We were married on the sunny day between two rainy days in April. His parents' wedding anniversary, something that we thought would be a blessing to his recently widowed mother.

We went on a dream vacation to Victoria, Canada for our honeymoon. Yes, the alternator went out, and it cost us the necessity of buying a new battery for the car, an extra day of vacation, walking everywhere and ultimately a new alternator before heading back home. 

But aside from that, it was wonderful! I saw the alternator problem as God trying to get us to slow down and enjoy the time and relax and really enjoy each other.  So, it really was not a bad thing. 

It was the best vacations we ever had. The only one that we were not been tied to the clock, or severely concerned about every penny spent. 

And really, I think our "happily ever after " started to end the day we returned home.

A lot of our early issues could have been classed as "normal" adjustments that needed to be made. Every couple comes together with certain expectations and has to work things out to find what works. I came from an abusive home with lots of emotional baggage, very needy, and a gross misunderstanding of what being a "submissive wife" is, mixed with a little rebellion against my grandmother who is very anti-God and His ways.

So, I dutifully got up early every morning and made breakfast for my husband, who never ate it. And finally, after weeks of discouragement, I got angry and he finally told me he doesn't like eating breakfast. He could have told me that, on or when we returned from our honeymoon, would have saved a lot of frustration, but that's power. In frustrating me, he was able to portray himself as calm and steady and clueless as to why I was so upset...

I also started trying to have dinner ready when he came home from work. And every day he came home later and later. After a while I asked him to set a dinner time. I couldn't guess when he would be home, and I wanted to have it ready, and I thought if he set the time, perhaps he would honor it... I was wrong.

About 6 weeks after we were  married a couple teens in our church had trouble at home and needed a place to go. He was the youth pastor, so we welcomed them into our home. He acted hesitant, but I assured him, I really wanted to have them stay with us (partly because I liked those two, and partly because I saw it as an opportunity to support him in something that seemed very important to him)
It was strange! As soon as theses  kids (only 6 & 8 years younger than me!) moved in, my husband suddenly not only wanted breakfast every morning, together as a "family", he also took it upon himself to have devotions at the breakfast table. That lasted the whole 3 months the kids were with us, then stopped as soon as they moved out. Coming home on time for dinner was also something that happened only while they were with us.

Naturally, I  took it personally. What was wrong with me? What did I need to  change to become lovable?  

When I asked him those questions,  he told me I was crazy.

The problem with that is I allowed and enabled him to manipulate me so he could keep doing what he was doing... And I was so damaged that I didn't realize that he was hurting me more and more every day.

I took the blame for his obvious disinterest and discontent in our marriage. I knew I was not good enough, it was some miracle that God allowed him to think I was good enough to be his wife. Yet it seemed the harder I tried, the more impossible he made it for me to please him.  

And it took me 16 years to find out why. 

Sixteen years, that makes a person feel stupid! How do you live with someone for 16 years, and they are able to keep a secret like that all that time??? 

I don't know. I trusted him. 

And I was foolish enough to believe, that because I had endured all those years of abuse, I couldn't be abused again. And instead I was ripe, perfect to be set up to be psychologically controlled and manipulated. 

Yeah he built himself up a LOT, yes he was always late, and he never called me, unless I called him first, and he always just assumed I would be available to go out with him when it was convenient for him  and he never asked until he was ready to go... And I enabled that behavior, because I was that damaged and needy.

But there was so much more than what I saw, and I saw hints of it this last year or so, but had no way of knowing for sure until he admitted, or confessed it three months ago...

When one is steeped in blatant sin and refuses to let it go, and manages to manipulate their life and the lives of those around it really does a lot of damage. But the one doing the damage thinks as long as it all looks good (for themselves) every thing is good. 

His deception started before he or anyone he knows even knew I existed. I was somewhere between birth and grade school (Because he claims he was a teenager when he started and by the time I was in 2nd grade, he was no longer a teenager).

So by the time I met him, he had already spent close to 20 years pretending to be an upright, godly man... And almost 10 years as an assistant pastor/youth pastor. 

I swallowed his act hook, line and sinker. Any "red flags" were dismissed as my own misunderstanding, because everyone who knew him longer (and therefore better), had no problems with what I attempted to point out. 

Really, those things seemed insignificant anyway. 

This has been a rough time in my life. I could say, the last six months, but that is only when it all came to a head. The last three years? No, that's when God started really reworking me and molding me into a person who could handle my last 4 months. The last five years? No. That is when He showed me how to share my previous hurts so I could begin to heal, so He could set me on the journey of the last three years...

This rough time goes all the way back to the beginning of life. Those who have read my original blog "His Grace is truly amazing" understand how rough my times were. 

What I did not understand, even when I wrote that blog, was how perfectly my damaged-ness set me up to be fully deceived and further damaged by a person, so many believed to be godly 

Why?

Because there are many questions about our life. Questions left unanswered for people to draw their own conclusions and assumptions... People who have been manipulated and fooled by a person who is masterful and has spent more than 35 years pretending to be someone he is not.

I am putting this "out there", and it will be public, so anyone can find it, but I (for now) will not be sharing the link publicly. 

I know that my saying these truths, in this public way, when discovered, will make some people angry. That is OK. The truth is the truth, and maybe I will never need to make this as open as my other blogs, maybe just writing it out and sending it out into cyberspace is all I need. Maybe. Only God knows... He will lead me in that.