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 – ??: Heritage

 About six months after I returned from my student exchange, I moved in with my maternal grandparents in Newcastle. Barely months before, my grandad was diagnosed with mesothelioma, which is a form of lung cancer caused by asbestos poisoning. His time on this earth had become a ticking clock, and I was in a position to move up there to help them.

My maternal grandparents I had always had a close relationship. They lived in the Blue Mountains for a time while I was a child, but mostly they lived in Newcastle. My paternal grandparents, however, I did not have the opportunity to get to know in this life.

My paternal grandfather was born in Yorkshire. A Yorkshire man through and through, my aunt and father describe him as hardworking, honest, and a sober man. It is his family line that goes back several generations in the church. His father’s grandmother was stalwart, steadfast, and, from family stories, she desired her children to be strong members of the church as well. There are several branches still active in the church today that trace back to her and her sons, and one of my great uncles was even mentioned in General Conference. That was a funny moment when I, as a young teen, suddenly found people around us from our stake staring at us like, “Hamstead? You’re Hamsteads!” And yes, my dad assured us we were related!

Anyway, somewhere in there my particular line of the family became inactive. I’m not sure on the specifics, but my great grandparents and my grandfather must have had their names on church records, even if they didn’t practice or attend church because, after moving to Australia, home teachers came by and brought my dad and his sister into the church and activity.

My grandfather, as I mentioned, was a hardworking man. Unfortunately, his hard work proved to be the death of him. He died of cancer, most likely mesothelioma due to exposure to asbestos in the munitions factory where he worked. My dad was just seventeen. I have no doubt though, that he was the love of my grandmother’s life. Although she lived for several decades after he passed, she never remarried even though she had the opportunity.

Born to an Irish farming family in Queensland, Australia, my paternal grandmother was stunning and elegant. Photos of her show a tall, slender woman with a lovely face and a sweet smile. When I see pictures of her I can see my sister and myself in her, but while my sister is quite pretty, and I apparently resemble my grandmother quite a bit, I don’t feel like her beauty was passed down to me particularly. I’m definitely not tall and slender!

I never felt like I had much of an opportunity to know her either. By the time I was old enough to really begin building a relationship, she had begun to decline mentally to dementia. During my sixth-grade year, my sister and I went to visit her in Queensland while on one of our school breaks. I remember it was the first time I read Looking For Alibrandi. Not sure why that sticks with me. But I also recall her telling me stories of her life repetitiously. I didn’t understand why she didn’t remember that she told me the stories already.

During my mid-teens, her mental state had declined to a point where my dad had to bring her down to Sydney and place her in a care home. Those visits were hard for me. I think as a teenager being faced with the reality of mortality and life on the decline is a hard pill to swallow. I found it upsetting to see her so frail, and she always seemed so surprised to see that we weren’t little children anymore. It was worse when she was surprised that her own son was a man in his forties.

My grandmother died the beginning of my eleventh grade year. The people who knew her were heartbroken and spoke of a warm, tender, and classy woman. A woman I never had the opportunity to know. However, over the years I have learned about the woman she was before her illness took her mind away.

A few years ago, my dad, with the assistance of his sister, compiled a biography for my grandmother. I keep it on my bookshelf and have read it and think about her life often, especially lately.

My grandmother’s father was an Irishman, and her mother English. Together, they carved out a farm from virgin bushland in Queensland, and were among the pioneers of my homeland. My grandmother’s early life I believe molded her and gave her the quiet strength she held throughout her life. When she was in her twenties, she joined the women’s force to support troops in WWII. It was during this time she met and married her first husband.

I remember once at the end of her life she mentioned seeing her first husband and being frightened. My dad had to explain to her that he hand long since passed, but this was the first time I had heard that she had married before my grandfather. Upon receiving her biography from my dad, I learned why this first husband was never talked about. At first, things were as they should be between a husband and wife, but slowly, he declined. He took to drinking and staying out late. When confronted, he became violent. My grandmother in her journal said that, “He began knocking me about, and that went from bad to worse, because if he hit me, I hit back.” She described having bruises, black eyes, and enduring threats. He would beg her forgiveness, and she would give it. She explained that, “my problem was I had no one to go to, no one to talk to…” Her experience and feelings of isolation is something I can completely relate to. There have been times while I have been in the temple that I have felt her near me, telling me that she knows exactly how I feel and lending me her strength.

Eventually, she discovered his affair and impregnation of another woman. That was enough for her. He had pushed too far. She left him.

Through my own experiences, I feel like I have grown closer to my grandmother since her death. Like her, I suffered from abuse. Not of the physical kind, but the emotional kind. I have no doubt she watched me, aching to intervene and help me escape. The problem was, I had no bruises or black eyes, so no one else could see it. Looking back, I believe she was at my side often, trying to help me remain strong and get through.

She was with me at the temple right before I discovered my husband’s affairs. She was one of several members of my family there promising to lend me their strength in the trial the Lord told me I was about to face. She knew what I would uncover, and she knew how painful it would feel. She has been one of the angels walking at my side throughout all of the wretched business I have had to endure.

My grandmother is a strong woman, and I wish I had known her better in life.

By the time I had hit my late teens, my surviving grandparents were my maternal ones. I had built a close relationship with them and felt a particular closeness to my maternal grandfather; my grandad. He had a beautiful English lilt to his voice, a tone I can still hear ringing in my memory to this day. My maternal grandparents were a little younger than my paternal grandparents, so while my grandmother had served in WWII, my grandad was a child in London. He was never evacuated during the time of the blitz. I believe he lived just outside of the evacuation zone. There is a story though of one night his mother insisted they all sleep downstairs together. That night, the streets were bombed, shaking the house. In the morning they found a fallen heavy beam resting upon my grandad’s bed. Without his mother’s keen intuition, he would have died.

As a young man post WWII, he join the British Navy. He had some great ghost stories from his time in the service, but I don’t remember them in enough detail to share here. During his time in the Navy, he was on shore leave in Goole, Yorkshire. It was there he met a pretty young lass whom he literally picked up on the street! That young woman would become my grandmother.

After he married and they had a child, they migrated to Australia. His first job was in the blast furnace area at the BHP, and from there he got a job with the dredge service on Newcastle Harbour for quite some time before becoming an ambulance driver, a profession my brother has now taken up.

When my mother was in her early teens, missionaries knocked on their door. The story goes that he was almost immediately converted. All my life I remember him having a strong testimony, one that never faltered. He was a beacon of faith for me.

When I was a teen, he was called to the Sydney temple presidency. Prior to being called, doctors had found some shadowing on his lungs. In hindsight, we know that was the first symptoms of mesothelioma, but upon getting the call, the shadowing vanished. Mesothelioma does not just vanish! However, the Lord blessed him with good health and strength as he served for several years in the temple presidency. During this time, I developed a deep love for the temple, and I believe it is directly because of his and my nana’s diligent service.

After his release, the shadowing returned and he was diagnosed. Mesothelioma is a fast acting illness, so he was given a year to live. My mother was quite distressed and worried for her parents. She and Dad talked often about what they could do. After going to a YSA convention over new years and becoming friends with people from their ward and stake, I had the distinct impression that I needed to move in with my grandparents and help them over the final months of my grandad’s life. I was nineteen.

Upon moving in, I arranged to go to TAFE and study travel and tourism nearby. At first, things seemed pretty normal. My grandad was his usual, warm, loving self. We talked about things while Nana fussed about in the kitchen or cleaning. Nana seemed to always be cleaning something! Grandad liked to do things with me, maybe a little more than usual. I signed up for a netball team and he enjoyed coming to watch me. He enjoyed talking with me, and I showed him how to use Google Earth to look at where he grew up and see how it looked nowadays. He would show me things like his sealing ledger and tried to show Nana about the budget and bills. She would always bury her head in the sand and walk away. She and I were both in denial about how serious his health problems were.

I settled in and made some amazing friends with the Young Single Adults in the ward and stake. I truly feel I was blessed with some of the most amazing people and wonderful friends at that moment because of what was to come. To this day, even though I don’t see her often, one of the girls in particular I call one of my best friends. When we see each other, it’s like we’ve never been apart. The families in the ward also welcomed me with arms wide open. I slotted in easily, and for a while I was so happy.

During this time, my friend from my time as an exchange student got engaged. So, I arranged to go to her wedding back in the U.S. and my mum wanted to come with me.

Unfortunately, Grandad’s health declined. I came home one day from TAFE to find an ambulance in the driveway. I had never been more frightened. They took my grandad to the hospital, leaving me with my irate nana. I had to do something, but since I was still quite young and distressed myself, I struggled to pull myself together, but I did manage to send Nana off to the hospital after him.

He came home with an oxygen tank. I hated that thing. The noise it made set my nerves on edge. I would lie awake listening to it to make sure Grandad was still breathing.

The whole ordeal seemed to drive my nana to the edge as well. They had been married for more than fifty years by this point. They had celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2002 when I was in year ten. My journal entry for the 14^th of April says that we had spent the weekend at their place and had a party at their favorite restaurant “with heaps of old people Nana and Grandad have known for ages.” They also had me sing, How Do I Live? By LeAnn Rimes. Now I can’t hear that song and not think about them. This was about four years after that anniversary, so my grandparents had been together for most of their lives. I can’t imagine how hard it was for her to watch him slipping away. I don’t blame her for it causing her distress.

Unfortunately, since I was the one in the house, I was served a heavy helping of misplaced frustration and anger. Nana would yell at me for everything and anything. I couldn’t do laundry right, but I needed to do my own laundry, except, I kept getting in the way so she would take over and do it for me anyway. My room was never clean enough. I never got home at the right time. I spent too much time with my friends. I wasn’t dating enough. I ate too little, but I ate too much and I was getting fat. I didn’t know which way was up or what exactly I needed to do, so we would end up fighting. It was upsetting for Grandad, and it broke my heart, but it got so bad I packed everything and left. I had nowhere to go, so with everything I owned crammed into my hatchback, I floated between two of my friends’ houses for the week. Finally, with the intervention of my parents, Grandad convinced me to come home.

Unfortunately, he was only getting worse. So while Nana struggled to help him, I struggled to watch him slowly dying. At nineteen, I was still basically a child in so many ways. It’s important to note that I had a close relationship with my grandad. I adored him. I always expected him to do my temple sealing when the time came, but here I was, watching him slip away and I had no marriage prospects. The worst part was, he really wanted to do my sealing too, but he knew he wasn’t going to have the chance. He had a book full of names of people he had done live sealings for, and he wanted to add my name to that list, but it would never happen. A lost dream is a shattering feeling.

Soon, he ended up needing to stay in the hospital. I found it hard to visit him there because, like with Grandma, facing mortality was a hard pill to swallow, and I definitely didn’t want to face his mortality. I didn’t want to even consider him being gone.

Being just me and Nana at home got rough. Her emotions were everywhere, worse than mine, and I could hardly deal with my own. We would fight and fight, then I’d feel guilty when she would hide in her room and cry. So, I would pray and write in my journal to help me find answers for what to do. The answer was always, “Keep going.”

The time came for Mum and I to head to the U.S. We talked to Grandad about leaving, and he wanted us to go. He knew it would make me happy. So I prayed and begged that he would stay alive for the few weeks we were gone.

On Friday, 18^th August 2006, I wrote: “Grandad died on Sunday here, Saturday in Arizona. It was the strangest feeling… we would have to leave for Australia asap. I was absolutely devastated. A huge jumble of feelings and thoughts overwhelmed me and I didn’t want to deal with Mum asking me what I wanted to do… All I could think of was that maybe I hadn’t had enough faith in my prayers or it was a slight setback…

“I… sat with Mum. We talked about the possibilities (for going back) When Dad called and told Mum Grandad had gone. My heart seemed to just shatter… I knew my grandad was gone and I wasn’t ready to leave that happy place for the harsh reality of everything that was soon to come.”

Grandad died while I was overseas. It made me question my faith and the strength of my prayers, but the reality is, when the Lord says it’s time, nothing can change that. I believe I was exactly where I needed to be when he passed. My host family brought me comfort and happiness, and the distance I needed from the reality of his death to be able to cope.

We flew home right away, and so the journal entries came once we had arrived back in Australia and I had returned to my grandparents’ home, this time, with the rest of my family too.

On Saturday the 19^th, I went to his viewing. My journal entry says, “It took me about ten minutes to even stand in the doorway, then another ten minutes to get close to him. I think it didn’t look like him at all. I cried a lot which was pretty embarrassing. That’s all I really want to say on the day except that I’m glad I got to see him one last time in this lifetime.”

Monday the 21^st was his funeral. Of the funeral, I said, “the whole thing was nice, but sad.” I had been asked to sing, because Grandad loved to hear me sing, but I couldn’t pull myself together enough to do it. I had sung at Grandma’s funeral and I had cried on and off through the whole song, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a single note out since I had been so much closer to Grandad.

Something that helped me get through was my friends. I said, “I was so glad (three of my friends) came. When (one friend) showed up, I burst into tears which was embarrassing.” Yes, I hate crying and I find it embarrassing even now if people see me do it.

It took time for Nana and I to settle, in a sense. On Sunday, 17^th September 2006 I wrote: “After church I had a meeting with Bishop at 1:30. We talked about how Nana is driving me nuts and I hated feeling the constant resentment toward her because she’s always putting me down. We also talked about how she isn’t coping and how she just paces up and down the house and cleans constantly and ceases to function like a normal human being anymore, and how every now and then she says she just wants to die because there’s nothing left for her, and the time she was pacing the house and startled calling out, “Where are you, Grandad?” and how that was really distressing.”

My bishop was perfect for me during that time. He listened and saw how hard it was for me, a teenager, to deal with my grief and my grandmother’s all at once. He gave me a blessing that reminded me to love my nana and serve her, even though it was hard to do with her grieving and taking it out on me.

It’s interesting because, upon reading what I wrote was said in the blessing, I felt that the blessings given then are repeated and are relevant to me now. They were:

·       I was blessed to feel relief from loneliness

·       The Lord is aware of the desires of my heart and wants me to be happy and have those desires.

·       Although Nana may not appreciate what I’m doing now, she will eventually, either in this life or the next.

The first two are things I have felt in the temple a great deal lately, so to find them in my journal entry from thirteen years ago was rather timely. The last one, well, Nana is still kicking and I love her so much. Although that time was hard for both of us and we struggled to be in the same space, I appreciate that time we had together. Our abrasive relationship rubbed the edges off and helped us love each other deeply. I don’t know if she appreciates all I did, but I know Grandad does, I have felt him tell me so from the other side of the veil. I was little more than a kid, barely an adult, and I had to deal with some very hard issues. I didn’t handle them perfectly, not even close, but I made it through with the help of wonderful friends, family, and a bishop who was put in at the right place and time. I can see that nothing and no one placed in my life at that time was a coincidence.

I still miss my grandad, but I feel him with me often, especially when I go to the temple. He loved the temple, so I have no doubt he enjoys visiting there with me. In fact, I heard his voice when I visited before I discovered my husband’s infidelity. When the Lord told me I had the strength to get through what was to come, I said I didn’t know if I did. And so He said, “Then let them share their strength.” Right away I felt four people around me. Three women, and then my grandad’s voice, clear as day with that English lilt said, “Katie, I’m here.” Yet again, I embarrassed myself by crying my eyes out. The way he spoke my name was exactly how I remembered it. I believe he was the one who spoke because I could recognize his voice anywhere. One of the others present was my grandmother, but I am still not sure who the other two women were. I think one was possibly my great-great grandmother Mary Ellen Monks. I have felt bonded to her for a while now. One day I will know, and that day I will hold them close and thank them for being with me through such heartbreaking times.

My time living with my grandparents came to a close at the end of 2006. I had finished my TAFE diploma and found a job back in Sydney. I would be moving back south and turning to a new chapter. Although the grief for my grandad would linger well into the following year, I knew he was happy.

I have come from so many strong and faithful people. I am proud of my ancestry, the Yorkshiremen, the Irish, the Londoners, the stoic, the pioneers, the migrants, the soldiers, and most importantly, the faithful. All have come to a place in me. I have a great lineage, and a heritage of steadfast faith to live up to. In those who have come before me I find a beacon of light to move forward. They are with me always, even if I cannot see them. They lend me their strength when I feel like I can’t fight another battle and lift me up when I feel like hope is lost. For some reason they are standing with me always and helping me push onward. In me, they find hope, and in them I find the courage to keep pressing on.