I was thinking today about my response to the 2006 confession of my husband which precipitated our divorce. It was totally unnatural.

As he stood there that cold January night, having just uncorked years of bottled secrets under the pressure of fermented evil, something from above poured into me vertically, permeating my mind with a supernatural gift of forgiveness. It was that fast. As mercy met blame, it neutralized the power of bitterness with a preemptive strike, totally disintegrating its poised seeds.

The natural response at that moment would have been to jump up and scratch his eyes out—but to this day, I have never  experienced a vindictive kind of anger, despite the total shattering of our family. I have stumbled through deep, deep grief, but never a destructive anger. At that moment, it was as though God anesthetized my emotions, my brain, my senses, with mercy.

There were many people who declared that I was just going through one of the phases of trauma, but my feelings have not changed since that day. It had to be supernatural grace taking me through.

When the eruption of his confession gradually settled into the ashes of our lives, I realized that I had thought I had been dealing with reality all those years. Silly me. I remember staring at him, so earnest in his confession, so open in his desire to connect, so visible with the evaporation of his walls. Once I was actually able to see him, I didn’t recognize him. He was a stranger. No one I had ever met before. I felt incredibly sorry for him. He was like a prince who had signed over all the joys and riches of his kingdom for a soiled bag of deadly snakes. How could he have been such a fool?

The stranger standing before me was not a monster. He was the embodiment of what happens to a human being when the most base inclinations are allowed to surface, roam around in one’s mind and reach out with poisoned tentacles to destroy everyone within reach. But there was no denial of his total responsibility.

Everyone has dark inclinations, but living a life that contributes in a positive way to society requires a constant renewing of the mind with positive, healthy thoughts and appetites, not allowing any space for darkness to grow. My husband didn’t live like that. He had gradually allowed the darkness in his heart full rein. He was human, but pathetically enslaved to evil desires.

Thankfully, I had spent the previous 28 years of my life developing a relationship with God. I knew Him and He was with me. This was no time for scrounging around, trying to figure out who the real God was. My God had already stood up and made Himself known to me. I was not alone.