By MY HUSBAND, I HAVE BEEN UNFAITHFUL
She joined her husband in the bedroom. Their children were asleep. He was busy reading the newspaper.
She looked at him.
“My love, there’s something I need to confess,” she began to speak.
“What is it?” he asked without looking at her, his face still glued to the newspaper.
“I have been unfaithful,” she said.
He looked at her with fiery eyes. He slapped her. For the first time in their marriage, he slapped her.
“How could you woman?! Seventeen years of marriage, four children and this is what you do to me? You cheat on me? Foolish? How can you stoop so low?” he shouted.
He got up from the bed. He started pacing as he continued shouting, “You are the one who always tells me to keep off women. Out of respect, I keep females at a distance while you on the other hand do this?”
He was just about to pounce on his wife and beat her for the sting of unfaithfulness enraged him…
A knock was heard on the door. Their firstborn, Maria, a 14-year-old girl walked into their bedroom.
“Mom, dad, is everything OK?” Maria asked.
“Get out! Get out!” he shouted as his daughter.
“It’s OK, Maria, Dad and I will sort this out. Go to sleep,” she told their firstborn daughter.
Maria walked out of their bedroom.
“Who is it? Whom have you been unfaithful with? Give me his phone number. He will know today who I am,” he shouted, trying to grab his wife’s phone but she humbly took back her phone.
“Show me his number. Show me his face. Filthy animal who is snatching my wife!” he shouted some more.
“This is the man I have been unfaithful with,” she said, giving her husband her phone.
Her husband looked at the screen of her phone and saw his own face and phone number.
“Me?!” he asked, puzzled, looking at her.
“Yes, I have been unfaithful with you. I have been unfaithful to God because I have been so busy loving you. In my effort to try being a good wife, I have forgotten God,” she said.
He sat down on the bed, confused.
“When you met me, I was so devoted to God. In fact, you used to tell me that the most important reason you chose me as your wife was because of my devotion to God. I loved the Godly man you used to be. We would pray and long to have a Godly family together. I remember the days I would fast and pray and tell God that if He blessed me with a good job, I would dedicate my career to Him.
“God did bless me, God blessed you, God blessed us. We did so well professionally. We got good money. We could afford a good wedding. We got married,” she explained.”
He looked at her intently. She continued.
“In the first few months of our marriage, we would pray as a family. We started having children whom we failed to raise in the Godly way.
“With success, we changed our friends. We started worshiping money, success and materials. Look at us now, we live in a big house but God is absent. You started taking me to ungodly places to have fun. We started drinking too much, our children ashamed by our drinking.”
He looked away from her.
“In order to please you, I changed too; thinking that being a good wife means tagging along with everything you do. I didn’t confront you when you started going astray. I didn’t pull you back to God. I got lost with you – so lost that I started becoming proud, shallow and self-centered, all along thinking I was being a good wife. But this is not me. I have changed so much from the woman you married. We both have changed so vey much!”
He looked at her.
“All these – the good house, the good meals we eat, the money we have, the comfortable life – they have made us forget the God who gave them to us. I am nothing without God and I feel ashamed that I have abandoned the God responsible for all I am and have. We have started having troubles in our marriage because the Lord is no longer building our love; we are doing it on our own and we will fail if we keep on like this.”
She reached out and touched his hand.
“I want to go back to the woman I used to be, a woman after God’s own heart. I miss the peace that God gives, I miss worship, I miss meditating, I miss praying with you. What does it profit me to gain a good marriage yet lose my soul, my God? I am going back to God. Only as a wife submitted to God will I be the best wife to you and the best mother to our children. He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favour from God, but I cannot bring favour to you if I continue being disconnected from God. I want my spiritual life back. I want God back in our home, our marriage, our family.”
He started breaking down in tears. His spirit convicted. He held her tightly in his arms.
“I am sorry. I am sorry about going astray and taking you with me. You chose to marry me because you thought you were marrying a Godly man. I miss being that Godly man. Marriage shouldn’t be a stumbling block in our walk with God. The thought of you cheating on me ripped my heart apart. I cannot even begin to imagine how God feels when we are unfaithful to Him. God has blessed us this much and yet we turned our backs on Him! At the thought of you cheating on me I was filled with rage, yet God patiently looks at us in our unfaithfulness, longing for us to return to Him. I want to go back too. I want more in my life than these earthly things. I want God. I want the God of my youth. I am so sorry about slapping you.”
That night, they knelt down and repented, rededicated their lives and marriage to God. The Prodigal Couple came back to God.
The next morning they prayed together with their children. God returned to that home because that couple returned to Him.
