How do we love a husband who hurts us? How can we ever forgive, forget and begin to believe that he could be the one God chose for us?

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I am on the other side of our marriage miracle.

Not many people know that I am married to a recovering addict, a recovering alcoholic, recovering narcissist with a very dark past. I came from a very vanilla, very wholesome Catholic home with a strong, loving family.

Our childhood experiences could not have been further apart.

Immediately after we got married, as in… on our honeymoon, the trauma and drama got worse. I found myself battling my faith and questioning God, which was quite a fall from church leader ship.

I had truly been living for Him, now to find myself in a very emotionally abusive and toxic marriage.

But God.

What I have learned while being in a pit of despair, holding on to God for dear life, was that He uses every situation for our good and His glory. Which means, no matter how bad the man is or who’s at fault in the relationship trauma, the only control I ever had was over my thoughts, my words, and my actions.

I had to go through a personal transformation in order to love my husband even in the midst of his mess. In order to love the unlovable, just like Jesus.

Through my own personal transformation, I was able to create an atmosphere of healing and a safe place for my husband to begin breaking down all the walls and exposing all the trauma. Now don’t get me wrong, if he would’ve laid one finger on me I would have left without any questions. But I watched my husband begin to change slowly and make decisions on his own to pursue healing. He wasn’t strong enough to do it on his own, but God chose me to take the first step in healing myself, so that I could release my husband to do the same.

Let me stop and insert a disclaimer here: this is a very delicate process that comes with lots of wins and losses, but God CAN and WILL use us as women and wives to lead when we need to… to protect and nurture our husbands back to the heart of God (obviously this is a very hands-off-on-your-knees-in-prayer kind of process). But we learn how to fight our battles by clinging to God as our only hope and our perfect source of love and stability.

He will never fail us.
He will never leave us.
And the more we are completely full of His love and peace and supernatural strength, the more we will begin to see the relationships heal around us.

Overflow is inevitable.
His love is contagious.
Even if the person doesn’t realize it at first!

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Thanks for reading, friends. Remember, YOUR FEELINGS MATTER, and YOUR MARRIAGE HAS HOPE! If you have any questions about my journey or this topic, please email me at askdearmissmary@gmail.com! I can’t wait to share more of my story with you.