I knew something was wrong in my marriage the day I realized I was competing with God for my wife’s attention. That sounds strange, I know, but that was exactly how it felt. When I met Abena, she was a normal church girl. She believed in God, sang in the choir occasionally, and prayed before meals. That was actually one of the things that attracted me to her. She had faith, but she still knew how to laugh, how to make a man fall in love, and how to enjoy life.

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When we got married, church was part of our lives, but it wasn’t our entire life. On Sundays we went to service together. Sometimes we even skipped if we felt tired. We went out after church and sometimes watched football matches together. Those were the good years. We didn’t have to worry about many things. We loved simply and focused on how to make our days on earth better.

One day she told me there was a calling on her life. I asked her to explain, and she told me God had been calling her name in her dreams—a call to serve at the altar and interact with God in a special way. I assumed she meant becoming more active in ministry, helping with counseling, or even taking a role that would bring her closer to God than before. I asked her to pray more about it and seek clarity from God.

Then she started attending more prayer meetings. From Monday to Sunday, there was some kind of prayer meeting to attend. She fasted often, and when she fasted, it meant no cooking in the house, pulling me into the fasting as well. Soon she was barely home in the evenings. She said God needed her time and she had no choice but to obey. I was confused. When I asked questions, she answered with Bible quotations. Everything was changing too quickly for me to understand.

One night she came home very late, almost midnight. I asked where she had been.

“Prayer retreat,” she said calmly.

“A retreat? On a Tuesday?” I asked.

She smiled as if I was the one being unreasonable. “When God calls you, you must answer.”

I thought it was just a phase, but the phase never ended. Instead, it grew like wildfire. Almost a year later, my house slowly turned into a branch of the church. I would hear a knock on the door and go to check. There would be a lady asking for the “woman of God.” In the evenings after work, when couples should sit and reflect on the day, my wife would be holding prayer sessions with women in the community. I had completely lost my wife to the things of God, but because God was involved, I felt I had to approach the situation with fear and respect.

I asked her one day, “What’s the end game of all this? What do you intend to do with this call you said is on your life?” She answered politely but firmly, “I’m moving closer to God. Next year, I will go to school to become an ordained pastor.” I screamed, “No, that won’t happen. That was not the agreement from the beginning. I didn’t set out to marry a pastor, and I won’t allow that to happen.”

For the first time in our marriage, I spoke like the man of the house. I stood my ground and told her to change direction. She responded calmly, “I expected this to happen. The devil will not sit still while the children of God take up their mantle. But listen, God is God. You cannot stop what He is doing.”

The whole situation began to look like madness to me. I could no longer reason with my own wife without her quoting the Bible or talking about the mysterious plans God had for our lives. I called her parents and reported the issue to them. To my surprise, they already knew their daughter intended to become a pastor because she had told everyone who mattered.

I asked them to speak to her and change her mind, but they couldn’t do much. Eventually she brought the enrollment forms home and asked me to fill out my portion as her husband. I looked at her and said, “You’ve lost it. You need to come back to reality before it’s too late.”

I didn’t sign the forms. But a few months later, she told me she had already started pastoral school and needed a flexible job so she could combine work with school. Not long after that, she resigned from her job completely.

I looked at her and laughed bitterly. “You’re behaving foolishly, and that’s not God’s way. From now on, you’re on your own.”

I thought about leaving the marriage, but something inside me said I should pray about it first and try to hear God’s voice myself. I did. I prayed sincerely, hoping God would reveal the truth about the path my wife had chosen. Months passed, but I heard nothing.

Meanwhile, she was draining our joint savings because she was no longer working. We fought about money often. On nights when we fought, I couldn’t sleep. She, however, would pray from midnight till dawn, speaking in tongues and rebuking the devil she believed was influencing me.

Eventually, I grew tired. I realized I had stopped being a husband in her life and had instead become the enemy of her ministry. One night I asked her, “Do you want a divorce?” She screamed, “In the name of Jesus! How can you even mention such a thing?”

Her reaction was so dramatic that I started laughing, even though I was deeply hurt. I told her, “We have become two completely different people traveling on two different paths. We will keep fighting until one of us gives in. Since you won’t change and I won’t change, it’s better we end this before things get worse.”

While I spoke, she whispered prayers in tongues, rebuking the devil she believed was speaking through me. But I knew the truth: I was no longer happy with who she had become, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my happiness just to keep a marriage alive.

I told her I was leaving and that the marriage was over. She called several respected men from the church to speak with me, but I refused to listen. To show her I was serious, I moved out of the house.

I hoped that leaving would make her reconsider everything.

While we were apart, we still talked occasionally. But she continued attending pastoral school while everything around us was falling apart. Eventually she sent me an invitation to attend her ordination ceremony as a pastor.

I went.

But when they asked me to stand behind her as her husband to show support, I shook my head. In my heart I knew that once she was ordained, our divorce would follow.

Today, it has been two years since we divorced. We still talk from time to time. The reason I decided to share this story was something she told me during our last conversation.

Her voice sounded calm and reflective.“I have saved many marriages through prayer and counseling,” she said. “I have helped people overcome terrible situations. But look at me, I couldn’t save the one thing that mattered most to me, my own marriage.”

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She sounded like someone who wished she could rewind time and make different choices.I told her gently, “You achieved your dream, and that should make you happy. Not everyone gets the chance to see their dreams come true. I’m always happy for you.”

These days I’m building a new relationship with a woman I met seven months ago. The very first question I asked her was, “Do you have any calling on your life from God?”

She laughed loudly, and I laughed too. She knows my story. That’s why she laughed.

—Abena’s Ex

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