My Trash, Someone Else's Treasure

Okay, Girls, God is using me once again to minister through my past mistakes which have led to current hurts. This time it is through my marriage experiences. I have prayed for this for years and now--my prayers are becoming reality.

My marriage has been loveless and one of convenience. I stay in it because I need the finances. My husband stays because he doesn't want to lose finances through divorce. He is not a Christian. He has been physically , verbally and emotionally abusive our entire marriage. The physical abuse stopped when he got too old to throw me to the floor. The verbal and emotional stuff still continues, but God has buffered my heart to the jabs. I no longer let him drill holes into my heart where self-esteem escaped like steam from a boiling pot.

Anyway, two dear friends of mine are having marital difficulty. They each have opened up to me and confided to me things about their spouses and their marriage they haven't told others or each other. It's amazing to me how they think they don't know each other very well, yet they have both been on-the-nose about how the other acts. Neither has much empathy for the others' reactions, though. I've been asking God to show me how to help them. I believe their marriage is salvageable. Yesterday, I talked to the female portion of the marriage for over three hours--a lot of it was about her marriage which just celebrated its 35th year. She talked and I took mental notes.

The Holy Spirit prompted me to ask her about doing a Bible study together. She said, "Great." I asked her which one. She had no clue so I suggested Beth Moore's Breaking Free. She said, "Fine." I asked, "When." Again she was speechless so I suggested tomorrow (which is today). She agreed! Awesome. I'm taking two study books with me over to her house today at 11:00am and we are going to embark on this study together. I'm so excited God is using me this way. I'm bursting at the seams.

This woman has a lot of bitterness and apathy, but she's given herself over to God. Now her softening heart is receiving words from Him to let go of her grip on her marriage and to take hold of Him with a firm grip. She's working on it. She's ripe for this study, open to change. Pray for us, Siestas, as we embark on this spiritual journey. I have done this study before, but it certainly won't hurt to rekindle the truths found within the pages.

Now it is becoming crystal clear why I wasn't to direct the Christmas drama. I thought it had everything to do with the book, but that was only a small portion. There is a drama that has been thrown into my lap and it wasn't created out of someone's mind as a work of fiction to be performed. It is real, the characters are real and the ending is yet to be written.