I originally posted this blog on January 5, 2018. It has been on my mind for a few days, and when I saw Fandango’s prompt, I decided that maybe it’s meant to be posted again for someone else’s benefit. I have shortened it because the first time around, I didn’t understand about being succinct. It’s still long but important!
The day came when I was asked the question I did not want to answer, and I decided that only the truth would do. So, as we sat on my couch discussing a future together, he told me that he had been married the one time and he was ready to try again. Then he asked, “Have you been married more than once?” I started sweating and tears came into my eyes because just his asking meant that the question was paramount in his mind. But, I looked at him, and I said, “My greatest failures in life have been marriage. I have been married four times and divorced four times.” He looked stricken, and I told him that I understood if he wanted to end the relationship, because that was too much for any man to learn. But he asked me to explain the marriages and what happened.
I told him that I thought that I was the ugliest woman in the world and that no good man would ever want me, so I tended to marry men who wanted me to take care of them. It did not matter to me; I just knew that a woman without a man was seen as having no value, so any man was better than no man. I told him that I had never lived in a home where there was a father-figure; consequently, I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for in a husband.Then, I told him the stories of each marriage.
My first marriage ended when he beat me one night and told me that he was going to beat me every day until I learned to respect him. Because as a teenager I had already been beaten for months by someone I never learned to respect, when my husband went to sleep, I took his last $20, called a cab, went to the Greyhound station, and caught the first bus to Atlanta. I remarried within six months of the divorce, and the second marriage ended when he told me one day as he drove me to work (I had panic attacks on the bus) that he was going to live with his girlfriend, and considering that he did not help pay any bills, I filed for a divorce at lunch time, and hyperventilated all the way home on the bus.
My third marriage happened because one of my best friends thought that her cousin in Jamaica and I would make a good Christian couple. I will admit that God seemed to be screaming, “No!” in my ears. But I was so lonely I thought, “Lord, it is okay. He loves you.” But after spending money to bring his four children from Jamaica, I found out from that he and his ex-wife had hatched a plan to get their children to America for a better life. When confronted, he said,”From evil came good.” And I said, “You can’t get good from evil.”
I did not marry again for ten years, but I lived with someone for seven years. He threatened to kill himself if I did not marry him, and I did not know that was a form of domestic violence. After the marriage, every time I did something he did not like or spoke to him about something I did not like that he did, he threatened to leave me, and my greatest fear was being alone. When he threatened to burn the house down with me in it if I tried to leave him, I knew it was time to go.
I think of the woman at the well in John 4 when Jesus told her to go get her husband. I wonder if she thought as I would have,”What will he think of me if he knew that I had been married five times and now live with a man who is not my husband? Will he recoil in horror like other people do? Will he call me the names that others do, the really bad names that prove that words can be as hurtful as sticks and stones? Will he say that he understands now why I have to come to the well alone in the heat of the afternoon rather than with the “good” women in the cool of the morning? Will he take back his offer of the water that allows me to never thirst again?”
Even though she may have feared the answer, she told Jesus the truth, “I have no husband.” Jesus honored her telling the truth, identifying himself to her as the Messiah, and telling her spiritual truths about God and the need to worship God in spirit and in truth. What was most important for her was not that Jesus knew her past, but that in knowing her past, he still found her worthy to serve him.
Posted for Fandango’s Flashback Friday. Addition: We have been married for 20 years now and are headed to “until death do we part!” I am grateful Douglas took a chance on me. I thank God for him every day.
Help from Heaven 
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