It has been years, now, since I posted my first blog about being thrown away by a husband who lost his mind in mid life crisis mode.  At first, my focus was on survival, and that was all.  Just get through the days and somehow make ends meet.  Along the way, I wrote other things, things about what you will encounter financially that you won’t realize during the armageddon, reminders about expenses you won’t even know are coming.  And now, I’m in another stretch of the valley.  I’m in the part where I can view most of the carnage from the other side of the battle, and where the last of my wounds are still bleeding, but trying to heal.  No, not trying, healing.

I can now see the carnage in HIS life as well: another marriage and another divorce in just a few short years…big surprise.  And cancer.  His, not mine.  I do my best not to let him into my spirit, but occasionally tidbits get dropped in my lap, unsolicited.  One was that he was no longer a ‘star’ in his company, and I didn’t try to get any info about that.  I assumed his behavior had manifested itself again and he’d been called on it.  Maybe; maybe not.  And one was that he has cancer…the bad kind.  That news rattled me a bit, but I can’t make myself feel bad for him.  I think I just don’t feel anything at all…which is amazing considering what I went through because of his indecent behavior.  One would think I would be glad, but I am not.   I believe that what you sow, you reap.  I believe that you cannot sow evil and really expect to reap goodness, though many men do think that.  That would be like planting an orange seed and expecting to grow an elephant.  This is just another story of proof; I’m sorry once again, that it is people whom I know…or thought I knew…who are the protagonists.  I don’t like to see anybody suffer.  But justice will come.  Not through me, but it will always come.  Is that so hard to grasp, when we see it day after day after day right in front of us?  Or am I the only one who notices?

I’m standing high on the banks of the swirling mass of destruction left in the wakes of the ones who came after me with unimaginable vengeance and glee, the ones who took major joy in destroying my life with lies and cheating and underhandedness.  And now I’m thinking about the deaths of loved ones they lost in the process, illnesses they endured and still endure, and even potentially the ending of the main character.  I think about the horrible woman who moved into my home, into my life, thinking it was hers, only to get kicked out herself after a short while.  Evil begets evil.  All I wanted for her was for her to feel the kind of pain you cannot escape, and that surely happened to her.  She knows that  kind of pain and will feel it forever.  Was it worth it, the evil she sowed?  I wonder whether it ever even crosses her mind.  But if it ever did, I’m absolutely sure she would say, “No, it was not worth it.”

And I wonder why people ever dare to step into such evil doings, why they endeavor to heap such pain and humiliation on another human being, let alone someone they once claimed to ‘love’.  I can almost understand how cheating women can try to destroy the wife in the marriage they are trying to break.  That degree of separation must feel safe to them somehow.  But this woman found out she was not only not safe, she was about to face life altering justice in her life.  But men? Do you ever think at all?  Do you ever weigh the pull of lust against the Justice (capital J) promised by God?  It may take time, even years, but you will pay for the harm you sow.  That’s just how it goes.  God is a just God, and he warns against doing harm to his own.  Does anybody notice that?

And I think it just does not make sense, the damage men do to middle aged women.  And then I started watching a movie called King David, and of course there’s the scene where he sees Bathsheba in her bath.  From that second on, David was a man devoid of logic, of heart, of sense, of memory of his love for his wife.  He loved his her!  But that love was gone in the time it took for him to spot Bathsheba.  And he worked it out so that her husband would be killed in battle, bringing justice down on his own head in the form of the death of his first child and consequences that existed for the rest of his life.  Was it worth it?  What happens to men when lust takes over their lives?

Is it so hard to understand that you ruin people’s lives for the sake of it?  Is it really worth it, the carnage you leave in your wake?  When you face your maker, are you going to feel any shame at all about it?  Do you know that you break the hearts of your children, your family members; that you bring shame into your own life an onto your head?  Is that urge so strong that you will really throw everything away for it?  Every single relationship in my life was damaged by the actions of my ex husband and the women, and the men who helped them.  I wonder about their marriages, the other cheaters.  I wonder if they learned anything about the horror of my marriage being set afire by all of them.  It was a huge fire.  I know they saw the flames leaping skyward.  I hope it frightened them to death.  I hope that because they destroyed my life, people who never knew me, and I was a faithful wife, a loyal wife, a real support for my husband.  In other words, I did not deserve what happened to me.  Unless you want to blame me for birthdays.

We hear it every day: Men are visual creatures.  So I say again to women: If you are in middle age, you had better be aware of what is going on in your life.  Don’t be ambushed, as I was, because your once loving and loyal husband becomes an entirely different animal (using that term on purpose) in the throes of lust.  You won’t recognize the person inhabiting your husband’s body; and women today have no qualms about stepping into your marriage, because society doesn’t mind it at all.  And I say again, also, that we are not animals; God gave us dominion over animals, gave us the ability to reason and think through things.  In lust, men become animals, behaving as though they have no power over their base urges.

I think the key is for people to understand the nature of love, and to realize that lust and love are antithetic, if you’re using lust as a representative of love.  Love really has nothing to do with lust.  Think about that.  And I ask you to do that because if you don’t, you are vulnerable.

Notice what your potential spouse thinks love is all about.  If it’s all about the bedroom, run like hell.  You will surely be in danger one day if you don’t, one day along about your fiftieth birthday.