A Fasting Cry To God

Fasting Cry to God

Our marriage had never been ideal. We married out of respect for our faith six years prior. In that time we had nothing but struggles and incompatibility. I was educated and married to a man with a seventh grade education. Our mentality was very different and so was our character.

I had become a Christian in 1993 and he quickly followed suit, in what I believe was an attempt to pacify me, my faith and possibly my church. We should never had been permitted to marry. Six long years of disagreements and a life of seeming friends in and out of the home. None of them ever had any good intentions, in my opinion.

I did not particularly enjoy his friends and he did not enjoy mine. To be fair, my friends did not like him much and put up with him for my sake. His friends were a different story. They enjoyed the food, hospitality, and kindness I offered everyone and a couple of them, over the years flirted a little too much, which made me uncomfortable and my husband angry. The difference in our relationships with friends was just another indication that we had never been the right fit for one another.

His love of pornography was a displeasure that I was forced to endure day after day making our intimate live a vile and degrading act each time we were together. So much so was this aversion to our intimacy that I shut down emotionally. We clearly had different views on what love making was in the marriage. Pornography was not something I wanted to enjoy and he did not want to give it up. Still we forged on since we had been married after we were both saved and baptized, making our marriage more than a civil union or secular tradition. We were in a covenant with each other and with God. And that, covenant, is an oath that is only broken with death or blood. I needed to honor my faith and God and was clear on my responsibility to God and this man I had chosen.

The sad truth was that the faith I had was not the same faith he had and sooner rather than later that became more and more evident.

In that time, there had been a new product introduced to the world, WebTV. It was a kind of chatroom social media, with the difference being that the chatting was in open rooms, for lack of a better term, and people from all over could engage in conversations together and even send pictures back and forth. The problem with this in our marriage was that we did not share logins and this led to secrets, jealousy, insecurity and eventually the dissolution of our marriage.

I cannot place all blame on my husband for seeking his outlet with others, because I did not feel respected and cherished as a wife anymore and his touch made me cringe. And while I could have had respect for him if he had come out and told me he wanted out of our commitment, he did not chose truth as he way of handling the situation and soon was hiding his chats and waking in the middle of the night to log on and speak to whomever had gained his attention. I’d wake up and peek through my eyelids to see what he was doing and I’d see his chats with women and the pictures being sent back and forth. And that put the nail in our proverbial casket.

I packed my bags and car and took off to Colorado to stay at a friend’s house while I decided what course to take. I unfortunate thing about running away from your husband is that I was running away from God and the covenant I had made with Him. Within the month, I had such a heavy weight on my heart that I felt obligated to go back to our marriage to work it out and do the hard work to fix what we had broken. So I again packed my bag and went home. But in that month, there had been many changes between our dynamic and it was never going to get better. I arrived back home and he took off the following day to move in with one of the women he had been courting on the WebTV, in another state. He failed to mention any of this when I had told him I would come back.

And now I was devastated that I had upturned my life twice, because of this man and this marriage. I had no job and nowhere to live and I was depressed and a constant wreck. Even so, my church rallied around me and helped me through the hardest time of my life.

I was staying with my sister then, and news had come that my husband wanted to be divorced which I had anticipated, but did not realize the impact it would have on me. I became nervous and edgy, frightened and unsure of almost everything. I questioned everything over and over. This was not a sustainable way to live.

One day, I heard of a book on fasting and its effect on the faster with regard to connecting with God on a deeper level. By the time I purchased the book, read it and was ready to put it into practice, I was chain smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes a day. I had also lost so much weight that I did not look like myself anymore, and all from the stress of honoring my commitment and doing things correctly in the sight of God. So I was mentored by pastors I love to this day for their love, and instructed that divorce was not an option I had except for infidelity that could be proven with evidence from two or more that my husband was in fact committing this act against the union.

I decided to fast because I needed to hear from God that I was doing the right thing. I began by preparing my mind for what I was going to do, which was go full on into a week long fast from food. I would consume only water and electrolytes for that week, giving up all food and vices, like cigarettes.

I felt fine the first day. I prayed and read my bible all day and cried out to God for help, guidance and a clear indication of what I should do. I asked him to show me plainly what would happen and to give me a peace when I encountered the response. I asked God to take away my desire for cigarettes and to provide for me.

Day two and I still felt decent but I really want to smoke. I did not however and opted to just pray more and read more. I shed many tears those days but God counts the tears of women. Day three came and I did not have ant cravings for the cigarettes. Could God have answered part of my petitions? I wasn’t sure if this was just a fluke, but I was fine with it.

Everything tasted better, richer, more full of flavor, and I had a calm and peaceful presence about me and surrounding me all day. I got a phone call the following day from my pastor and was asked to come to the office, which I did. All the answers from God to my prayers were about to reveal themselves.

As I entered the office the first person I noticed my father in law, who had been supporting me through all of these months and I was appreciative of the love he and his wife had given me, and with quite a bit of flack from their son.

My pastor asked me to take a seat and then I was told they had news that I needed to beware of, so I listened. Then the words came that numbed me but not in an anxious way but rather a completely peaceful release. My husband had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, giving me biblical permission to divorce. I asked them to inform my husband that I would not fight it, because a child deserves and needs both parents, but that I would not pay for it. And that was the end to my torment. My father in law gave me a warm hug and told me that I would not be alone in this and that him and his wife would care for me emotionally through it all. And they did as they promised. They loved me through the divorce of their son with kindness and gentleness. I wont ever be able to repay that, or to repay God for giving them to me for that time.

The answered prayers were opening my eyes to a different side of God so few encounter. The very realness of Him and the immediate response to my pleas broke me, my heart and gave me such a deep love for the God that gave his personal attention to me the time of my deepest need. I love Him more than I will ever love a man. He is my God, my Father, my protector and my shield against the bad things in this world.

I never picked up a cigarette in my life and I am 57 now and I was 28 then. He healed me and gave me family, protected my heart and never left my side for one second. I always know he is here with me, and over the years he has shown me over and over that he is in fact a God that can do all things, heal all things, and bear all things for me in infinite compassion and mercy. I won’t ever leave Him, and He won’t ever leave me.