Marriage Restoration Testimonies

Colleen and Ward

My name is Colleen and I am 59 years old and the mother of four grown children and grandmother of 12 grandchildren... I was born and raised in Canada... My father worked with the Canadian government and we moved all over Canada during my childhood years. He worked for the Canadian Defense Liaison Staff; so when I was 17 years old, we moved to Washington, D.C. I went to a Secretarial School in downtown Washington... After I finished school, I worked for the school as a secretary and my husband Ward worked on the same street for a shoe store. He sold me a pair of shoes and got more than he bargained for.:-)

Although my family moved around a lot, I was raised in a pretty stable household. My parents were married 50 years and when I said my vows, I knew that the only thing that was going to get me out of them, was death...Hopefully not mine..!! I took my vows that seriously. My husband on the other hand grew up in a very dysfunctional family...He had four fathers in the first 17 years of his life and his mother, father and three stepfathers were all alcoholics.... It was do unto others before they do unto you.

Ward was drafted into the Army and joined the Navy before the Army could enlist him during the Vietnam War era...He was in the Navy for nine years and during that time he was not home very much. After nine years of marriage, he decided to get out of the Navy and that coupled with his mother dying and his new found freedom, proved to be the catalyst for a major crisis in our marriage.

Although I had been raised in the Church, I didn't have a personal relationship with the Lord. I had been baptized and confirmed, taught Sunday school, but didn't know the Lord. He was a far off God... I felt that the Lord was up there and I was down here and never the twain shall meet. God had a plan though and Ward and I became born again Christians three days apart...

My husband at that point was convicted that he needed to come clean with me and confessed to many affairs beginning shortly after we were married. I was crushed and with my newfound faith asked the Lord to get me out of this marriage any way he could. I was praying and crying out to the Lord one morning and the sky was dark and then one glimmer of sunlight broke through the clouds and I heard the Lord say in my spirit "out of all darkness comes light"...There was a song playing on the radio at the same time that had the words."Can’t we give our love another try”? I knew that I knew that God wanted me to stay and work on my marriage...

Ward became that new creature in Christ and just glowed. I know that if God asked him to walk on the water, he would have tried... We were moving with his job while the children were young and lived in Germany for four years and Hawaii for eight years and all over the States...We attended many different churches of different denominations and sought the Lord where he would want us to minister or be ministered to.... Life was good. Five years ago, my world came crashing down around me...We had gone through some difficult times with our children and the Church. My husband decided he wanted out of the marriage. . I was devastated and struggled to understand what God would have me do.... We were between churches, which I am sure didn't help...He got involved with a friend of mine and moved out of the home. The stronghold the Lord had broken 25 years previous was back.

I prayed and sought the Lord again about what his will was for me and through many sources He told me to stand for my marriage...He began to speak to me about marriage being a covenant and how He views a covenant and the vows we make.... So standing for my marriage then became, standing for what is right, loving others when they have hurt you and believing in a powerful God that can soften the hardest of hearts and bring victory out of loss....

When my husband first left, I begged, pleaded, and did everything that I knew to do to change the situation. I gave him scripture, prayed for him for hours at a time and fasted. I was consumed with fears of what would my future be like if he chose not to come back. Then slowly I began to realize that God wanted to be that husband to me, the friend that sticks closer than a brother...He wanted to be everything I needed until my own husband came back home and He wanted me to trust Him to be working on my husband at the same time... I had been a housewife and mother for 34 years at that point. We had two children before we became Christians and the Lord literally intervened and we had two more...So there is 11 years between my oldest and my youngest...It took me 30 years to raise them and get them out on their own. My life up until that point had been supporting everyone else so they could fulfill God's ministry and calling for their life...I didn't consider by putting myself on the shelf, that I was neglecting what God was calling me to do.... It took my husband being removed from my life to realize God wants first place in each of our lives...to be our first love. We can never put anyone or anything in that place, or it becomes an idol and God will remove it...

I was very sick at the time Ward left and ended up having major surgery. So in one year’s time, my husband left me for my friend, my son was in Iraq and Afghanistan with the 82nd airborne and I had major surgery on my neck.... Yet I can say it was one of the most precious years of my life...The Lord carried me when I couldn't walk and prodded me when I didn't want to keep going...He was my stronghold and my rock.... When everything else was shifting around me, I could count on Him to never change and to complete the work He began in me.... I will never say it was easy, but it was definitely worth it...

My dear husband came home in September 2003 (on Rosh Hashanah) and went to the OW's husband and asked forgiveness on Yom Kippur. He had no knowledge of the Jewish Calendar; so I believe it was a god-incidence...Our marriage has been restored. He was gone for a year and has been home 4 years.... We both have changed and our marriage is better than it has ever been...We renewed our vows last year in May 2006 and God is working to heal all the family relationships that were broken during that time...We have four lovely grown children and 12 going on thirteen beautiful grandchildren that are a definite blessing from the Lord and now won't inherit the legacy of divorce, at least from us anyway... I just want to encourage you that God is able to do more than we can think or ask and has a wonderful plan for each of our lives. It doesn't mean that we won't go through trial and heartache, it just means that he will bring us through the fire and we won't even have the smell of smoke on us. We will be refined to become all he has called us to be and if we remain faithful, one day we will receive our reward, if not here on earth in heaven....

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction

Prayer Requests

We Are Restored
Nightly Conference Call

Prayer Call Guidelines

7PM CST to ?

1-712-432-1495
Pin 12942 #

Share your praise!

Join
God Hates Divorce
Yahoo Groups