So, our life together began.  I finished up my schooling to be a teacher and Dave was finishing up his schooling as a pastoral major.  He wanted to be in ministry.   I felt that we had a good marriage.  We rarely fought, we had fun together, and I enjoyed his company.  Dave had huge goals and aspirations to plant a church someday.  I supported him in the many adventures along the way.

Our daughter, Waverly was born in 1999 and our son, Emerson, was born in 2003.  I had always wanted children and they were the joy of my life.  I did everything with them.   I wanted Dave to join me as a partner in parenting, but with his busy work schedule at the church he was at kept him from being with us.  I am a very independent person so I continued to handle the kids on my own.  It was becoming very clear that although we loved each other very much, Dave and I had our own separate lives.  He had his ministry and future goals and I ran the house and cared for the kids.  We were both running very parallel lives, but they were not intersecting very often.  Again, at t his point we didn't necessarily feel that anything was wrong with the set-up of our relationship.  We were settled into our roles and we were living them out the best we knew how with the tools we had been given.  If someone were to ask me, "Do you have a good marriage?" I would have said "Sure, we do."

We planted a church in April of 2003.  It was very exciting because this was what Dave had dreamed of doing up until this point.  He wanted to make a huge impact in people's lives. We even moved away from the area where we had lived for 12 years in order to immerse ourselves in the community.  There were good days and bad days in the journey of trying to plant and grow a church.  Dave was pouring his heart and soul into it and as time went on, it became very tiresome for him.  I loved the community that God brought us.  There were and still are some amazing people that came to our church.   SInce Dave was very busy with the church, I found myself relying heavily on friends in my life for support.  My friends meant everything to me because they were my family unit.  I didn't like that Dave worked so much and that he wasn't with us, but I found myself feeling bad for speaking up because he was doing ministry and all of the work was for God.  Plus, I knew that Dave loved what he was doing and I wasn't sure if he would choose our family over the church because it was so important to him.

By 2007, Dave was feeling so much burnout.  There were more days than not that he would tell me that he wanted to quit.  I knew that he felt stuck, but I am not sure that he knew how to get out.  It's not that easy to quit being a pastor especially a church plant.  In early 2008, Dave was taking a team of 20 or so people on a missions trip to India.  He had been there several times before so it was a familiar trip.  This particular trip, he did not want to go.  He felt  more burnout that ever before.  He was weary and didn't want to hop on a plane and fly across to world to India.  He couldn't back out so he left in mid February and would be gone for 2 weeks.  The first week he was gone, we had some contact and everything seemed normal.  I missed him so much and was really looking forward to him coming home.  The second week he was there, I barely had any contact with him.  I tried to reach him via email, but he didn't return my emails.  I knew something wasn't right.  I had a really sick feeling about a weird connection between he and my best friend that was on the trip as well, but I immediately dismissed it because I thought that Dave would never do that to me.  The night before he was to come home, he sent me an email telling me that he wouldn't need me to pick him up from the airport and that he would see me at home.  That didn't sound like him and I knew something wasn't right.  The kids and I went to the airport anyway to pick him up.  When he got off the plane, I knew something was wrong.  He barely greeted us and wanted to leave right away.  It was silent in the car the whole way home.  He said he wanted to talk as soon as we got the kids to bed.  My heart was pumping.

As he began to talk, he said that being away for 2 weeks made him realize how unhappy he was in ministry and marriage.  He wanted a partner and he didn't feel that we were partners.  Ministry was killing him and he was willing to walk away from both our marriage and ministry in order to be free from the weight that was causing him so much pain.  I was so shocked.  I was devastated.  Dave said he was going to take a sabbatical from ministry and start going to counseling to get things sorted out for himself.  I knew that night that I was powerless to change the circumstances.  I had to lean into God more than ever before.  I couldn't eat or sleep well.  I cried myself to sleep every night.  Dave wouldn't talk to me and he was so distant.  It was like living with a stranger.  I immediately started going to my own counseling after he returned from India because I knew that I needed to take care of myself.  It had been 2 weeks since he returned from India.  Things didn't seem any better.  In fact, they seemed worse.  I told him that I was not willing to live like we were living much longer.  The silent treatment and lack of emotional connection was killing me.  So, on Friday( 2 weeks after returning from India) I got a call from my best friend's husband telling me not to go home because Dave was going to break the news to me that he was leaving me for her.  I thought back to the thoughts I had while Dave was in India about the 2 of them and it was now being confirmed.  I was in shock!  Dave called shortly after and told me that he was going to leave me and that he and her had a great connection and felt that they were supposed to move forward together.  Dave said that he wanted a divorce right away and she was asking the same from her husband.  They left together to go out of town that night for the weekend and Dave said he would be back on Sunday to discuss next steps.  So, the nightmare for me continued.  They moved into an apartment together about a mile from our home and for the next 40 days their affair continued.

I was in so much anguish.  I could barely get up in the mornings.  I had lost 20 pounds in a very short time.  My kids kept me going and my classroom full of kindergarteners helped to distract me from the hell and pain that I was going through.  I stayed at our church and they were a huge support to me.  Meals, financial provision, prayer, and much more helped the kids and I endure.  God was with me and I knew it, but it didn't take away the sadness of what Dave was doing.  He was on his own journey and I didn't see any hope of us ever being together again.  I hated him and wanted him just to leave me alone.  I did give him visits with the kids, but I couldn't even look at him.

After 6 long weeks of their affair, it ended.  Dave spun out and then had to begin to deal with the real issues within himself.  I was numb and felt nothing for him.  I was sad that he had left his whole life for this relationship, but I was in so much pain from him, I wanted nothing to do with him.  A couple of weeks after the affair ended, he asked to meet me at a park and he wanted to talk.  He apologized for everything he had done to me and our family.  I still was very numb and stoic as he was saying all of this.  It felt good to hear it, but I was so hurt!  I was hopeless to see that I could possibly recover from the trauma that I experienced.  

Meanwhile, I was working on my own life and things that I needed to change and processing our whole relationship prior to the affair.   I asked God to soften my heart and lead me in the paths he had for me.   Then, I did begin to read a book called "Torn Asunder, Recovering from extramarital affairs".  This book truly did help me to open my heart to the possibility of us even talking again.  So for the next few weeks after reading the book, we began to talk.  I talked a lot.  Sharing all of my pain with what he did.  He just listened to me and responded with "I'm sorry.  I went on and on which I needed to do.  I wasn't about to just let go of all that had happened.  I appreciated that he didn't try to defend himself or make excuses. His words didn't mean much to me, but his actions were huge in me seeing him in a new light.   

He was working hard too.  He had accountability of other men and his counselor around him.  He was becoming a better dad than he had ever been before.  He was not working as much and learning to enjoy his life for the first time.  All of these things that he was doing, gave me hope that I could possibly be with him again.  Believe me, it didn't seem likely.  I felt like the journey to recovery was so long and painful and I wasn't sure if I had it in me to work that hard.  I leaned into God constantly because I was too weary.  I needed His strength to see me through each day.  I took one day at a time because I think I would have quit had I looked beyond one day. 

As my school year came to an end, I was at a crossroads of pursuing the divorce that Dave asked for (which he didn't want now) or beginning to pick up the pieces and work on reconciling our relationship.  Believe me, reconciling sounded like too much pain and not very attractive.  On the other hand, I knew that divorce was no piece of cake and that road was long and painful as well.  I felt that with a whole summer being off from work that the time was now to roll up my sleeves and give our marriage a chance.  If I waited until I was back to teaching in the fall, I knew that I would not be able to give our relationship repair my all.  So, last July we started going to marriage counseling.  It was hard, but we were making major progress.  I was becoming a new person and so was Dave.  We were both committed to becoming the family that we never were.  We were committed to working on our marriage to be the partners that we longed to be.  Dave moved home in August.  What a whirlwind 6 months!

The first time we were intimate it was good to be with him, but very painful emotionally.  The key for me is that I communicated with him how much I was hurting.  I cried so hard the first time we were together and he just held me.   I cried until I couldn't cry any more.  I truly believe that it is only God that has helped me to see Dave in a new light. 

I love him so much and 15 months since this all went down, I am doing very well.  I will be honest that there are still triggers that cause me to feel a pain that I thought that I was over or had dealt with, but they do come back.  We talk about it, I cry or share my pain, and we get through it.

I have also read a great book recently called "Dare to Forgive, The Power of Letting Go and Moving On".   That has helped me immensely in my journey of healing.  What I realized is that even if I hadn't repaired my marriage, I wanted to recover and process the pain so I could come away from this a whole person.  So, for those who feel that their marriage is done, there is hope that you can be free of the pain.  My hope is that marriages can make it through this challenging time.  It is possible.  I am proof of that.  For those that can't understand my willingness to repair my marriage, well I just know that divorce would have been just as hard as restoration.  So, when you are faced with the options, you really have to stop and think what you want. 

I didn't anticipate once he moved home that other things would be difficult, but they were. I knew that when we got back together, that I would be leaving the church that we had started.  This was very hard because the kids loved it there and I was leaving my support system so that I could repair my family.  Due to many people just not being able to forgive Dave for what he did, we basically lost nearly all of our friends.  I didn't expect that to happen, but it did.  So, over the past 6 months, I have had to grieve so much loss of my friends that I thought would be in my life forever.  I will say though that our family is stronger today than it ever was and for that I am forever grateful.  I am confident that God is going to bring us new friends (which he is already starting to do) or even bring reconciliation with friends that have been lost.

Here are my biggest learnings from this whole trial:

• God is with me always and he is still sovereign.
• God is able to help me to forgive.
• I want to have more grace for others in my life because God gives it to me daily.
• I have learned how to be a better wife and partner through all of this because I did look at my patterns of  behavior and learned that I need to speak up more about my thoughts and feelings.  Also, I need to admire, affirm, and appreciate my husband more.  In other words, be less critical.
• I have to bring to the table what I want in our relationship and share those things.  I can't wait for Dave to bring whatever it is I want.  I want to be more proactive and intentional in our relationship.

One more thing I want to share.  When Dave left, the 2 scriptures that constantly flooded my mind were Psalm 23 and Romans 15:13.  They are the promises of God and they are true!

I pray my story will be used to encourage many women that need to hear it.
-Laura Trotter