Chap 3: What Came Next

I Married My Dad

Chapter Three

What Came Next

January 6, 2018

We had now been married thirty-two years. And, I was walking in freedom! And, God was doing a marvelous work in my life and through my life. I was writing what God had given me to write, and I was posting it on the internet, so that a runner – a herald – could run with it. And, I was doing this daily.

Plus, God had now given me a new gift – the gift of writing songs. He would put a tune in my head, and I would write it down, and then he would give me the words to go with the tune, and then I recorded the song, and then I placed these songs on the internet. As of the last one, there are 173 of them, total. All glory to God!

Deeper and Deeper

But, my husband Rick just kept getting deeper and deeper into sin, into pornography, masturbation, and other ways in which he chose to act out his addiction, as I have already mentioned, and including he was involved in a homosexual relationship with another man over the course of our marriage.

The man was a close family friend. He and Rick were friends since they were teenagers, and the young man, at that time, had evidently groomed Rick to get involved with him in homosexual activities. So, this had actually been going on since before Rick and I were married, but I did not know.

We lived very far away from the man, so these sexual encounters were infrequent, yet they lasted throughout our married life. But, Rick kept promising me it would not happen again, but it did. And, again. And, again.

I finally had to put a stop to it, because Rick wouldn’t. So, I wrote a letter to the man, maybe three years ago, and I told him we could no longer have any contact with him, and that he was to cut off all contact with us, too. And, I asked, that if he knew we were going to be in town, that he would stay away from going to any family members’ homes, so that we did not end up in an awkward situation with him.

But, I protected my husband Rick’s reputation through it all, and that of our friend, and I took the brunt of it, with people most likely thinking I was just being mean to our friend, and that I had just gotten mad at him about something, and thus I had cut off the friendship. And, I bore the blame for that, in order to not sully my husband’s reputation, and so the family would not think badly of him. And, I also bore the brunt of my husband’s anger against me for breaking off that relationship with our lifelong friend.

The Rage

When the Lord would teach me things from his Word, sometimes he would also reveal to me, oftentimes through dreams, what my husband Rick was doing when I wasn’t looking. I would pray about it, and if I felt led to talk with Rick about it, I would go to him and present to him what the Lord was showing me. Much of the time he denied it, but some of the time he would confess, at least some of what he was doing, and sometimes I would catch him in the act, too.

Rick was a sex addict, a professional liar and deceiver, an actor, a chameleon, a manipulator, a user and an abuser. He didn’t like it, first of all, that he could no longer talk me into compromising my faith and convictions, although he certainly tried. From our dating years, up to the time of this writing, he has been like Satan to me, in trying to talk me into sinning against God, or attacking me verbally to try to shame me or to make me feel bad for confronting him, or to try to make me feel like I was crazy, for how could I possibly think he would do such things, etc.

When he could no longer use me for his sex toy, and when I began confronting him and standing up to him when he sinned against me, and when he lied to me, then what came next was rage. The anger and hatred he had toward me, from when we were first married, and because I didn’t meet up to his sexual expectations, and which had been building all these years, began to spill out of him like volcanic ash. And, if I dared confront him, no matter how gentle I was, then he would punish me. He would falsely accuse me of things, and he would make cutting remarks, and he would say things he knew would hurt me, in hopes that it would shut me up.

But, the Lord kept sending me back to him, time and time again. And, even many of the songs the Lord gave me to write were specific messages to my husband, that he was to forsake his lifestyle of sexual addiction and all that came with that package, and he was to turn to the Lord, and to follow him in obedience. It was the same message over and over and over again. And, I was the chosen messenger.

Balaam’s Donkey

I often thought of myself like Balaam’s donkey. The donkey could see the angel, and the donkey had sense to stop, but Balaam didn’t see the angel, and so he kept beating the donkey. Only, in his case, when the donkey finally spoke, Balaam listened, at least for a time. But, Rick never listened, and he never stopped beating (verbally) the donkey (the messenger of God) sent to him to open his blinded eyes, so that he would turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that he might receive forgiveness of sins, and a place among those sanctified by faith in Jesus Christ (See: Ac 26:16-18).

Recycled Everything

For at least the past 13 years, Rick and I have been recycling the same conversations over and over again, and he has been continuing to sin sexually, to commit adultery against me, to lie to me, to deceive me, to betray me, and then to attack me bitterly whenever I would try to “snatch him from the fire and save him.”

Many times he said he was sorry, but then he would go right back to the same old stuff. Many times he gave a show of working on recovery, but it never lasted. His heart really was not in it. And, within a short period of time, he was back to business as usual.

He just kept breaking my heart and stomping on it over and over again, and without conscience or concern for me or for what he was doing to me. And, he kept doing that, even though he would tell me, again and again, that he had turned his heart over to the Lord and that he was working on changing.

So, I kept praying about it, and the Lord kept telling me to trust HIM, to rest in HIM, to believe HIM, to keep loving my husband, and to keep telling Rick the truth he needs to hear, when I am prompted by the Holy Spirit, and when the Lord gives me something specific he wants me to say.

But, I kept facing my husband’s wrath, and his childish temper tantrums, and his false accusations and cutting remarks, and all the same excuses and justifications he had been giving me for many, many years, which do not hold water. And, this is where we are, as of January 6, 2018, after 45 years of marriage, still fighting the same old battles.

Playing Ignorant

But, it wasn’t just the cheating, the lying, the manipulations, the pushing me into and the tempting me to sin against my Lord, and the difficult and repetitive conversations, and the false promises that were always broken, and the continual stomping on my heart that was at play here.

And, it wasn’t just all the hate and the rage that I saw in his eyes regularly, and the hateful speech that spewed forth from his lips consistently, and the nasty and hateful things he would say to me, particularly when I confronted him with sin and when I attempted to share with him what God had laid on my heart to share.

But, it was that he lied about me to other people, or he would leave them with false impressions about me, which he would not correct, and he would get them to like him and to not like me. He would never defend me, rarely ever, but he would defend other people, and he would treat other people with kindness, and me with disdain. He would tell me he couldn’t remember whatever I said to him, but he could remember conversations with other people, especially with other women, and he knew how they were dressed, and the color of their eyes, and their body language, and how they walked, and what kind of vehicles they drove, etc.

He would play dumb all the time with me, and act as though he didn’t know something, which he did know, or that he didn’t know how to do something, which he did, or he would claim he was hearing something or realizing something for the first time, although he had heard it hundreds of times. Many times he would say to me that he was learning something for the first time, as though he had not heard it before, but it was the same stuff.

He would play tricks on me, too, and set me up for a fall, i.e. he would try to make me look bad in front of other people, because he continually tried to promote himself as the victim, and as the weak and helpless one, and as naïve and honest, etc., and the good guy. And, he was very good at being convincing, too, and many people bought into his lies and his manipulations, and some of them turned against me, because he had gotten them to side with him against me.

And, the more I realized the depth of Rick’s character and all that is a part of it, the more I saw my dad in him, and in the things he did and said. He is so much like my dad, even the whole hypocrisy thing of claiming to be a Christian and then living like this our whole marriage, and treating me like he has and does and then he pontificates religious conversation as though it is a reality in his life, when it isn’t, and hasn’t been. He willingly admits most of this, and that he has been a fake and a phony, but then he keeps going on in his hypocrisy, and in the same behavior patterns which I have come to be very familiar with.

And, one day, as I sat across the room, and I looked at him, the realization of all this hit me at once. I acknowledged to myself that I had, indeed, married my dad. Everything I did not like about my dad, well most everything, has been part of my husband’s character and behavior from before we were even married. I just didn’t see it until years later, and I don’t think I fully realized it to this degree until now, after 45 years of marriage to him.