Prayer for Understanding Wife Divorcing

[-=H=-]

Thank you so much to everyone for your encouragement, prayers, wisdom and accountability.

Tonight I'm 2 nights from starting to travel to Los Angeles for the May 23 flight to Australia. It has not been my heart to leave for Australia, and my prayer for God was that I needed work and a place to stay if He wants me to stay in this city and keep trusting for the miracle.

Tonight I received an email invite to apply for a video team at a church in this city and so now I'm praying and also needing wisdom. I can re-book my flight to Australia to next year easily enough, same with the train. My parents are pensioners who helped me with accommodation in Los Angeles pre-flight.

The one thing preventing me from staying in my city here was no job and no accommodation. I replied I was interested in the position, I am so close to travel, I'm thinking perhaps I can fly to Australia to visit and then return.

God can still work a miracle here and save the marriage, and even if my wife files divorce papers I'm still committed to my vows before God.

I really need God's wisdom here.

 

[Skye1300]

Sounds like she needs counseling because it seems like she has a soul tie and trauma bond to her abusive ex. This sounds like a spiritual warfare, especially since her behavior seems to lack logic. She needs prayer and counseling.

 

[Hazelelponi]

Thank you so much to everyone for your encouragement, prayers, wisdom and accountability.

Tonight I'm 2 nights from starting to travel to Los Angeles for the May 23 flight to Australia. It has not been my heart to leave for Australia, and my prayer for God was that I needed work and a place to stay if He wants me to stay in this city and keep trusting for the miracle.

Tonight I received an email invite to apply for a video team at a church in this city and so now I'm praying and also needing wisdom. I can re-book my flight to Australia to next year easily enough, same with the train. My parents are pensioners who helped me with accommodation in Los Angeles pre-flight.

The one thing preventing me from staying in my city here was no job and no accommodation. I replied I was interested in the position, I am so close to travel, I'm thinking perhaps I can fly to Australia to visit and then return.

God can still work a miracle here and save the marriage, and even if my wife files divorce papers I'm still committed to my vows before God.

I really need God's wisdom here.

This close to leaving the wisest decision considering your own circumstances is to go back to Australia.

I'm sorry for your troubles.

P.S. it sounds like your wife is unsaved. From her behavior, that's not a someone who knows Christ. I'll pray for her soul.

 

[-=H=-]

Sounds like she needs counseling because it seems like she has a soul tie and trauma bond to her abusive ex. This sounds like a spiritual warfare, especially since her behavior seems to lack logic. She needs prayer and counseling.

I believe that about the soul tie, I'll get up to speed about trauma bonding. Thank you so much. Definitely still spiritual warfare to be done.

This close to leaving the wisest decision considering your own circumstances is to go back to Australia.

I'm sorry for your troubles.

P.S. it sounds like your wife is unsaved. From her behavior, that's not a someone who knows Christ. I'll pray for her soul.

I totally agree with you, spoke with family and a trusted missionary friend last night. I have responded that I'm interested in the role and sent through the application, I figure I can come back in a month should God open the door. I have had to put a bunch of stuff into storage with a friend's business (film gear that they can use while I'm away). This seems like the wisest path, not one or the other, but rather possibly both.

I have questioned my wife about her spiritual journey as that's what I've been observing as well. She knows about God and reads her Bible, but she grew up in the Catholic Church and it doesn't seem she has given Jesus Lordship over her life, or made a personal decision for Him.

There have been a few encouraging signs until the latest hardening of heart. But God is good at replacing hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. Keeping tied in to Him and continuing praying.

 

[Skye1300]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-sobriety/202109/what-is-trauma-bonding

"Trauma Bonding

KEY POINTS

• Trauma-bonding lives in the nervous system. The brain makes associations between “love” and abuse or neglect.
• Trauma-bonding is a hormonal attachment created by repeated abuse, sprinkled with being “saved” every now and then.
• Trauma-bonding in adulthood can stem from childhood trauma.

Why do I keep choosing unavailable and abusive partners?

Well into my career as a clinical psychologist, I continued to ask myself this question. I saw many clients who wondered the same thing, and we swirled around the problem thick with shame.

I knew intellectually that my pattern’s roots went deep into childhood. But “knowing better” never relieved me of my chemistry. It felt as helpful as “knowing” pizza isn’t good for me, but I ordered it anyway because it tasted so good. I couldn’t force myself into being attracted to a kind and available person any more than I could find liver and onions super appealing.


When I finally learned about trauma-bonding, it was such a relief. It allowed me to judge myself a little less for how I’d been caught in this cycle. It wasn’t because I was broken or didn’t deserve love. It was because my nervous system was wired for trauma-bonding in adolescence. My brain had made associations based on what I experienced and witnessed: “love” comes with abuse and neglect. Of course, I sought out abusive and unavailable partners over and over again.


Trauma-bonding defined
When we are faced with abuse and neglect, we are chemically wired to focus on getting to the “other side.” When the abuser is the person that brings us relief, the brain associates them with safety.

The brain latches on to the positive experience of relief rather than the negative impact of the abuser.


This happens because the body’s threat response (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) turns off the part of the brain that can think long-term when we are in crisis. This creates the feeling that we need the abuser to survive, and is often mistaken for “love.”

Trauma-bonding is a hormonal attachment created by repeated abuse, sprinkled with being “saved” every now and then. A slightly different version of this cycle can be seen when we are sitting at a slot machine in Vegas. It’s called intermittent reinforcement and casinos have long used the data surrounding it to help us pour our life savings into their hands in the hope that we might finally “win.”


This type of conditioning is intuitively exploited by narcissists. They are masters at giving us just enough and then ripping it all away. In conjunction with gaslighting, emotional abuse and manipulation designed to make us question our reality, the major building blocks for trauma-bonding are formed.


In my experience with a narcissistic stepfather, I’d receive months of the silent treatment followed by expensive gifts. Or, he’d ground me for weeks because of an innocent mistake and then pull me aside to say we were “kindred souls,” grooming me as a girlfriend.

I repeated this well-worn cycle in adulthood. Part of the experience I was recreating included the hope that “he will change.” Just like I hoped as a kid, “He'll finally see me and love me for good, and then I’ll be okay!”


The necessary ingredient to start the cycle (but this time I’ll win) was being attracted to someone who was unavailable, narcissistic, addicted, and so on. And I re-enacted this trauma so many times, I lost count.

This will not surprise many folks, but the news flash to me was that none of my partners ever changed. I never won. It never got any better. I stayed in a dependent stew, believing I wasn’t capable of a healthy relationship.


Now I know I have always been a perfectly functioning human being. I reacted to my childhood traumas exactly the way I was meant to just to survive them. My body was wired to live in the cycle, and my mind was protecting me by believing “this time will be different.” I perpetually hoped the next person would see me, they would break the spell, and then I’d be free."

 

[SANTOSO]

Thank you so much to everyone for your encouragement, prayers, wisdom and accountability.

Tonight I'm 2 nights from starting to travel to Los Angeles for the May 23 flight to Australia. It has not been my heart to leave for Australia, and my prayer for God was that I needed work and a place to stay if He wants me to stay in this city and keep trusting for the miracle.

Tonight I received an email invite to apply for a video team at a church in this city and so now I'm praying and also needing wisdom. I can re-book my flight to Australia to next year easily enough, same with the train. My parents are pensioners who helped me with accommodation in Los Angeles pre-flight.

The one thing preventing me from staying in my city here was no job and no accommodation. I replied I was interested in the position, I am so close to travel, I'm thinking perhaps I can fly to Australia to visit and then return.

God can still work a miracle here and save the marriage, and even if my wife files divorce papers I'm still committed to my vows before God.

I really need God's wisdom here.

Beloved one, I ask you to consider what Jesus said :

 

[SANTOSO]

Beloved one, I ask you to consider what Jesus said :

“So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
‭‭Mark‬ ‭11:22-24‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

““And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.””
‭‭Mark‬ ‭11:25-26‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Beloved one, it is important that we are standing right before God every day, that if we have anything against anyone, that we forgive. Yes, we forgive before we ask anything, that our Heavenly Father may hear our prayers.

For we should consider what has been written:

“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭59:1-2‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Beloved one, we have confidence that God hears our prayers because there is no iniquities separating us from God; and there is no sin so He reveals His face, that He shows favor and peace, that He helps us.

So if we lack anything, we ask. For we heard our Lord said:
And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you;
seek, and you will find;
knock, and it will be opened to you. -Luke 11:9

If we ask for a miracle, we are NOT talking about wishful thinking or a vague hope but we are talking that we ask God to intervene in our lives based on the reality of His promises.

So if you seek job and accommodation, tell God and others again and again that you believe that He will provide a job and accommodation. So speak in faith over your circumstances and needs, believe that you will receive what you ask. Hold in faith.

This I also consider what sister Basilea Schlink told me:

Disappointments come from already wanting to see what we are first meant to lay hold of in faith.

So hold onto your faith.
And believe that God have done what was right, also believe that God is doing what is right, and also believe that God will do what will be right.

So if we knew that, we can be happy, satisfied and calmed, that we are assured of His words, that we trust the Lord, that He saves us out of all our troubles or distress or affliction or pains.

And our hearts will be filled with thanksgiving toward God through Christ.

Each day, we can expect great things that God will do. And believe His wonderful works.

To God the Father be all glory and thanksgiving through Christ. Amen.

May God’s peace be with you in every way.
Amen

 

[aiki]

I am at a loss as to why she is running. She has accused me of hating myself and others, of being afraid of being rejected by people, of lying and a host of other things that are neither my heart nor are they my character. She seems to be projecting her hatred of herself and the things she is doing off onto me.

I don't know what to do. God has said He is fighting for me, not to be afraid, not to be discouraged. To rest in Him. Yet she moved out of home again and has gone back to her 13 year ex's place, a man who is a drug and alcohol addict. I have 7 days before I have to leave for another city to catch a flight to Australia and divorce will be finalized on May 27 unless God works a miracle.

How can this happen? What is happening? Why is she behaving this way? I don't understand and no one around us understands why she is acting this way.

All sin originates from the same basic thing: Selfishness. Selfishness manifests in all sorts of ways, of course, not looking necessarily like selfishness on the surface, however. A person who is controlling and manipulative is often motivated by fear which is, at bottom, just a reflection of a desire to keep oneself from hurt. A withdrawn, moody, self-hating person wishes to be more beautiful or handsome, more intelligent, more witty and likeable, more athletic or gifted in some remarkable way. Thinking they are none of these things, and resenting the fact, they hive off, shrinking from contact with others, in self-pity despairing of life, becoming dark and bitter. But at the root of things is just dissatisfied Self, wounded vanity and ego, and a selfish desire to protect against further wounds to one's pride. And so it goes, self-centeredness manifesting in narcissism on one hand and self-wounding on the other, in inappropriate content addiction and in legalistic asceticism, in gluttony and in anorexia.

Your wife is no exception to the rule. She is demonstrating that Self is in control, that her "old (wo)man" (Romans 6:6) is seated on the throne of her heart, making her fleshly, short-sighted and temporal, as the Bible says all who are living under the rule of carnal Self will be. (Romans 8:5-7; Philippians 3:19, etc.)

But in all that you face, God intends that the same fundamental purpose be served: Conformity to Jesus Christ. (Romans 8:29) Whether a miracle happens or not, God would make you more like Jesus. Whether or not your wife submits to God, repenting of her sin and returning to your side as your wife, God is working all things toward the goal of making you more and more like your Savior and Lord. Both in pain and suffering and in joy and peace, this is the "good" toward which God is working everything in your life. Nothing you endure, then, must be a pointless waste, an irredeemable experience in pain and loss, but the worst moments, if you'll let them, can be a means of "polishing the reflection" of Christ that God made you to be. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

I know this isn't a particularly...emotionally satisfying response but it is the truth, regardless, and can be at times the only clear line to follow through the insanity of the troubles of earthly living.

 

[Hannah66]

1 Corinthians 7:15 says if unbelieving spouse wants to leave let her leave !

There are thousands of unmarried women seeking husband and all you need to do is to introduce yourselves that you are single and wealthy enough to support a family, tell your Friends and relative to introduce you to a decent female.

Don't try to force somebody who doesnt love you, its a disgrace to you.

Please don't encourage divorce because God hates divorce. jumping from relationship to relationship is not biblical. Clearly, our brother is in pain here.

 

[Hannah66]

I am so sorry this is happening to you. I've gone through similar. Could your wife possibly be suffering an underlying mental illness. Bipolar disorder creates mood changes. She doesn't seem stable with changing her mind so often. Just a thought. Not Diagnosing.

 

[Hannah66]

praying