Heavenletters

Beloved Anita,

You are wonderful to respond. Your caring heart shines through.

God isn't encouraging men to leave their wives. I believe that God is addressing everyone who feels abandoned or hurt. It could be fathers, sons, husbands, mothers, children as well as wives.

God is loving the wives whose husbands have left them. The world might tell us to consider ourselves mistreated, the husband a villain etc. And, if we listen to the world, we may well wind up bitter resentful angry old women. Maybe we never get over it.

My understanding is that God is telling us squarely: No matter how hurt you are, you must let go of the anger, sense of betrayal etc. In one sense, the man may be innocent except for the crime of being human and having fallen in love with someone else. He may be foolish, misdirected, weak whatever, but he did not fall in love with another woman in order to hurt you. Maybe he was happy in the marriage until then, or maybe he wasn't happy, and maybe the wife was or wasn't happy either. Maybe his decision to leave was painful to him as well. Maybe it was the hardest thing he ever did.

Would it be wise for a wife to hold on to a man who, for example, wants to be with someone else?

Should the unfaithful husband be punished? What exactly is his sin, dear Anita.

I remember so well a true story that Jampolsky wrote about in a book. The book had several true accounts of people who were extraordinary examples of letting go. The one I most remember is of a mother whose 20-year old son was shot and killed by his own friend who was on drugs. She hated her son's murderer. She went to parole hearings to make sure he stayed in prison. After I don't remember how many years, the mother realized she couldn't keep living this way with so much hate in her heart. She arranged to meet with her son's murderer in jail. They cried together.

From then on at parole hearings, she fought to get him released. And when he was released, she took him to her home, and she became a mother to him and he a son to her.

What is the good of holding a grudge, no matter how deserved?

God bless you, Anita.