I had passed up many suitors, waiting for a strong, ministry-minded man I could love for a lifetime. After years of waiting, graduate school, and dozens of friends’ weddings, I had finally found him.

Our wedding was a joy-filled celebration with 700 guests. I was in love and full of hope—cherished, chosen, and ready for a lifetime of shared ministry.Now, holding those divorce papers, I felt wrecked. Miserable. Utterly unloved.

The Marriage Counselor Who Couldn’t Save Her Own Marriage

After we married, my counseling practice flourished. I developed a special interest in helping couples recover from infidelity. I loved helping devastated couples fight their way back to connection.

Years earlier, before entering graduate school in Marriage and Family Therapy, I sensed the Lord whisper to me during a worship service:

“I will give you a ministry in reconciliation.”

That promise seemed to have been fulfilled in my counseling practice. The irony was brutal. I had helped countless marriages heal from betrayal. But I couldn’t save my own.

My husband had confessed to what he described as a one-way crush on a coworker. I took his story at face value. What I didn’t know was that he was already emotionally and physically involved with her. Despite all my training, I had missed the signs.

Now shame burned through me.

How could I have been so blind?

I felt foolish, duped, and discarded.

From the beginning of our courtship, I had felt secure in my husband’s affection. He hugged me daily, told me he loved me often, and seemed emotionally invested in our life together. The idea that he could fall in love with someone else had seemed absurd.

Until it wasn’t.

The final blow wasn’t simply that he left. It was how he left.

With disdain. With emotional coldness. As though I no longer mattered.

Looking back, I could trace his withdrawal to the point when his relationship with the other woman became physical. As he attached to her, he detached from me.

Sitting in that garage, I pounded the steering wheel and sobbed.

My marriage was over. My family was broken. My professional credibility—especially as someone who specialized in infidelity—felt ruined. My past seemed stolen from me, and the future I had imagined was gone.

I feared I would never feel normal again.

Maybe I’ve already done everything I was meant to do.

I had written a play that pointed people to Jesus. I had discipled young women. I had helped save marriages. I had raised two sons to adulthood.

Was there anything left for me?

Counseling, fervent prayers, and even spiritual warfare hadn’t stopped the nightmares, flashbacks, trembling, and despair. I was exhausted. And I wanted the pain to stop.

What Stopped Me

As I sat there with the engine running, a quiet interruption entered my thoughts:

What about Mom? She had already lost my father and both of her parents within three years. What would my suicide do to her?

Then another question came.

What about my sons? What kind of wound would I leave them? What kind of legacy would my suicide become?

I cringed.

Then I thought about my clients—including people I had talked out of suicide. What would my death say to them?

And finally:

What would this do to the reputation of the Christ I claimed to serve?

For a moment, my focus shifted from the unbearable pain inside me to the ripple effect my death would create around me.

I turned off the engine.

I chose to live.

Barely.

The suicidal thoughts did not magically disappear. I fought the desire to end my life for another six months. But something important changed that day. I realized suicide was a lose-lose proposition. Ending my pain would transfer enormous pain to people I loved.

Somehow, I would have to keep going.

Why Betrayal Can Become So Dangerous

Not every betrayed and abandoned spouse becomes suicidal. Many factors affect vulnerability: previous trauma, depression, coping skills, available support, and the depth of emotional investment in the relationship.

But betrayal followed by abandonment can be one of the most demoralizing experiences a person can endure. Being supplanted by another person, fantasy, or addiction can feel like receiving a devastating message:

• You are replaceable.

When betrayal is followed by rejection, the injury becomes even deeper. We were created for love and connection. When someone who vowed to love us suddenly detaches, the result can be far more than ordinary sadness. It can shake our identity, our sense of safety, our understanding of the past, and even our relationship with God.

Earlier wounds can make the impact even more severe.

My father was emotionally unavailable because of alcoholism. Without ever saying the words, his addiction communicated something to the little girl inside me:

• You’re not worth it.

When he died suddenly from a heart attack at 54, I grieved not only the father I lost, but the father I had never really had. Somewhere inside, I carried an old fear into adulthood:

• Maybe I am unlovable.

So when my husband fell in love with someone else and ended our marriage, it seemed to confirm an ancient lie.

Three Lies Despair Tells Us

Years later, I encountered a model of suicidality identifying three beliefs often present when someone reaches a place of profound despair:

• I am unlovable.
• This pain is unbearable.
• My situation is unsolvable.

I understand all three.

But I also know something today that I could not see from inside that garage:

They felt true. But they were not true.

Trauma narrows our vision. Intense emotional pain convinces us that how life feels today is how life will always feel.

It isn’t.

I wince when I think about how close I came to ending my life.

I would have missed my sons’ graduations and weddings.

I would never have held my grandchildren.

I would have missed new friendships, new opportunities to serve, and the unexpected gift of a beautiful second marriage.

And I would have missed something even harder to imagine from inside that garage: the restoration of my own soul.

I would have missed discovering emotional resilience I didn’t know I possessed. I would have missed a deepening faith and a more intimate relationship with God.

I would have missed redemption.

God Can Redeem Anything

The word redeem first took hold of me at a women’s retreat one month before I married.

The speaker made a declaration I never forgot:

“There isn’t anything beyond God’s ability to redeem. He can redeem anything!”

Years later, when the hurricane of betrayal and abandonment tore through my life, those words returned like an anchor in a storm:

God can redeem anything.

I clung to them for dear life.

Today, decades later, I understand those words differently.

I no longer believe in redemption merely because someone told me about it.

I have lived it.

Like Job, I can say:

“My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen You.”
—Job 42:5

Does redemption mean every consequence disappears? No.

Are there still scattered remnants from the wreckage of my first marriage?

Yes.

But they no longer live inside my soul.

The woman sitting in that garage believed her story was essentially over.

She was wrong.

There were entire chapters of her life she could not yet see.

If you are living through betrayal, abandonment, or another devastating loss, please remember this:

The fact that you cannot imagine a meaningful future does not mean there isn’t one.

Sometimes hope begins with something as small as turning off the engine.

And choosing, for one more day, to stay.

Give God a chance. Give the people who love you a chance. Give life a chance to show you what you cannot see from where you are standing right now:

Your story is not over.

This pain will not always feel as unbearable as it does today. Your present circumstances are not the final verdict on your life. And despite what your emotions may be telling you in this moment, you still have purpose. There are people you have yet to love, lives you have yet to touch, and chapters you have yet to live.

I know, because I almost missed mine.

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
—Psalm 34:18

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This post is a summary of the first chapter in my new book, Redeeming the Post-Affair Divorce.