Chapter ??: (Title Undecided)

 It's the silent kind. It sneaks in quietly, subtly, unnoticed. It leaves its victim wondering if its really there. It makes them feel paranoid, as if they're maybe going crazy. 

If you know what I'm talking about, you're doing better than so many people.

During the process of my divorce, I submitted almost two hundred screenshots of evidence detailing descriptions my ex gave of his sexual escapades and deviancy. Details that while I was collecting them made me sick to the stomach and left me crying harder than I've ever cried before. These screenshots led my attorney to change his attitude of just another client to "geez, this is messed up and I need to get this woman out!"

These screenshots resulted in, much to my ex-husband's chagrin and protest, the judge ordering him to undergo a forensically informed psychosexual evaluation. Due to confidentiality laws my ex instated because he is afraid of people discovering the truth about him, I cannot discuss in detail what was uncovered, but I can say that this highly trained professional diagnosed him as narcissistic. This Narcissism was the element of him that tortured me for years unnoticed by almost everyone around me, even myself.

That's right, the beast I mentioned in the beginning is emotional abuse. I was abused. My mind was twisted, altered, strangled, all by the person who was supposed to love me. The person whom I gave up my whole life to build a new life with. The father of my children.

The thing with emotional abuse is that it comes slowly. I've likened it a lot to the story of the frog in the pot. If you toss him in while it's boiling, he'll jump right out, but if you put him in and slowly heat up the water, he won't realize what's happening until it's too late. That is exactly what emotional abuse is like. I think back and remember a time when things were good. We had a lot of love in our marriage. But I can't pinpoint exactly when things changed because of this slow disintegration. It was likely a little thing here and there I let slide to keep the peace, then he added more and more inch by creeping inch. Once I was in too deep and floundering, I believed deeply it was all my fault. I had ruined everything.

I think the worst part is that people can't see it from the outside. There are no bruises, no broken bones or black eyes. It's completely invisible, and the victim can't even see it happening to speak out for help. So they're stuck in a torture pit believing they deserve it because they somehow caused it. Especially with a narcissist at the helm. The only way it can be noticed is someone seeing that the victim's personality is altered.

For me, I didn't have anyone. I'd left my family and people who had known me well on the other side of the world. They are the people who would have seen my personality shift in a blink, but my narcissist ex didn't have them watching him. When I came here, he basically severed my relationships with people who did know me relatively well. He would tell me my close friends didn't like him so we couldn't be around them, and he'd tell me how his friends thought I was useless and I shouldn't be around them. Whenever I tried to reach out and make new friends, he would make some excuse to block me from really forming solid, long term bonds. He and his family also kept me locked outside, never ever being able to be worthy enough for their acceptance. Isolation plagued me, and provided my ex the perfect cesspool for my torture.

Looking back, I can see the damage he caused. Hindsight truly is twenty-twenty. As I mentioned, my entire personality was altered. People who have known me before I married, and even people post divorce will tell you I'm a positive, friendly, a bit silly, confident, and driven person. I always liked who I am, and since going through a healing process, I've begun to like that person again. However, that person vanished. Anxiety always seemed present for me. Anyone who knew me in high school would know anxiety was never much of an issue for me, even during exams I'd usually be pretty chill compared to others. Even during my time of persecution, anxiety was never something I dealt with, it was more distress. But I did become anxious. I grew depressed. Worried. Stressed. Overburdened. Exhausted. Nothing was ever good enough. I'd reach and strive, and be cut down. Even my own connection to the Savior was undermined and my prayers and personal revelation ridiculed. Considering my prayers are a sacred gift that have always been so strong of a connection to the Lord, the fact that my ex managed to make me doubt my connection and caused me to cease using it is a testament to the power he had exerted over my mind. I was no longer me. I was afraid of making friends because he would breath into my ear that people didn't like me to the point where I would simply tell myself that without his prompt. I believed myself a hideous person inside and out. 

I think the worst part is, again in hindsight, that people in the church turned a blind eye. I want it to be clear first before I delve into this; I love the Savior. I love the gospel. My spiritual connection with the heavens saved me and brought me through the darkest times. My testimony will never falter. However, the gospel and the people of the church are two separate entities. My ex is part of a long standing, well "respected" family within the area. Many people knew him growing up and knew his family for years before I even stepped into the picture. And so, when I was painted as a villain, they accepted it. Why wouldn't they? If these people they knew so well said so, then clearly I was. This blind eye fed my abusers. Because I wasn't a decent person, I could clearly lie about the way I was being treated or felt. Instead of seeing the way I was spoken of as the abuse it was, they allowed and even accepted it. When the divorce came, they didn't want to know the truth in that my ex had adulterated with barely legal young men, multiple of them, that he had a bestiality deviancy, that he'd delved deeply into a shady crowd known for their sexual "openness" of all varieties and would go to parties where he would drink until he passed out. No, it was my fault we got divorced. Because I wasn't a good enough wife and I drove him to madness. His choices were to be made accountable to me because I forced him to make them... apparently. And thus, the abuser taught those around him to abuse me as well.

Although, not all church members fell for this. My ward rallied around me. I have received such support and love from my ward I can't fully express the gratitude I feel for being placed among these wonderful people. And the best part? They watched me transform after the separation and saw the real me emerge. They told me they loved and admired the real me. After years of being told how worthless and ugly I was, this brought me back to life. 

Although I still see the scars from the abuse, I know I am healing. My children also still suffer from the abuse they witnessed their father dish out on their mother and I struggle everyday to overcome the damage done to them, especially my oldest. He abused them too, not as much as me, but the abuse of me caused them considerable damage that will take me years to repair and may never completely go away. Nevertheless, I am grateful for a watchful Father in Heaven and Savior who have taken care of me and my girls and have broken us free of our bondage. They protected us through the divorce, and continue to protect us now.

I am so glad I am back to being me. Except, I feel stronger. Fear has been driven out. I can see nothing but hope for my future, all because I'm a survivor. I speak out because no woman deserves to feel the way I did. We were married in the temple, and so I clung to that for dear life, fighting even when my ex made it abundantly clear he'd prefer to break me than love me. Just because I married him in the temple, it didn't mean I had to stick around. The Savior taught me that. He told me to get out and gave me an escape, then promised me my temple covenants remained in tact. The Lord loves his daughters. When we are mistreated He grieves, and when we are abused His heart breaks and He wants to break us free. I am so glad I accepted His hand to liberate me.

Abuse isn't always beatings. I speak up because I want people to see this invisible abuse. When a woman becomes quieter, when her husband and/or his family speak badly about her, when she seems sad more than she's happy, when her husband always seems to speak for her or over her, these are some of the signs. I experienced them. I survived them.

I am not a victim. I am a survivor of emotional abuse at the hands of a narcissist.

Chapter ??: Secrets, Betrayal, and the Lord’s Divine Interventions

Things get tough from here on. I will warn that the content to follow may be upsetting to some. I share this not to humiliate or defame, (which is why I don’t give names) but to share the truth, and how the hardest things we face in life can be eased and tenderly overseen by the Lord. What I’m about to share has brought me closer to God in a way I cannot begin to express. I have witnessed His hand in remarkable ways, and if I don’t share the miracles I have been given, I would be incredibly ungrateful. I know the Lord wants me to tell my story, for whatever reason He sees fit. He knows far more than me, and I’ve learned to trust Him and obey when He gives me direction. My direction now is to tell how I came to be divorced.

At the beginning of 2019, as mentioned, I had begun to feel things were off in my marriage. My husband had become increasingly closed off and distant, and the Spirit left the house whenever he arrived home. Tension filled the air whenever he was around.

My husband was incredibly protective of his phone. He had locks and passwords I couldn’t crack, and even though he knew how to access everything on my phone/laptop etc., he refused to let me even touch his and would get angry if he saw me pick up his phone. I became paranoid and agitated as I watched him texting but refusing to tell me who he was talking to. His phone was completely off limits to me, and I would be severely reprimanded if I so much as looked at it.

I want to make his protectiveness of his phone clear as much of what is to unfold revolves around his use of it, and how the Lord gave me miracles so I could find what I needed to escape. I won’t mince words here and I will say directly that my husband had become verbally and emotionally abusive. After our separation he was diagnosed by a professional as narcissistic, impulsive, and would do harmful things to garner reactions and attention. In the midst of the dark part of our marriage at the end, he used these things against me to keep me quiet and submissive. He made me believe I was useless, lazy, ugly, mean, selfish, and a terrible wife and mother. I worked as hard as I could to try to mend things. I worked a thirty-five-hour work week, I was enrolled in online college classes, and I was expected to tend to all the needs of our children while also somehow maintaining a house and making sure he had dinner every day. Sufficed to say, I failed at juggling all the balls I was supposed to juggle. At the time, I felt overwhelming guilt for failing, especially because I would be heavily criticized for it from not just my husband, but his mother and other family members, and even some of his friends. I was exhausted and beaten down, so questioning or fighting over my husband’s overprotectiveness of his phone fell low on my priority list.

However, one morning, he left his phone unlocked and, on the bed, while he took a shower. This was one of the rare mornings he got out of bed before I got our children and me out the door for work and school, because yes, I did all of the morning routine on my own. An image on his phone caught my attention. Horrified, I picked up the phone and flicked through several images of anthropomorphic homosexual pornography. With shaking hands, I held up the phone and asked him to explain. He couldn’t. He stood dumbfounded looking between me and his phone. Finally, he said he couldn’t explain it away. He knew he’d been caught. He tried to grasp my shoulder, but I pulled away. I felt sick to the stomach from his betrayal and confused by what it meant. I hurried to leave and get the girls and me as far from him as possible. Before I left for work, I told him he needed to either go to the bishop or move out.

He chose to go to the bishop.

After his meeting with bishop, he came to me and explained himself to me. He said he was what is called a “furry” and so his sexual desires are piqued by the animal imagery, costumes, and so forth. He also confessed to being drunk on a recent work trip to the point where he vomited in the hotel room and had a massive hangover in the morning.

When I asked him if he had same sex attraction, he flat out denied it and said he liked to imagine those images were him. I was foolish enough to believe him.

He told me to help him overcome his porn addiction I needed to be more sexually available. With my desire to help him, I agreed. Unfortunately, this meant I suffered from degrading and humiliating sex. I felt like a piece of meat to release his excessive sexual needs. To put it bluntly, he’d hump me to the point where it hurt me, but he wouldn’t stop until he had his release. Then, he’d simply roll over and ignore me. It made me feel like trash. I hated it.

Soon after this, I underwent gastric sleeve surgery. I told him before going in that it meant we wouldn’t be able to have sex for a while as I recovered. Looking back now, this lack of sex likely became his undoing.

In the time that followed, he became increasingly distant and irritable. I knew he’d gotten involved in furry chatrooms and I felt uncomfortable with it. Whenever I voiced my objections, he yelled at me and told me to stop being paranoid.

During another work trip, his car was repossessed while he was gone, leaving me standing in the street with my confused and distressed eight-year-old daughter. He had lied to me! He told me he’d been making the payments, but he was more than three months behind. When he returned home, I dragged him to the bishop and explained that I was just about done with his money mismanagement and something needed to change immediately. Bishop agreed and encouraged us to get marriage counseling again. While my husband’s parents bailed him out with his car so he could have his vehicle back, I also discovered we were on the brink of foreclosure on the house, which was another bill he had lied to me about paying.

I’d had enough. I took over all the bills and the budget, giving him strict and tight funds to use. Although I managed to catch up the mortgage and most of our other bills, he saw this take over as a personal insult, like I wanted to ruin him and refused to support him. From my perspective, I had gone years trying to support him, trusting him with our finances even though I watched him blow our money over and over. I’d tried to do the financial self-reliance class with him, among other things, but he still couldn’t stop the hole money burned in his pocket. And so, I took drastic measures in a desperate attempt to keep our family afloat so our children would have a roof over their heads and food on their table.

We started counselling. After our first session, he told the counselor he wanted me to stop yelling and make dinner every night. I said I wanted him to read scriptures with us in the morning and lead as the priesthood holder in the house.

I did what he wanted. He didn’t do what I wanted.

When we returned to the counselor, my husband’s excuse was that I’d done the things he’d asked with a bad attitude. He justified not doing what I wanted because I was horrible and miserable to be around and my attitude about doing what he wanted killed his motivation to do what I asked for in return. The counselor said, “But she did do what you asked.”

This just made my husband angry. Counseling wasn’t going well.

During this time, I managed to pick up pink eye from work. Working with kids has some downsides at times! As pink eye is highly contagious, I had to stay home. It was probably the worst case of it I can recall having. My eyes were sealed shut in the morning and I had to feel my way to the bathroom to flush them out. I’d barely gone back to work after my surgery and I was out again.

My second day of home remedies, I couldn’t tolerate the itching and goop any longer. I called my husband and asked him to stop on the way home and get me some eyedrops. I promised to have dinner ready, and he told me he’d get the drops and be home by six.

I made dinner. Six came and went. I fed my children while the food was still hot. Seven came and went. I bathed the girls, got them ready for bed, read a story, and got them in bed. Eight had passed by this time. At eight thirty, I called my husband to find out why he was more than an hour and a half late when I had explained how miserable I felt with my sickness. He answered and told me he had driven a friend home. I thought he meant stopping somewhere on the way, but that didn’t explain the two and a half hours. When I asked where he was, he said he was on the other side of Phoenix. I was mortified. Hadn’t I explained my sickness clearly? Hadn’t I told him I would have dinner ready for him if he just grabbed me some eye drops and given a specific time? I begged him to come home because I desperately needed eyedrops. He said he’d come home when he was ready because he was helping this friend with his college classes. I became frustrated, wondering why his wife being sick took a backseat to some random college kid. I yelled at him, trying desperately to get my message across since he clearly wasn’t hearing me. I was highly infectious and had our children in bed. I couldn’t go anywhere and I needed relief from my misery. He yelled back, telling me to stop being so selfish and he would come home when he was good and ready. He hung up.

I tried calling back. Again and again. I tried texting, but he ignored me.

Finally, exhausted and miserable, I flushed out my eyes again and climbed into bed. Not long afterward, a crippling pain erupted from deep within my belly. It felt like a tearing inside me, ripping me from the inside out. I couldn’t move. Tears rolled free from the agony, and I begged to the Lord, confused and alarmed by this strange and debilitating pain. It spread over my body, radiating from my core and the Lord answered, “I cannot stop this. You need to feel it.”

Never have I felt anything like this pain before. It was different to childbirth or dislocating joints which I had experienced. It was like it came from something beyond the physical. However, although this pain lasted for almost a half hour, I felt the Lord with me. He couldn’t take it away, but He could help me through it.

After the pain finally subsided, I looked at the unanswered texts and calls and I knew, deep in my heart, that my husband had just cheated on me. I sent him a message saying as much.

It wasn’t until much later when I mentioned this event to a friend that I realized what the pain was. The pain came from my temple marriage covenants literally breaking. My husband had broken them, and I felt it. I’d always held my temple covenants as sacred and knew they were extremely powerful, but now I know how deep and binding they truly are. To feel that pain from the breaking of sacred covenants made in the temple affirms to me their divine power and my responsibility to keep those vows with the Lord.

When my husband arrived home close to midnight, he woke me just to yell at me and say how dare I accuse him of cheating. Still sick, and alarmed by what had happened to me, I didn’t resist his barrage of insults and demeaning remarks, I just wanted to sleep. My heart hurt, and I knew what he’d done.

At our counseling, my husband brought up my accusation. I couldn’t say anything in response. I’d felt he’d done it. I had no proof, but I felt it. He kept saying “I’m a good guy,” over and over like he needed to prove it to everyone else and himself. Deep in my heart, I felt the pains of his words as the whispering came, “He was once, but now he casts all that’s good aside.”

Somewhere in there, we had another fight. I’m not sure exactly where it fits in, but he left to go—surprise, surprise--help his mother. I stayed home with the girls and worked on my college classes. I was studying Eternal Families at that time and did work on what to value most and whether to be more concerned about winning a fight or preserving a relationship. So, that evening, when I went over to meet my husband, I took the time to apologize. I tried to hug him, but he pushed me away. He said, “What’s wrong with you? You’re bipolar or something.”

I told him about my lesson, but he didn’t care. He scolded me for being the most selfish and mean person he knew and then told me he didn’t love me anymore because I was impossible to love. He went on and on about how horrible I am and how everything wrong was my fault and I needed to change.

The worst part? I believed it. I believed I was the most horrendous person alive and I deserved to feel like the scum between his toes. He had successfully whittled down my confidence and perception of myself that I now believed every horrible insult he threw at me. I believed I was fat, ugly, selfish, mean, unsupportive, lazy, a terrible mother, hateful, and the list goes on. I was so destroyed inside that even when I prayed, I didn’t see that all these things were completely false. I couldn’t feel the Spirit tell me they were wrong, but sought out answers on how I could change myself to please a man who didn’t want me to please him, a man who had turned me into his personal punching bag to project all of his own self-loathing onto.

Earlier that year, before I even found the porn on his phone, he had stopped attending church. He said it was because I harassed him about getting ready, but even when I stopped and focused on getting the girls and me ready without him, he still didn’t come. The only time I recall him attending church was Mother’s Day, and even then he ignored me and spent the entire time on his phone. In the special Relief Society held, Bishop said some beautiful, tender words that really struck my heart. I had to leave and hid in the bathroom to cry. Everything the bishop said I didn’t experience. In fact, I’d been made to believe I was a horrible wife and mother and didn’t deserve any respect.

On my way back to the room, I hesitated outside the door. I didn’t know if I could face a room full of women who were amazing when I was so pathetic. The husband of a friend of mine walked into the building. He and my friend had both gone through terrible divorces before finding one another, and I have tremendous respect for them both for their strength to go on. He saw me standing by the door to the room and complimented me for being a strong and wonderful mother. I burst into tears again. It was hard for me to fathom such a thing when my own husband constantly told me otherwise. Poor guy gave me a hug, clearly not sure what to do. But when I pulled myself back together, I could return to the room. And I’m glad I did. The women embraced me and loved me and so many told me how amazing I was to be able to work, study, raise children, and still attend church on my own. All of it on my own. I would say, “My house is messy,” and they’d laugh and say, “If that’s all that’s wrong, you’re doing pretty well!” My ward sisters gave me strength. This was the beginning of a turning point for me.

At work, I had coworkers who had become wonderful friends. They showed me love and lifted me up, telling me I was the opposite to everything my husband would tell me at home. Meanwhile, he was coming home less and less, and later and later. He told me to cancel our counselling because I wasn’t learning or changing so it was pointless. But I had begun to rise up inside. I would watch him and see how mean and selfish he was, not me. I realized that he had been projecting onto me, blaming my struggles to keep a clean house and make dinner for him, as well as my doubts regarding his lack of real estate work as the reason why our marriage was failing. Truth be told, he never once supported me. He openly objected to me returning to school and hated the choices I’d made for employment because it didn’t fit what he wanted me to do. The only reason he had for me being a bad mother was that the girls looked “scruffy”. I made sure they had a bath every night and clean clothes, and if their clothes became scruffy, I couldn’t replace them because he’d already blown our budget. It began to sink in that, considering what I had to work against, I was doing a pretty decent job. However, calling me a bad mother was another projection of his. One evening, while he was laying on the bed using his phone again, I got into an argument with our oldest who refused to do her chore. After some yelling back and forth, he stormed into the living room. He grabbed her and yanked her over his knees and started smacking her hard, over and over. She was screaming and crying, and I said he needed to stop. He paused his beating to glare at me and said how dare I undermine him, and he would keep hitting her until she stopped crying. I was so frightened and scared, all I could do was watch my child be beaten by her father until she finally managed to suck in her sobbing. When he released her, all she did was run and cry in her room. Her chore never got done, and instead, she treated me with more contempt.

Despite everything, when it came to saving our marriage, I was fighting a losing battle and it had exhausted me.

One Friday night. It was a rare occasion when I stayed up later than my husband. When I came to bed, he had left his phone on my pillow. When I picked it up to move it onto the charger, I saw messages from strange people, some of them suggestive in nature. I tried to unlock the phone to figure out what was going on, but I couldn’t. Instead, I took a photo of his screen with my phone and went to bed.

In the morning, after his phone had woken me several times during the night, I tried to unlock it again as it had even more of these strange messages on it. He woke to me doing this and turned savage on me. He raised his fist to me, but somehow didn’t actually hit me. I thought he would. He stormed from the house swearing to not come back all day because of my behavior, leaving me frightened and shaken. I went into the kitchen to prep breakfast for me and the girls while they were still in bed and cried the whole time. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I’d tried counselling with the bishop and a marriage therapist, and he had cancelled them. I’d tried church classes, and he openly hated them and told me he didn’t need them, but that I clearly did. I worked hard and studied hard, but nothing I did was good enough for him or good enough to mend our relationship. Standing up for myself caused fights and backing down made him treat me like garbage. Apologizing made him call me bipolar and crazy.

While I worked in the kitchen that morning, a friend called. When I answered, she simply told me that she felt impressed to call me and tell me to go to the temple that day and she would watch the girls. This made me cry all over again. God knew me and knew my pain, and through this friend, He was calling me to His house. So, I got my girls up, dressed, and fed, and dropped them with my friend.

I didn’t know what to expect at the temple. Honestly, I just needed to find some sort of peace. After being told by my husband he didn’t love me and no one around us liked me, I felt pretty hopeless. After years of being rejected by his family and treated like a pariah, I’d become beaten down. My fight had just about been extinguished. The people who were supposed to love me hated me. There are no words to describe how lonely it is to feel worthless. Thinking back, I think all I wanted at the temple was to feel like I meant something again. That there was some point to my existence.

For years I have exclusively taken family names to the temple, and this day was no exception. There is something about doing the work of your own family that draws the Spirit in a stronger way. Listening to the words of the session and keeping a prayer in my heart for direction and guidance, the Spirit encompassed me throughout the entire time.

In the Celestial room, I found a quiet place and began to pray. I needed help with my marriage. I’d run out of ideas, and everything I’d tried fell flat and often made things worse. We were supposed to have an eternal marriage, so I needed help getting it to a place where I didn’t feel so destroyed. The Lord knew my husband better than I did, so I needed direction to make this work.

The comfort of the Spirit wrapped me tightly as a warm voice whispered, “I am here.”

It’s months later while compiling this that I realized that those were the same words He whispered to me as a broken-hearted teen alone in the bush. He reminds me while I’m at my loneliest that I don’t need to feel alone because He’s always right beside me if I just be still and listen.

After having a good cry from the overwhelming strength of the Spirit, I asked, “What do I need to do to repair this marriage? I’ve done everything I can think of, and still I can’t make things better. Lord, you know my husband better than I do, please, help me.”

His response: “Let it all go and leave it to Me.”

Leave it to Him? Okay, I’d learned to trust Him over the years, but what else could I do?

“Let Me take care of it,” He repeated. “I know all, and I will provide a way. What will come will be hard, but you are strong enough to do this.”

“Strong enough?” I thought. I felt so broken. “I’m not strong at all,” I told Him.

A flood of memories, trials, heart aches, torment, all rushed to my mind. I’d gone through all of it and survived, even came out stronger for it. He had given me trials to make me stronger, and I had enough strength to get through what was to come.

“You husband will be brought low,” He told me. “He needs to hit bottom to remember who I Am.”

In a moment of fear, I begged Him to keep my girls and me safe. So often, we’d suffered from my husband’s poor choices more than he did. Car repossession, severe debt, being left stranded with a broken-down car, air conditioning not working mid-summer in Arizona because we didn’t have the funds to maintain or replace it. I feared that bringing my husband low would drag us down right with him, and I didn’t want that for them. My girls deserved better.

The Lord promised He would watch over and protect us. He would get us through, but again, I would need to be strong.

“I don’t think I’m strong enough to do this,” I told Him.

“You are,” He responded, “But I’ll give you support.”

It was as if the veil had lifted. I felt so much love around me. Five distinct presences drew close to me, and one said my name, and said, “I’m here.”

I knew his voice. Years had passed since I’d heard it, but I still knew it. The voice had filled my childhood and youth with love and kindness. That soft, English lilt in the way he spoke my name brought me to tears. My dear maternal grandfather. I believe he was the one who spoke because I would recognize his voice. I felt as if he stood right in front of me.

The other four presences were female. I believe one was my paternal grandmother. She knew my pain, and she knew what I would soon face because she had gone through similar trials herself. The other three women I cannot say who they were, but I felt their love. I knew as my ancestors they watched me closely and we have some deeper bond I don’t yet understand. I felt them all pledge their strength to me.

I left the temple feeling like a different person to the one who walked in. My heart was full and I felt powerful. I could face what was to come.

After arriving home, I tried to reach out to my husband. He didn’t answer my call but responded to my text where I said I’d gone to the temple and had an incredible experience. He told me I needed to stop being so self-righteous. As a result, I kept what I’d experienced in my heart. I feared he would mock it and sully it.

Instead, as I looked at my phone, the prompt came to download the app I’d found on his phone and get into the furry chatrooms. I did not want to do that. I’d felt for months something was off about the chatrooms he’d gotten involved in. But the prompt came through stronger. Get in there.

So, I did. It took some prodding around, but I eventually found my husband’s alias. I sat on it for a few days, concerned he’d figure out who I was. During that time, many of the furries confirmed my suspicions that the scene was a shady one. I was asked to meet up for sex, have threesomes, and sent crude and pornographic images, even of the guys' genitals themselves. I wanted to get out, but the prompt came to engage with my husband.

So, I built up my courage and dove in. I started simply, saying I was new to the furry scene and seeking guidance. It didn’t take him long to start trash talking about me to me. I didn’t even try to get it out of him. He talked about how his wife was crazy and certifiably bipolar but refused his suggestion to get treatment. I don’t recall him ever suggesting I get treatment for being bipolar! I brought up the question with my counselor after filing for divorce, and he gave me a look like, why would you think that? and told me I was quite normal. A bit damaged, but not bipolar.

Anyway, Tuesday, after talking for less than a few hours, he told me he is bisexual. I was absolutely gutted. He’d lied to my face saying he didn’t have same sex attraction, then was trashing me to the furries saying I didn’t understand and I was horrible for not accepting him as he was. How could I accept someone as they were when they lied to me about their feelings?

After work, I couldn’t bare the thought of facing my husband. I’d arranged to visit with my host mother that afternoon a few days earlier, and I couldn’t be more grateful I had. So, we went over to their place. My host mother immediately noticed something was wrong. She asked if I wanted to talk, and I began to tear up. She asked her daughter to watch the girls and took me into another room so we could talk.

There, I went into great detail. I explained everything, pouring my heart out to her. I told her he didn’t love me, he blamed me for everything, resented me for trying to fix our money problems, and he was bisexual. I cried the whole time, feeling terribly betrayed, and hating that lying to me had come so easily for him. Yet, hating even more that I’d been blind enough to believe the lies.

After I’d finished, she asked her husband to come in. Being on the stake presidency, he had better insight into the repercussions of what I’d revealed. He and my host mother counseled me to talk with my bishop because things had become very serious. While still in that room, I contacted my bishop. He was still at work, but he heard my concerns and arranged for me to go to the Relief Society President for support in his absence.

Before I left my host family, my host mother invited me to join them at their family cabin that weekend. I needed a break, she told me, and I had to agree.

After leaving, I headed straight to the Relief Society President’s house. We talked about all that I’d discovered, and she was shocked. One thing my husband has a talent for is putting on a good face. He has charisma and knows the best way to sell himself to people. Even now, people refuse to believe what I say happened because he is that convincing. I was abused, but he convinces people I was the one who did the abusing. However, this kind woman believed me and she hugged me and told me she and so many other would support me through this hard time.

Still, I did not consider divorce. I hoped, with some help, the truth would bring us to a point of healing.

But I had yet to discover more truths. Worse truths.

Over the next few days, I kept him talking on the app. He would spill without any prompts, willingly trashing me to someone who was essentially a stranger. He had no idea who I was under the alias, yet he talked more to someone he didn’t know than he did to me.

Meanwhile, as of the Saturday when he yelled at me and stormed out, he told me flat out that I wasn’t allowed to talk to him. All week, not only did he not come home until late, but when he did, I was met with a deafening silence.

On Wednesday night, as I was heading to bed, he stopped me. With every part of me aching from his betrayal, I stopped, wondering what he could possibly say to someone he told the world was basically the devil incarnate.

He said I had permission to talk to him.

I had permission? A bubble of rage popped inside me. Permission? I was his wife and I needed his permission to talk? It took all my effort to keep walking to the bedroom. Except, he stopped me and forced me to the living room to talk. I could barely look at him knowing what I did, but I didn’t want him to know. Not yet anyway. I felt like there was more. I wanted him to admit to me the truth on his own. To my face.

He started telling me how impossible I was, and how he couldn’t stand living with me. He tried to convince me that I needed to leave. Where would I go? I argued. My family lived on the other side of the world. He told me to go live with my friend if she’d have me.

I said I couldn’t leave the girls. They needed me. He told me they needed a decent mother, and I’d do them a favor by leaving them with him. After years of him telling me that I wanted the kids so I needed to deal with them, and me literally being the one who “dealt” with them 95% of the time, that cut deep. They were my babies, and I would never go anywhere without them. A voice inside me lit a flame, saying, “You are not the bad mother he says you are.”

That night, he tried to force me to leave. He bullied, belittled, demeaned, insulted, made me feel like the salt of the earth, but I wouldn’t budge. Not for him, but for my girls. I’d never leave them. I’d fight to the death for them. I’d suffered through infertility, aggressive tantrums, sleepless nights, postpartum depression, fear of them being harmed, and years of being accused of being a bad mother just for them. They were my blood, sweat, and tears, and I’d never let them go.

I tried to push him to admit the truth to me. I said I felt he was keeping things from me. I knew it deep down. He told me I was paranoid and I needed therapy. But I knew I wasn’t. I knew he was lying to me.

Somehow, I managed to escape and go to bed.

Thursday. After work, I prepared to leave for the trip to the cabin the next day. It meant putting off my oldest’s homework, and I had my own assignments for college I wanted to complete before going away. It was one of the few evenings my husband arrived home when he was supposed to. When he walked in, I was engaged in an argument about homework, and had barely managed to get my youngest to go to her room to leave her sister to do her work. Basically, all three of us being in a tense state, didn’t register him arriving home hours earlier than usual.

As my oldest did her homework and I retreated to do my assignments, he sat on the couch, waiting for someone to acknowledge him. When no one did, he stormed out.

The next thing I knew, he sent my alias a message showing him with a glass of beer. He said his wife had made sure everyone ignored him when he got home and started trashing me while he drank.

Alarmed, and knowing he didn’t have house keys, I locked down the house. He spoke such ugly and hateful things about me that, with some alcohol in him, I had no idea what he’d do to me.

He didn’t arrive home until well after the girls had gone to bed. I’d shut the house down to go to bed myself when he first started banging on the doors. He went all around the house, banging on the windows and yelling at me to let him in and stop being crazy. He grew so aggressive, I called in a mutual friend who lived nearby. This friend managed to coax him into leaving, but told me later he had to stop my husband from throwing a brick through a window.

He went to this friend’s place briefly, and after he left, this friend called me and told me he was very upset. I explained that I knew he’d gone out drinking and I feared for my safety. He said he hadn’t smelled any alcohol on him, so I sent him the picture. Concerned, he said I should probably try to talk to him.

The forty-five-minute conversation that follow I recorded. As I made the call, the distinct voice of the Spirit spoke to me telling me that I needed to record it. When I played it for a professional, they explained to me that it showed prolonged gaslighting to the point where he knew exactly how to manipulate me into bending and thinking I was completely to blame. Even though I made valid points for concern, the way he twisted my thoughts made me buckle and even ask him to come home, despite my fears and best judgment. He made me doubt my own judgment and even my sanity.

He stayed with his parents that night. However, at some point we did see him because he wanted me to take the more reliable car to the mountains. I don’t recall much about that encounter aside from telling him there was an extra box of Ritz in the cupboard.

We settled in at the cabin, enjoying the cold. The girls ran around and had fun with my host brother’s kids, while I felt mellow. I simply wanted to savor my time with these people I’d grown to love, but hadn’t seen much of due to life getting in my way. The family all knew something was wrong, but no one said anything. They were just kind and loving, like always.

That night, over the app, my husband started to sext my alias. He talked about his fantasies with men and what he’d do to my alias. He talked about how his wife was fat and refused to do things he wanted to do and how unsatisfying I was. He also sent me pictures of his penis, and a video of him getting off.

First thing in the morning, he told me about his sexual encounters with men. Two men, specifically, one aged twenty-one which he’d had several penetrative encounters, one time on a Sunday when he waited for me to leave for church and went to meet this guy. The other was a nineteen-year-old whom he was working to convince to let him penetrate, but they were having oral.

I thought I was devastated before. This took my pain to a whole other level. When I managed to go downstairs, I asked to speak privately with my host mother. She took me to her room, where I sobbed as I told her of my husband’s affairs. She, having watched him grow up, was mortified and in many ways, quite heartbroken herself. None of us saw this coming. Once, my husband had been a good man, an honest, loving, loyal man, but somewhere that man had died. The man I loved had gone, and I think that was more heartbreaking than death. Death means someone going to another place and one day I would see them again, but this, this was the complete vanishing never to be seen again of someone I loved. A new person resided in his body; someone I didn’t know nor did I want to know. My husband, who had been tender and caring for years, no longer existed.

I told my host mother that I had to divorce him. She agreed that things had gone too far and I needed to get out. She invited her husband in to update him on the situation, and he too knew that divorce would be the best route for me and the girls. We decided that I needed a blessing, and my host brother, who was the same age as me and my husband, was invited in to help. The poor guy just saw this sobbing mess but had no clue what was going on. To his credit, he didn’t ask either.

The blessing from my host father was tender and so affirming. He said I was doing the right thing and, down the road, my girls would look back and admire me for the choices I would make and would love me for being strong. The blessing confirmed that I’d done the right thing, followed my promptings, and that the Lord would be with me.

That night, I discovered my husband’s affinity for beastiality. My resolve was set.

The following evening, after a series of texts regarding everything that I’d learned, my bishop called. I sat outside in the cold night air as we went over everything that would unfold. I sent him the screenshots of what I’d learned, being careful to select shots without the pornographic images and just the descriptions. He agreed that divorce was the only course to take and sent me details for an attorney. After our conversation, he contacted our stake president and shared the screenshots with him as well. Excommunication began to be a definite possibility.

The problem was, my husband still lived at the house. Somehow, I had to convince him to leave. As I drove home, I worried over how I would do this. I prayed over it, fearing his explosive temper. Then, I received a message from him that answered my prayers. He had moved out. I sent up a prayer of gratitude, relieved I didn’t have to face that horrible encounter.

Then, with my burden lightened, I told the girls. My oldest started to cry, but my youngest sat quietly.

I asked her, “Do you understand that means Daddy won’t be living with us anymore?”

She said yes, then, in her three-year-old innocence, said, “I’m glad because you can be happy now, Mommy.”

It broke my heart. She’d seen how much her father hurt me, and with him gone, she hoped her mother would finally be happy.

Over the next few hours, I was frightened when he showed up, and even more frightened when he took the girls to his parents’ house. In tears I made his dad promise to bring them back.

The next day, I went to the attorney, signed a contract with him, and filed for divorce.

The day after that, my friend who had told me to go to the temple just over a week earlier, took me back to the temple. I cried through large portions of the endowment session, feeling the grief of broken covenants.

Afterward, in the Celestial room, my friend left me to converse with the Lord. I asked again if I’d done the right thing. I believed so fervently in the sanctity of the temple sealing and eternal marriage, yet I’d taken action to end mine. The Lord reminded me of what He had told me before, that He would take care of things. He showed me that He’d made the truth come to me, and for the wellbeing of my children and me, we needed to escape. The Lord told me that He wanted me to get out of the marriage, so He made it so.

The best part? He told me He had greater plans for me, and because of my faith, He would guide me down that path, remaining at my side the entire time.

I would need Him with me, as the worst and ugliest was yet to come.

Chapter ??: Decline

 After years of generally being content in my marriage, something shifted. My husband never seemed to find job satisfaction and his inability to manage money added stress to our relationship. However, I was not naive and I knew finances often caused strain in marriage. He was attending college part time and coming close to earning his associates. I encouraged him to complete the classes, and often took the girls out when he needed some quiet to do online work. I knew that in the long run finishing college would benefit our family and maybe, hopefully, alleviate some of the financial strain and consequently the strain between us.

Between semesters, he made the decision to go to train as a realtor rather than do the next semester of college. Like most of his decisions, he made it without talking to me, but rather told me what was going to happen. I figured if he wanted to do something and it would finally make him happy, then he should do it. He promised once he had completed the realtor school he would return and finish his college, so I trusted him and supported him.

When he finished realtor school, he signed on with an agency. Keeping up the fees that came along with it would place an added strain to our already tight income, especially because he kept talking about quitting his job to focus entirely on drumming up clients.

I was not a fan of him quitting his day job. Real estate is commissions, and he had little to none lined up. Somehow, I managed to talk him out of quitting. Meanwhile, I grew concerned he would quit anyway, because he had a habit of coming home and telling me, By the way, I quit today. My mind turned to me getting a job. I agonized over this as our youngest was just over a year old. I felt the need to stay home with her and to raise her the best I could, and like I felt I needed to do, but, if I hoped to help my husband keep the family afloat, I needed to work.

I prayed over the issue extensively, until I received the prompting to apply to work part time at a school. So, I did. As soon as I began to apply, my husband told me to look for full time positions starting at a minimum of $14 an hour. Coincidentally, that was what he was making. He wanted me to be the breadwinner so he could quit. Except I wanted to be a mother, not the breadwinner, and I felt that was what was most important.

It didn’t take me long to find a job. My second interview at the schools landed me an almost instantaneous offer. I had another interview the next day, so I asked to have that interview before I accepted. They agreed. Except, over the next twenty-four hours I felt a strong pull to take the position. It felt right, even if it was six hours less a week than the position I was interviewing for, and also $2 less an hour. So, after the interview, even though I hadn’t received a response from the later interview, I accepted the job offer with the elementary school.

My husband was not happy with me. The twenty-nine hours at minimum wage was not enough of an income to allow him to quit. He pestered me to keep looking for other work, despite my explanations of how this would fit into our eldest’s school schedule and I would have more time at home with our youngest. My income was supposed to be supplemental, to assist him with alleviating the pressure on our finances enough to manage some real estate and get the ball rolling. To him, this job meant I was being unsupportive and that was all he could see. He refused to see that I needed to be a mother first, but I was doing everything I could to help him.

I thoroughly enjoyed my job. Once I settled into it, I found wonderful friendships with my coworkers and fell in love with the kids. It became a reprieve from the strain of my marriage. Things at home began to slowly decline. At first, it was little things. A snide remark here, a small insult there. I would bite back because I didn’t like being insulted and belittled and so arguments would break out. He stopped telling me I was beautiful, and I, with lingering postpartum depression and image issues due to the significant weight gain over the years, began to believe he found me repulsive. It didn’t help that he would turn down my sexual advances, but I would find him often relieving his own needs.

Meanwhile, I was struggling with finding people to watch my youngest while I worked. My husband refused to pay for daycare, and so I had to beg and plead for people to watch her for as little as $10 a day. He never helped me find people to watch her. He would tell me that was my job. His parents watched her once a week, begrudgingly. I found it frustrating that they called me unsupportive of my husband, yet they didn’t support me working and made it clear watching their granddaughter was a hassle. Eventually, they told me they wouldn’t watch her anymore. So, I had to scramble to find someone else willing to watch her for pennies. When I found someone who said they would watch her for $15 a day, my husband got after me for it being too much money and tried to force me to find someone else. I refused to budge, which made him upset and again, tension grew.

On July 2^nd, 2017, I wrote, “As much as I’ve enjoyed working at the school and working with the kids, I’ve been getting some serious mommy guilt about leaving (my youngest). She’s such a sweetie, and I feel like other people are raising her. I wish (my husband) would get serious about working to earn more so I can be with our children.” My frustration had grown, and I was feeling the strain. Despite this, my entry remained positive, talking about the fun we were having camping, my time at summer school with my oldest, and my efforts with weight loss using HCG shots.

By the summer break however, I was thinking about leaving my husband. He had broken his promise to return to college, he had done nothing with his real estate, and the insults and bullying was slowly increasing.

I went to visit my family in Australia that break. My parents were about to leave on their mission, and my sister had recently had her first baby. The three weeks down there I viewed as a break from him to clear my head and refocus on what to do. Friday, August 4^th I wrote, “Before I left, I was broken. I went to Australia needing a break from everything, especially my marriage. I was considering the pro’s and con’s of leaving (him) because I felt like there’s no love in our marriage anymore and despite my efforts to support him and keep our family afloat financially, emotionally, and spiritually, all I was getting in return was ignored, yelled at, and emotionally abused. Sundays were always a huge fight when all I wanted was to get to church on time. Every day I would get both girls ready and out of the house before he even got out of bed. He wouldn’t even get up to read scriptures with us. I got no attention, no praise, no thank yous, and our sex life had fizzled into basically nothing…

“I hate that he bought himself a brand new car with a car payment using money from my book sales that I had planned to use to pay off some debts. Now we have another debt on our plate and he’s more in love with his car than me and the kids….

“The point is, I left the U.S. considering what it would cost me and the girls to leave him to all his selfish madness. He thinks he’s head of the house, but all he does is think of himself and dictates what will happen in our lives. He yells at me when I make my own decisions. Our biggest fights are when I decide to do something on my own accord, or I want to do something other than his dictated outline. I was miserable. I was lonely, brokenhearted, and I hated myself. The worst part was that I LET it get that way.”

I fasted every Sunday while I was in Australia and attended the temple to help me find direction. My focus turned to the Lord. As I said in the same entry, “I used to receive inspiration with ease… But it’s been years since I felt the Lord’s hand guiding me.” I resolved to be open to every voice He placed before me and be conscious and sensitive to any direction I might receive.

My efforts didn’t go unnoticed! It was as if the Lord had been standing at that door just waiting for me to crack it open. All the revelations seemed to have built up like a clog in a pipe and with the opening of the door, they rushed over me.

Of my experience in the temple, I wrote, “It hit me, (my husband) hadn’t been hearkening to the Lord, but to himself. So I needed to listen to the Lord for the sake of my family… I knew the Lord wanted me to step up.”

My entry from this time says it all quite clearly, so I will quote directly from it for now.

“So, I sought out how He wanted me to do that. As the mother, my primary role is to care for my girls, so I trusted He would show me the best path. (My husband) wants me to work forty hours a week, but that felt wrong to me. Heavenly Father wants me to raise His children and be their example of womanhood. Right now, I’m showing them how to be an emotionally abused, broken, doormat wife. I need to show them that they can be smart, strong, and instruments in the Lord’s hands.

“So, I took on that angle; how can I be the example the Lord wants me to be for my girls?

“Meanwhile, an old friend was placed before me. I have known this woman since I was younger than (my oldest, who was six). She is one of the most beautiful people I know, inside and out. But she had a disastrous marriage. She opened up to me… about her experiences and the events leading up to, around, and after her divorce. Hearing her story broke my heart, but I knew I wasn’t in the same boat as her. She explained how now she has different priorities for a spouse and I agreed with her (priorities); Loves the Lord completely and everything follows from there. She also explained that before they married, she was prompted to call things off. I was never prompted to do that. In fact, I remember clearly receiving confirmation to marry (my husband) and being with him was the right choice and the Lord would bless me. Because of that, I knew I could trust my decision and the Lord would provide a way for our marriage to work as long as I stay true and faithful and seek His counsel.

“So, (my friend) inspired me to find a new angle. Things in my marriage aren’t as bad as they could be, and they are issues the Lord can help me overcome. Armed with a new resolve to find a path to mend our marriage and be the example of womanhood my daughters need, I set out in search of the Lord’s answers.

“They came fairly quickly after that. I think the Lord needed to change my heart and open my eyes first. The answer came that I needed to return to school and finish an education degree. I’ve felt for a while that I need to be a teacher, so although this prompting wasn’t surprising, it was enlightening. About a year ago I felt the powerful urge to return to school, but due to the lack of finances, support, and the need for me to work, it fell through. But it’s so strong now. He made it clear that I need to start in the new year and save up as much as I can while working this semester so I can… focus on my children and schooling. I grew very excited to have the heavens open to me again and I felt deeply happy for the first time in a long time. That, for me, tells me my answer is what the Lord wants…”

More revelation is written in here, but it is too painful to recount. Because I was unable to follow through with it, the blessings I had felt would come from it never came to fruition. The blessings promised would have saved my marriage. However, my husband had lost any ounce of spiritual sensitivity and fought me regarding the topic anytime I raised it for discussion. He told me my revelations were false and stupid and he refused to listen. It breaks my heart to read the promises I was given back in 2017 for if I would follow the Lord’s will, but I was unable to obey due to my husband’s refusal to hear me.

After the revelations given, I wrote, “But I knew getting all that would be an uphill battle. (My husband) has no money skills and refuses to see anything outside of his personal expectations. So, I asked the Lord to help me. The Lord replied, “That’s all I’ve been waiting for.” From every direction, His answers flew at me. (My husband) and I needed to do the self-reliance classes, specifically the finances class, and until he can show responsible spending, I need to keep my income out of his grasp. I can then be a protective barrier for his poor money skills and begin building a savings for education and our girls.

“I needed to push (my husband) to find better work because his work as a realtor isn’t going to be a blessing to us anytime in the near future. He needs to prove his ability to manage money selflessly before we will be blessed like that. The Lord has given (my husband) direction, but he doesn’t listen to it.

“On the flip side, I haven’t played my part either. The Lord saw that I am flexible where (my husband) is rigid. I am adaptable, where (my husband) refuses to change. I am long suffering, whereas (my husband) is short tempered. I was supposed to soften him, but I failed so I am paying the consequences. But I am determined to change that.

“It’s up to me to heed the Lord and teach (my husband) how to find the Lord’s desires for us so (my husband) can lead our family in righteousness. It was my responsibility to teach (my husband), but I failed. I won’t fail anymore.

“I know (my husband) will fight and resist me, but I cannot deny what the Lord has revealed to me. So I will stay the course the Lord has placed before me no matter how hard I’m kicked and bruised. In the long run, I have been promised a beautiful marriage and a happy family as long as I obey. So I will obey, no matter what. I love my Father in Heaven and my Savior too much to deny the things revealed to me, or to back down on what they have shone a light on. They have provided a way.”

And so, my time in Australia set me on course. I was right too, my husband resisted me at every turn. When I told him I wanted to go back to school, he told me I was being stupid and selfish. He forbid me from quitting work to focus on schooling and our children. When he discovered I had set up a bank account to place my paychecks to help curb his spending, he yelled at me for twenty minutes, then went and set up his own bank account to keep money away from me. He played tit for tat, and refused to listen to anything I felt prompted by the Spirit to say or do. I felt like I had married a teenager with all his temper tantrums and belittling of me, but I gritted my teeth and pushed through. The Lord had told me to stick to it, and so, I would. When I made arrangements to do the finances class, he went briefly, then refused to go. He said it was because I humiliated him, but no one felt that way. The class was about learning and growing, and I had asked questions to help both of us. I had never sought out his humiliation, but rather, I wanted us to grow together in developing money management skills in the way the Lord intended. Everyone else asked similar questions, and other spouses pointed the finger at one enough just about every week. However, like what was becoming frequent, I was to blame for all my husband’s problems and I was supposed to fix all of them while making him feel like he was the one in charge and fixing them.

My work situation was still in question as well. While I still felt I needed to go to school, my husband had made it clear I wasn’t allowed to quit working. I prayed fervently over a course to take, and my answer came as simply, “Trust Me.”

I feel like that’s been the catchphrase of my life ever since. I cannot count the times I’ve gone to the Lord begging for direction because I am out of ideas and He simply says, “Trust Me.” I’ve learned now that when He tells me that to let go, sit back, and watch miracles unfold.

This time, He opened my eyes wide. The librarian at the school where I worked was retiring and they needed to fill her position. One of the aides qualified and would be filling the job. That, however, opened up a fifteen-hour position, and my team leader asked me if I would like to take it. That would be fourteen less hours a week, fourteen hours I could be with my youngest and working on college classes! I couldn’t believe how easily and perfectly it all fell into place, and all right after the Lord told me to trust Him. I couldn’t stop the prayers of gratitude!

However, when I recounted with great excitement how things had panned out to my husband, he scoffed at me and told me I was being stupid. It wasn’t the Lord, he told me, just coincidence and I was seeing things that weren’t actually there. This really perturbed me. I walked away from him, feeling like I’d lost him. It was in that moment I knew he had lost any ounce of faith. It hurt my heart, but I’m obnoxiously stubborn and I refused to give up fighting. We had been sealed in the temple, and so help me, that meant everything and I would fight with everything I had to ensure that covenant remained intact.

I signed up for the BYU-I Pathway program to ease back into my studies. My husband showed clear signs of not being pleased about it, but I ignored it. The Lord’s will had more sway with me by this point, and my husband’s foul demeanor and bullying was having less of an affect on my decisions. During General Conference on October 1^st, 2017, I wrote my thoughts after the completion of conference regarding my education: “Earning this degree will make me an instrument in the Lord’s hands somehow. Being a teacher… is an important way for the Lord to bring His light to others in the future.”

Pathway began in January 2018, and so did my position working fifteen hours a week. Less hours working and getting back into studying relieved so much of my stress and brought me happiness. I could be with my little girl more and I began my journey down the road the Lord had directed me to take.

During this time, my husband did exactly what I had been expected him to eventually do; he quit his job. For the fifth time during our marriage. Thankfully, I had built a little nest egg for savings. Although, I did not realize he was raking up more debts behind my back. He wanted to focus on real estate, so I tried to keep calm. With the extra time, surely he could get out and canvas areas and drum up clients. He didn’t. In fact, I’m not really sure what he did with his time. He had a couple of clients with friends, but that was it. In hindsight, I know what he was doing with his time, viewing pornography, most of which was homosexual, and it alarms me to think he had our youngest in the house with him, risking exposing her to it.

Hindsight is a remarkable thing. As part of the divorce, I submitted pages of screenshots and photographs to my attorney to help fight my case to protect my children from what I knew my husband was doing. I thought my attorney would take hold of all the drinking and driving and use it as evidence of possible child endangerment, but he took hold of something else entirely. As a result, the judge ordered a psycho-sexual evaluation on my husband. Part of the evaluation revealed my husband had begun his porn addiction three years earlier. It didn’t surprise me then that our marriage had begun its nosedive at about that time. Thinking back, I could see things shifted between us at that time, and the spirit left our home then too.

The year continued, and we entered summer break. This meant we had no income whatsoever. This was frightening, but my husband kept telling me everything would be fine. Tight, but fine. Since he withheld all his commissions from real estate from me, I figured he had built up a savings from the few sales he had made. We went on a trip to San Diego and to Oregon that summer, and we seemed to be doing okay. I ended up having to use my credit more than I wanted before I started getting money again from work, but we didn’t fold. Yet, anyway.

During that summer, I was offered a position at my daughter’s school. It would pay more and would be thirty-five hours a week. After struggling for many months, the position was too good to be true. Working close to my child and earning a bigger paycheck? It was a no brainer. I would be doing classes I knew I could manage with the bigger workload, so I felt comfortable with juggling my schooling as well.

The initial adjustment was rough. The longer hours and shifting to SpEd proved difficult and tested my abilities. Our finances weren’t bouncing back either, so I began getting short tempered with my husband. He needed work other than real estate. He needed a steady income because I was growing tired from carrying everything. He saw this as being unsupportive and grew increasingly angry with me. Exasperated, I dug my heels in on this. How was I being unsupportive when I was working thirty-five hours a week, studying, and being expected to manage and maintain our house and family as well? All I wanted was for him to step up and bring in an income so we didn’t lose our home and to get back on track.

By this point, I had also received some disturbing revelation. I needed to work on my education and build up a savings because I wouldn’t have my husband for much longer. I needed to become self-reliant of him to keep myself and my girls afloat and moving forward. I remember when I first received this information. It was an odd moment. I can’t find when it happened exactly, because my journal entries are sparse during this time and consist mostly of spiritual notes taken from conferences, Time Out For Women, and other scripture and church studies. Pathway had given me a spiritual shot in the arm and I went from spiritual starvation to spiritual feasting. This shift in closeness to the spirit was what opened me up to such a revelation. And so, one morning while I was in the bathroom and pondering on the direction I needed to take with my education and work and how to best support my husband by using them, the revelation unfolded. I was staring at my hands as it came, I remember that much. The Lord told me I needed to work hard on my studies so I could establish a career as a teacher. This would be important because soon I would not have my husband. In fact, I felt impressed that we would not make it much past our ten-year anniversary. I thought it was because he wasn’t maintaining his diabetes and it would kill him prematurely or something the likes. Divorce was never something I gave serious thought to, especially after my experiences in Australia that told me to stick to it. The revelation alarmed me, and, in fear that maybe I could have possibly made it up, I kept it to myself. At least, for a short while. Eventually, with the revelation weighing on me, I told my mum. She was concerned as well, but offered me comfort in that people can make choices to change and maybe, on our current course, things would end up that way, but I could change it with my choices.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t my choices that were leading us down that path.

Chapter ??: Depression and Infertility

When I was eighteen, I was diagnosed with poly cystic ovarian syndrome. At the time, it meant very little too me. It gave me the advantage of rare periods, but that information was what clued my mum onto my possible health issues.

When I was in year ten, I suffered from some severe pains in my reproductive organs area. Cramps, stabbing pains, the works. I was examined and had tests done, but at the time nothing was found. I believe though, that this was the time my condition started.

My symptoms slowly crept up on me. Lack of menstruations isn’t uncommon in teenagers, so it didn’t bother me. I began to gain extra weight, but I wrote that off as being less physically active due to my HSC classes. I had gone from having two P.E. classes, playing school sports, doing swimming club in the summer and netball in the winter, to just netball. P.E. was no longer sports but sitting in a classroom basically studying biology and sports science. Doing school sports was traded in for TAFE on Wednesday afternoons. And so, my physical activity declined, leaving me with a reasonable assumption for that being the reason for gaining extra weight.

During my time as an exchange student, I gained even more weight and had a total of one period the whole time. I started to notice dark hair on my face and other awkward places. After I arrived home, I was talking with a friend and told her I hadn’t had a period in six months. My mum overheard and booked me in to see a gynecologist.

After blood tests and several ultrasounds, I was diagnosed. My left ovary looked like honeycomb it had become so bad. The gynecologist explained to me that I could be treated by taking the pill, but one of the side effects could be trouble conceiving in the future.

I was eighteen, so I didn’t think much about that issue then. For the moment, I focused on getting my other symptoms under control; regular periods, reducing the hair issues, and losing the extra weight. I did, however, suffer from some severe pains during the early medication period. I felt my body trying to extract the cysts, and one occasion I curled up in my bed and cried from the pain.

Eventually, my body settled. Time passed and I got married. My first child came along quickly. I hadn’t been off the pill a month and I was pregnant! This shocked me because I had assumed I would struggle to have children, but, here I was, pregnant without any effort. I wasn’t terribly overweight then and I had been careful to maintain the PCOS. I think those factors helped with the quick conception.

What a happy and exciting time! Although my husband had said he didn’t want kids yet, he was excited along with me. Even when I projectile vomited on him in bed! He tended to me carefully and lovingly. He would make up songs about how much he loved me and laughed when I called him in tears over spilling ramen.

Her delivery was traumatic on my body. I had just turned twenty-four when I gave birth to her. My waters broke at two in the morning, but I didn’t go into labor. It turns out, my body likes to do that; dump all the fluid then do nothing. The nurses didn’t believe me because I had no contractions and said I’d peed my pants. I insisted that I hadn’t, and when they tested the fluids, they found that I had, indeed, broken my waters. This meant I needed to be admitted and labor would need to be induced asap.

Pitocin is not a friendly drug. It gave me these double, extremely painful contractions. I had wanted to avoid an epidural, so I was given medication through the IV. They made me loopy and apparently, I said some strange things. I saw bizarre images of pink bubbles that contained my pain, but I couldn’t make them pop and go away.

Eventually, the pain meds wore off and I asked for an epidural. The Pitocin induced contractions hurt worse than anything I could recall. In fact, my contractions with my second daughter weren’t half as painful. With the epidural in, I relaxed enough to get some rest. I slept for an hour or two. When the nurse came in to check me, she immediately called for the doctor to arrive and told me not to push. I wasn’t pushing. She said she could see the baby’s head. The epidural had made me relax enough to go from five centimeters dilation to engaging the baby’s head and unintentionally pushing her out in a very short amount of time. We had to wait for the doctor though, which didn’t help anything. In fact, I believe being told to wait was what caused the problems that followed. The baby came out fast when the doctor arrived and tore me from the inside out. I bled like crazy while my doctor worked to stitch me up and the nurses took care of my screaming newborn. I ended up with forty-five stitches. I was ordered to be on twenty-four-hour bedrest and was treated like a cesarean patient.

It soon became apparent that I had latching problems. Nursing required several hands on deck just to get my baby to latch on. With so many people looking at and touching my private areas due to the tearing and nursing, I began to feel no shame regarding my body.

The nursing issues meant I had to pump and supplement my newborn with a bottle. She also developed jaundice. So, I had to deal with fighting to get her to latch, a bilirubin blanket, and the pain of my recovery. The jaundice soon passed and, slowly, after the pain of cracking and swelling, I began to get her to nurse. Except, my healing didn’t seem to be going so well. I still had pain when I sat. My mother-in-law told me to stop complaining because I should be fine by that time. I felt bad, like I had done something wrong. At my eight-week check, I told my doctor about my pain. She took a look and found there was something wrong. The scar tissue had overhealed and was too thick which was causing the pain. With a quick, sharp snip, she solved the problem. I smarted for the next few hours, but the pain vanished.

After all that had settled, my baby developed colic, then reflux, then she started to cut teeth. In a letter I wrote to my former sister-in-law, which I will use since my journal entries weren’t well kept during this time, I wrote of these struggles by saying, “She would wake up at midnight like clockwork and scream for a solid two hours every night. I was exhausted and exasperated.”

I sunk into a deep hole, a hole I soon learned was postpartum depression. I didn’t know what was happening at the time. I just thought my lack of sleep, my baby’s constant need to nurse, and all her sicknesses had driven me a little bonkers. Because postpartum depression can often make me feel a bit like I’m going insane. My temper gets short and I lose a lot of control over my emotions. It turned me into a person I didn’t recognize. I was definitely not myself anymore. In the letter, I explained, “My depression with (my oldest), looking back, was quite bad. I struggled to function in so many ways. I couldn’t keep up the house, there were even days when I wouldn’t shower and I’d lie in bed for hours. I even told (my husband) that I didn’t like (our daughter). I was in a dark place, and I wish I could have seen what was happening, or even someone else see it. Instead, I was criticized for a messy house and not making dinner every night.”

I had married into a family who considered mental illnesses something that could be brushed away by a simple decision. I wished I could brush my feelings away! Finally, I was medicated and the meds took the edge of my depression. It still lingered, however. My postpartum depression lasted between eighteen months to two years for both my girls.

After getting out of the depression, I began to think about having another baby. With my PCOS and weight gain, I was in no denial that a second child would not come as easily. The months turned into a year and still no baby. I began to grow disheartened, especially with so many women around me making “I’m pregnant!” announcements. Especially the teenagers who only recently married. There were times at work or at church I would slip away to the bathroom to have a cry. I tried not to make a big deal out of it because, as my husband kept telling me, we were blessed to have one pretty great kid. Still, my heart ached for the life that never seemed to come.

My husband’s younger brother was the perfect and favorite child. When he married, his wife could not be more perfect and I couldn’t be more ostracized. Even things we said and did the same, I was criticized for and she was praised. When, during my time of grieving for my infertility, they announced they were pregnant, I was crushed. Of this occasion, I said in the letter, “I said to (my husband) on the way, “If they announce they’re pregnant, I’m going to break.” He understood and agreed we would leave if need be. And you did announce it. My soul died. Although, I couldn’t cry there. I turned to (my husband), and he understood. We packed our things to leave and (my mother-in-law) pulled (my husband) aside to tell him that I was being selfish and needed to stay and be happy for you. I couldn’t stay, and (my husband) knew it. So, we left. At home, I put (our daughter) to bed and locked myself in our back room. I cried and ached and prayed. All I wanted was children, and I couldn’t even do that. (My husband) eventually came in and held me, letting me cry. He understood even if no one else did.”

This pain was only compounded by my struggles with my daughter. “Meanwhile, (my daughter) had become a demon child. She would beat me almost daily. I had to lock her in her room and hold the door shut while she rampaged and screamed inside. Once, she even unbuckled and attacked me while I was driving. I had to pull over and hold her down until she was done. I have no idea even now where any of this came from. She only ever did it to me. Unfortunately, this was used as more proof that I was a terrible mother. I couldn’t control my child, so obviously I was doing something wrong.”

My in-laws always seemed to make my feelings worse. Instead of letting me grieve, they told me I was selfish. Instead of understanding, they told me to shut up and stop complaining. “All of this pain, grief, feelings of failure, all swelled and mixed and drove me back into a dark place. During this time, (my husband) caught me contemplating self-harm. I think it was the first time he really saw how bad things were for me. He took me to the bishop who immediately sent me for therapy. The therapy helped me a great deal and I began to climb out of my hole. Still, I struggled to be around pregnant women without a wave of grief creeping up, and I’m pretty sure you saw me avoiding you during this time. Know that it wasn’t you, I just wanted to avoid the pain. But, again, this avoidance was taken as a massive offense. I was told by (mother-in-law) to stop being so selfish and be happy for you. More salt in that wound…

“However, I was beginning to feel more like myself again. I was happy and having fun, and even went on a trip to Vegas with some writer friends. We were having a great time, until my phone started to buzz. Over and over. I looked at it and it was like a slap to the face. You’d had the baby. I tried to ignore it, but the messages kept coming, slapping me over and over. I felt sick, and left to return to my room, having the great excuse that I didn’t want to join my friends with their drinking. In my room I lost it. I collapsed in sobs, struggling to call (my husband). He knew right away what was wrong and hung up to tell (his brother) to take me off the text. Before he even called me back, I received an angry text saying how dare I ask to be removed from the group text. When (my husband) called me back, he let me cry as I said over and over, “I can’t do this.” The grief was back worse than ever. I hadn’t felt so much sadness and loneliness since I’d been persecuted in high school.”

Infertility is a pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Sometimes, you feel on top of it, and other times it slaps you across the face and paralyzes you. During this time, I was blessed to have wonderful friends who knew the same pain as me. One friend in particular I had long and heartfelt conversations with as we both worked together in an office full of pregnant teenage brides. She had a harder time than me because she had also suffered from a string of miscarriages, but we both knew one another’s pain and consoled together. Having gone through that pain has given me the power to be empathetic to those who suffer from the lost hopes and dreams of infertility. As hard as it was, I am so grateful for it.

Unbeknownst to me, I conceived my second either before or after my trip to Vegas. I have no doubt the Lord saw my agony, knew I had learned what I needed to learn, and sent me my little daughter. My daughter who would be so much like me. By the time she was born, my older daughter was almost five years old. It’s hard to be grateful for something so painful, especially when the people around you seem to compound the pain and drive a knife deeper at each turn, but I am grateful for it. My sister and my brother’s wife both struggle with infertility and miscarriages, so it has helped me love and appreciate their strength through their trials. It also helps me appreciate other women who, despite the cultural expectations placed upon young couples in our church, don’t have children. I never ask them why. I know what it feels like to be asked, “When will you be having another?” and the answer is, “I’m trying and failing!” I know what it feels like to have people treat me like that failure is some sort of sin that means I deserve to be treated like garbage, and if I feel pain, I need to get over it.

When my second daughter was almost two, I began thinking about having another baby. However, I was wary. The pain of the struggle to conceive was still sharp in my memory. On July 2^nd, 2017, I wrote, “I want to have one more child… I prayed about having another child because I’d been having doubts about having more kids. I felt very strongly impressed there’s a little boy waiting to join us… I also felt he would arrive very soon. I hope so… the toll the whole preconception takes on me emotionally and the post delivery problems I have with my body and PPD (worry me). We’ll see how it goes. When I prayed, I felt the promise of the Lord that He would help ease the struggles I face when having children and I have faith in that. He’s the only person I believe will always follow through and understand all of it completely.”

This was more than two years ago, and I have not had another child. However, the grief of not conceiving has never come. The Lord promised to ease my struggles, and He has. He still tells me another child is waiting, even though I no longer have a husband. But, I’m at peace with it. I trust the Lord, and I know His “soon” is different to my “soon”. When the time is right, my child will come. The Lord took away my grief as promised, and so I know His promise to send me a child will also come.

I know that I’m not alone with these feelings and struggles. I’m grateful for the friends and family who lent me their support and empathy, even when other family members used it against me. The Lord has a purpose for everything, and I have no doubt He had a purpose for me struggling with infertility.