fear dissipated. The whiteness of the sheep cleared all the dark spots in my heart. Total forgiveness happened that day.

Less than a year later, just when I thought all was done and forgiven, I caught my husband again talking to Rejoice. He said in one of the many messages he sent to her, “When we broke up, I drove by your house every evening and parked far away just to catch a glimpse of you. I couldn’t live a day without seeing you, though I was afraid to approach you.”

He went to park around her office, hoping she would pass by and he would see her. All the time I was praying for the healing of my broken heart, he was going around, working hard to catch a glimpse of his beloved. The lady was happy. She responded, “You’re the one who left me, so why were you going around looking for me?”

The pain this time was twice as much as the first, though I didn’t read anywhere that they were back being intimate. I usually pray my pain away, but this time, I couldn’t even open my mouth to say a word of prayer. I threw his phone on the floor and rushed to where he was washing his car, folded my arms, and asked, “You think I’m a fool, right? What about Rejoice that you can’t let go?”

He stopped the cleaning, froze, and muttered to himself, “Not again, Lord.”

Marriage Through the Eyes of Millennials and Gen-Z

We are currently living with my parents, me and my child. I didn’t want to stay and become paralyzed out of pain and disappointment. I told my parents about the first incident and how we resolved it peacefully. When his parents also met me, I told them what we’ve been through already. Everyone agrees with me that I’ve been through a lot, but they still say, “Allow God to operate through you.” But anytime I pray, all I hear is, “Walk away before it kills you.”

I don’t know if that’s God’s voice or the voice of my own desire, but whatever it is, I’ve told God to make his voice clearer so I can hear him very well.

—Bruwaa

This story you just read was sent to us by someone just like you. We know you have a story too. Email it to us at [email protected]. You can also drop your number and we will call you so you tell us your story.

*****