Twelve years ago I answered God’s call on my life to become born again. At the time, my husband went with me to the front and we accepted Christ together. We started going to Bible study and church every week and our best friends in the whole world became friends we met through church and are some of the strongest warriors for Christ I know.

We attended this church for several years. Then my husband walked into the living room, sat down in his chair, and told me he wasn’t a Christian anymore. He said he didn’t want to go to church anymore and was tired of the friends we had and wanted to not see them anymore. He wanted different friends.

I was surprised and started to argue with him about the fact that he stood and accepted Christ so even if he was back sliding a bit; he would always be a Christian. That’s when he told me he had lied. That he had never really accepted Christ and that he had tried Christianity but it hadn’t worked for him. I didn’t understand what this meant and after several months of just arguing and not believing him, I asked him if I could still believe and attend church without him on Saturdays when he was working. He said that as long as my faith in Christ wasn’t shoved down his throat, it was ok. So began my worship of Christ without my husband involved. I was unequally yoked.

The Bible says this about unequally yoked marriage:

“To the others I say (I, myself, not the Lord): if a Christian man has a wife who is an unbeliever and she agrees to go on living with him, he must not divorce her.
1Co 7:13 And if a Christian woman is married to a man who is an unbeliever and he agrees to go on living with her, she must not divorce him.
1Co 7:14 For the unbelieving husband is made acceptable to God by being united to his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made acceptable to God by being united to her Christian husband. If this were not so, their children would be like pagan children; but as it is, they are acceptable to God.
1Co 7:15 However, if the one who is not a believer wishes to leave the Christian partner, let it be so. In such cases the Christian partner, whether husband or wife, is free to act. God has called you to live in peace.

So we continued to live together as man and wife, but there was a rift. I would pray for my husband to know Jesus and see God through me, but the opposite happened. Instead of seeing the love of Christ in me, he began to resent me. He desired to live a more worldly lifestyle and I began to draw away from that kind of behavior more and more. It made me uncomfortable to go to the bars and watch my husband drink. It made me uncomfortable to watch movies that included derogatory nudity and perfunctory language.

We started to drift apart, but I believed God that my husband would someday see God and be brought into the family of God. Then one day, I came home from work and he told me he was leaving. He said he couldn’t live with me anymore. He said he felt like I didn’t want the “real” him and that I was asking him to change in ways he wasn’t ever going to change.

So now here we are, separated, filing for divorce. It’s hard to believe God for my husband’s salvation, but I continue to do so. Not so he will one day come home to me and confess all his sins and ask me to forgive him. I will one day be able to forgive completely again, but for now, we are over. No, instead, I believe so that my soon-to-be-ex husband will not miss out on the blessing I believe God has for his life and is breaking him down so maybe he can one day be ready to receive from the Lord.