My Husband's Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me (7 page)

In my mind I saw my husband naked with another woman, enjoying her embrace, and I winced. The thought that the most intimate part of my life had been betrayed made me feel exposed and ashamed. As my anger intensified, I began to pace my bedroom floor, back and forth, faster and faster. What did she look like, I kept wondering, unsure if I dared to find out?
If only this woman didn’t exist, that would fix my problem.
Rational reasoning was leaving me completely now.

I wondered how I could kill her, how I could annihilate her from my life forever. Maybe I could do it with a gun. After all, all I would have to do is pull the trigger. Just one quick pull, like pushing a button.

I knew I didn’t have the ability to do anything too gory. I couldn’t stab her. It would have to be more immediate than that. But where could I get a gun? I didn’t know anything about guns. I didn’t know where or how to buy one, but I guessed I could find out.

Was I capable?
My palms were cold and clammy. I wrenched my fists together tightly, tensing the muscles in my arms as tight as I could, while I bit my lower lip. I tried with all my might to keep from screaming.

I closed my eyes and was motionless, as if in a trance, and I tried to picture myself standing in front of this woman who had stolen the affections of my husband from me. I pictured her to be beautiful with long, dark hair. I saw her as young and slim with flawless features and large breasts, yet with evil clearly visible within her eyes.

I pictured her laughing at me, and I could see straight through her mask of goodness even though Brian had not. He had been deluded, and I needed to save him from the regret he would experience with this deceitful woman.

Brian is in danger, I thought. Like an ox on the way to the slaughterhouse and like a bird flying into a snare, not knowing the fate awaiting him there.
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I pictured the gun in my hand, hidden. I saw myself saying, “I hope making love to my husband was really good, because you are never going to experience pleasure again. Have fun in hell.”

Then I imagined the fear in her eyes in the split second just before I pulled the trigger, and I took pleasure in seeing her suffer for a moment. I wished I could make her suffer more, but I knew I wasn’t capable of inflicting prolonged pain. I had to be fast and I had to make sure I didn’t miss. I was angry enough to do it.

Oh God. What was I thinking?
It was as if I had just awoken from a terrible dream, and I trembled, feeling frightened of myself.

“God help me,” I said out loud, as the war between good and evil raged within me. I then reasoned that God probably understood me. For a moment, I tried to stop my thoughts and get a grip. Then I thought, maybe I didn’t care about God anymore. Why had He allowed this to happen to me? I felt desperate. I would have to be very careful to kill without getting caught ...
How would I get rid of the body,
I wondered? I thought about how smart the police were at solving crimes, and I thought about what a lousy liar I was.

What if I spent the rest of my life in prison ? Would killing her have been worth it?
It didn’t seem to me that being a good person mattered anymore. Maybe I could get someone else to kill her. I wondered how I could meet someone who didn’t care about killing and could do it for me. Maybe I could visit a prison, and talk to the inmates, and learn more from them. I wondered what I might have to offer someone in exchange for the deed. What might I have that was worth the price of a life? Maybe I could just throw this woman off a bridge.

Every time I thought of her, I refused to think of her name. Helen. I knew her name, but I didn’t like using it. I didn’t think she was a valuable enough human being to be worthy of having a name.

I thought about what I might have done if I had walked in on Brian and his lover while they were having sex. There would probably have been enough adrenaline in me to make me physically stronger than both of them in that moment. I saw myself throwing this woman out naked into the street, taking delight in her humiliation, and functioning with such fury that even Brian was afraid of me.

What’s the point of trying to be a good person,
I thought,
if you just end up with nothing for all your years of hard work and doing the “right” things? What were the “right” things?
I didn’t feel sure I knew anymore. Black seemed white and white seemed black. I didn’t care about myself anymore. I didn’t care whether I lived or died. I didn’t have anything to live for.

Then I remembered my children. I did have something to live for.

I have to be smart for them, I thought to myself. I have to keep living, so I can take care of them. They need me. I have to protect my babies and make sure they never get hurt. I have to live and fight for them.

I just wanted to get rid of Helen. I wanted to make the whole thing go away and get my life back.

I started to calm myself down a bit. The futility and evil of my thoughts was coming into perspective. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I couldn’t kill someone, but certainly now, for the first time in my life, I understood how someone could. If I allowed myself to react drastically, I knew I would destroy my own future and self.

Brian wouldn’t want me anymore if he ever found out that I had lowered myself to killing. There must be a better way to get revenge, a sly and subtle way. Maybe I could do it without doing anything illegal. I wanted to win Brian’s affections back, and I wanted to hurt the other woman. I wanted to make her pay for stealing from me, the one thing she could never give back, purity in my marriage.

Then, as if a voice was speaking to me, I heard the words, “You have to forgive her.” I don’t think they were audible words, just words somewhere in my mind. Yet not my own words, for they seemed to interrupt my own thoughts.

Tears began to pour down my cheeks. I knew the words were true and their truth seemed to penetrate the very center of my being. I wanted to do the right things, but I didn’t know how I possibly could.

A long time before learning of Brian’s affair, I had done a lot of studying about what it means to really forgive and why we should do it. Forgiveness interested me because I have always had a tremendous amount of forgiving to do in my life. And, quite honestly, it has always been one of my weaker areas. If ever anyone was a master of hanging on to even small offenses for years, it was me. And this hanging on had contributed to a great weight of sadness throughout my life, hindering my ability to experience true joy.

When I became aware of this negative root in my life, I decided to learn what it really means to forgive someone and how to do it. On this day that I wanted to kill Helen, my understanding of forgiveness was invaluable. I understood that the only person who suffers from not forgiving is the offended person, not the person who has committed the offense. I also remembered that the only person who really benefits from forgiveness is the offended person, not the offender.

I could not yet acknowledge Brian’s part of the guilt. I viewed him as “friend” and her as “enemy.”

Finally, I crumbled to my knees and screamed out, “Oh God,

where are you? Help me. I don’t know how to live through this.” It felt as if there was an ocean of pain and tears inside of me so huge, that even if I cried all day, I would barely have made a dent in releasing its storming waves of grief.

Yet as I cried out in desperation, I realized that the laws of the universe could not work on my behalf while I myself was harboring hatred within my heart. I had to understand what was true and right, right now.

“And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free,” the voice inside my head was saying.

What was truth right now? The truth was my marriage was probably over. The truth was my husband had developed strong feelings for another woman and this truth seemed too cruel a reality to bear. I wanted to run away from the truth, yet I needed to be strong and brave.

Willfully forcing myself to try and think with understanding, I asked myself what was the truth about this woman who had won the affections of my husband? Could it be that she was just a hurting individual, who had reached out and done what she needed to do to meet her own deepest needs? If I had lived her life, would I be capable of the same thing she had done? I didn’t know.

I began to think of the times in my life when I had done wrong things, and caused pain to others. I thought of how wonderful it was to be forgiven, and how everyone has a place of kindness in their heart, no matter what they’ve done in the past.

Was I a better, more deserving individual than her, that I deserved a better life? I knew I wasn’t. I was frail and weak like her. I didn’t want to admit it, but the Bible taught that all human beings were my brothers and my sisters. In that context Helen was my “sister” too.

“Lord,” I was decisively forcing myself to pray for my own benefit, not to benefit the woman who was ruining my life. It reminded me of the same will and resolve I had used many years ago, when I used to jump out of airplanes “for fun.” I had been underage at the time, and in order to have permission, I had to persuade my mother to sign a release waiver. When she said to me, “I’ll sign this paper, because I know once you get in the door of that airplane, you’ll never jump,” one thing had been determined with unbending certainty: dead or alive, I would not be landing with the airplane. When the moment came for me to willfully throw myself out of the plane, I remembered her words and my decision. I was frightened beyond description, but when my brain gave the muscles in my body the commands to move, they obeyed. I always had a choice. Not a choice over what would happen to me, but rather a choice over how I would react to it.

While wrestling with myself to pray and to forgive Helen, I thought about Corrie ten Boom’s remarkable story,
The Hiding Place,
her account of surviving unthinkable atrocities at the hands of the Germans during World War II. Both her beloved father and sister were killed. Years after the injustices had taken place she had been speaking in a church. There in the audience was the guard who had killed her own dear sister, in a very cruel and inhumane way. After the service, she spoke to the man and forgave him. If she could forgive, I could too.

I thought of forgiveness as an inner decision. I understood that it wouldn’t make my pain go away, and I understood that forgiveness didn’t mean I wouldn’t remember it anymore. What it did mean was that I was making a decision to release my feelings of anger and resentment towards the person who had wronged me.

These thoughts helped me to continue.

“Lord, please forgive my sister for the pain she has caused in my life,” I prayed on my knees on the floor beside my unmade bed. My head rested on rumpled quilts I’d made wet with my tears. I trembled and I sobbed.

The pain was so great that I wondered if I was bleeding. It felt as if there were one hundred pounds balancing on top of my head, yet with each word my load seemed to lighten.

“Forgive her for her wrong in stealing my husband’s affections

from me. God, I know I need to forgive her, but in myself I cannot, yet it is my choice.” I willed myself on because I understood it was the key to my own freedom. “I choose to forgive her,” I continued forcing myself. “Please help me to do that. Please bless her in her life and meet her needs, but not through my husband. Please help Brian to see the wrong he is doing, and please restore our marriage, if you can.”

I believed it was my responsibility to take one step in the right direction and that God would walk beside me, helping me to take the rest. That was faith.

As I ended my prayer, an inexplicable peace filled the room and I collapsed upon my floor exhausted. I felt like a soldier, just finished fighting the battle for my own freedom. I had been a prisoner to my thoughts of anger, hatred, murder and revenge. They had been destroying me from the inside out, threatening my very future. The war with my enmity towards Helen was not yet over, but the first battle had been won and for the moment the vexation was at rest.

At this moment, I encountered a special connectedness to God, which is difficult to describe. I sensed God’s presence and power in my life far stronger now, after discovering this betrayal, than ever before and ever since. Yet in the moment, I didn’t even recognize it. I was merely surviving. It was later when the strong presence left me that I missed it and recognized that it had been there. I believe this is where the forgiveness came from. I merely yielded to it.

There was an hour and a half left until my walking date with Lori, but I wished it were now. I needed to talk to someone, now.

I didn’t feel like it, but I forced myself to get ready for the day. I chose an attractive, but casual outfit to wear, and fixed my hair and makeup. As I prepared to go out, my pain at times felt so intense, that I would stop, hold onto a wall and wait while the tears flowed down my face. Then when they stopped I would wipe my eyes and keep going.

When I finished getting ready, I looked in the mirror and I thought I looked nice. I could hide behind my appearance. No one would know what was happening to me, although part of me wanted to tell the whole world how hurt I was.

Lori had convinced me the day before that I should be very cautious about who I told, because most people would not be able to handle the news and might hurt me with the information later.