But my question was now that Bill and I forgave each other, for all the pain, hurt and wrong doing in our marriage that caused us to divorce, what do we do next?  For Bill, it was a no brainer, “Let’s re-marry!”  Whoa, not so fast!!!  We forgave each other and now could be “friends” but I was confused about love. You see, I had confessed that I no longer loved Bill! Yep, the love was gone. I no longer trusted him! He had promised to be a Godly man, a man who put God first and that was gone (nor was I the Godly woman Bill thought he married). He had not and now, sure, he SAID he was, but I needed to see it. I needed proof and it was going to take time. I just believed that God had allowed us to divorce, and in fact, a Pastor had condoned it (as I look back, it was not Biblical counsel) and gave his blessing for us to divorce.  Yes, there are righteous reasons to divorce.  I thought mine was a righteous reason – but even those marriages can be healed.

Marriage was out of the question for me. I just needed to once again love and the next time I married, it would be for true and everlasting love!!!  So my quest began! In the meantime, I was under transfer out of Mobile, Alabama to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So thankfully, that was going to buy me some time to figure out what to do!  Bill decided to return to Virginia Beach and start a new business.

I dove into God’s Word and also into a book recommended by Linda Lees, my sister-in-law, Love Life for EVERY Married Couple: How to fall in love, stay in love, rekindle your love by Ed Wheat, MD and Gloria Perkins.  (This is the Biblical marriage manual and is the BEST book ever written for marriages, taken straight from the Bible!  In my next post, I will share the five types of love needed in every marriage!)  Linda pleaded with us to read it before our divorce was final.  Bill did and he tried to get me to read it.  But I was not ready, until we finally lived apart.

I only wanted to read the Bible. I was starving for a closer relationship with God. In fact, I craved knowing more about Him! I wanted His perfect will for my life! I asked Him into my heart at age 9 and remembered that day as clear as yesterday. I knew God was real and knew that He loved me. I just needed to know how to love Him! And if that happened, then I knew I could find true love once again! I thought Bill was my true love, but I was the failure. Love never fails, right?

So in a nutshell, after reading and studying the Holy Bible, I found the answer!!!  Wow, it was a simple concept….not much too it….I finally discovered what love was! I had the answer, the keys to the kingdom! Why doesn’t everyone know this? Why does it seem so evasive? Why am I just figuring this out, now? Do you know? What do you think love is? If you don’t know, are you ready?

Drum rollllll!  Here it is, so simple, but yet so hard for me to figure out:

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:8 

GOD IS LOVE!  WOW, I walked around in a daze for days!  What a revalation!

So then God and I began to argue for months! I still didn’t love Bill….so what am I to do? Bill began to “court” me and became the best dad ever for Jessica!  Yes, even though we now lived states apart, Bill became very involved in our lives in a new way. How could I not love him? He drove up every Friday and picked Jessica up from day care, went grocery shopping, cleaned the house and prepared dinner for when I got home from work! What is not to love? We began to pray together, we went to church together, but guess what? I still did not have any feelings of love for him! I knew he was a wonderful man and a GREAT father….but something was missing.

What did I do? I knew God wanted me to love him again. So I simply said, “God I can’t love him. Please love him through me.” And with that, after a time of healing and the restoration of trust, Bill finally popped the question in July. “Would you marry me?” YES!  No hesitation.

So the planning began.  We were new to a church fellowship.  But unknown to me, a fellow FBI Agent (Larry Hurst) who knew what was going on, shared with his Prayer Group about us and they began praying for our marriage to be restored. So imagine their joy when I showed them my engagement ring!  They offered to help us with our marriage ceremony and even the reception to follow!

What a blessing! So we also knew we needed an awesome honeymoon, because, let me tell you, when you give God the power to love someone through you, He really pours it on! Larry and his wonderful wife, Cheryl, offered to keep Jessica for the week while we went off to Jamaica!

Ah, God is so good! Thank you Lord for this great gift of healing. Thank you for helping us to learn what love is, for helping is to fall in love, stay in love and rekindle our love!

At the time of this blog post, we are in our 36th 1/2 year of marriage – even if on and off! Our first 13 years were pretty good, we were great friends if nothing else, but these last 22 years (upcoming second anniversary is August 19) have been divine!  Not without a rough bump in the road, but divine no less.

Next up: Love life for every married couple – our marriage manual