How do you know what God wants you to do?

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DaniHdez

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Hello, I need a place to get some feed back. I am a 31 yr old wife of 13 yrs, mother of two whose husband is having an affair and wants a divorce. I don’t want to go along with it because I think divorce is wrong; that it goes against God’s will. He says that that is only my understanding of what is right. Am I really doing the will of God by remaining faithful to my marriage? I believe in God and I know that he says that if I have faith I can move mountains, because of that I know that if my husband were to dedicate himself to God our marriage could be saved. That’s what I pray for; that my husband will return to God. Not to me, not to our marriage, just that he returns to God and wants to do God’s will. Well I talked to him the other day and he thinks that divorcing me is what God wants him to do. Is that possible? Is it possible that God sent this adulterous woman (she has divorced her husband and left her child to come after my husband) to my husband? I am lonely and heartbroken. My kids REALLY need their Dad. At this point I love my husband mainly out of my love for God. We were not married in the church, but when I made my vow, I made it for God and I don’t want to be a liar to Him. I just want to do the will of God. My husband wants me to let go of him because he “just doesn’t love me any more”. Marriage is “until death do you part” not “until you don’t feel like you love each other any more”, right???
 
Well, you can and should stay faithful to your husband given how you feel. You certainly can’t control whether he can or will stay faithful to you, though. Them’s the joys of free will.

Civil divorce certainly isn’t a sin - sometimes in fact it’s a necessity so that proper arrangements can be made in regards to custody and guardianship of your children, and division of or protection of the joint property of your marriage.

It’s adulterous affairs and remarriage without annulment that is sinful.

Anyone who thinks breaking the commandment against adultery is God’s will is deluded. Especially given that Jesus reaffirmed that very same commandment numerous times in the Gospels. It’s not possible that God wants us to break His very own commandments!

But again, no-one can force another adult to do God’s will. I’d probably let your husband go and pray hard for his conversion - please God he will tire of his other woman and recommit to his marriage with you, sooner rather than later.

My prayers for you, especially to St Monica, St Rita and St Helen, patrons of people in difficult marriages.
 
DaniHdez said:
Hello, I need a place to get some feed back. I am a 31 yr old wife of 13 yrs, mother of two whose husband is having an affair and wants a divorce. I don’t want to go along with it because I think divorce is wrong; that it goes against God’s will. He says that that is only my understanding of what is right. Am I really doing the will of God by remaining faithful to my marriage? I believe in God and I know that he says that if I have faith I can move mountains, because of that I know that if my husband were to dedicate himself to God our marriage could be saved. That’s what I pray for; that my husband will return to God. Not to me, not to our marriage, just that he returns to God and wants to do God’s will. Well I talked to him the other day and he thinks that divorcing me is what God wants him to do. Is that possible? Is it possible that God sent this adulterous woman (she has divorced her husband and left her child to come after my husband) to my husband? I am lonely and heartbroken. My kids REALLY need their Dad. At this point I love my husband mainly out of my love for God. We were not married in the church, but when I made my vow, I made it for God and I don’t want to be a liar to Him. I just want to do the will of God. My husband wants me to let go of him because he “just doesn’t love me any more”. Marriage is “until death do you part” not “until you don’t feel like you love each other any more”, right???
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If he says what you say he says, then he is just thinking with his you-know-what.

Do you have a priest you can talk to? Would he be willing to go to Retrouvaille (a weekend for couples whose marriages are on the rocks)? Does he have any men among his acquaintance who can beat, I mean, *talk *some sense into him? What about family? Do you have a good relationship with your in-laws.

Use every weapon at your disposal to bring him to his senses. Then, if he still wants a divorce, there may be nothing you can do about it but what you describe is so childish it should not be allowed to pass without serious challenge.

God sent him this woman? Puh-leeze.
 
Thank you both so much. Some days I just feel so confused. I really do understand that I have no control over his actions. The reasons I keep fighting are (1) because we are not divorced and I think I have a responsibility to fight for what I think is the right thing to do (2) because I honestly don’t know how or when but some where along the line he mentally reverted into a teenager. He is not willing to go to a marriage encounter and there is one priest that we had spoken to, but he just got moved out of my parish and the other priest that is left is not supportive. The priest I confide in told my husband that what he was doing was flat out wrong but I’m not sure it even got in one ear. Last weekend my husband did go to one retreat with me. It was not a marriage retreat but our priest thought it would be worthwhile for us to attend together. It was weird because all the while he just kept talking about how he was there for me, so that I could receive what ever healing I needed. The facilitator called him on it and asked him if he didn’t think he needed any healing and his answer was just, “I don’t know but I’m not here for me”. He told me that he figured that if God had wanted him to recommit to our marriage that he would have seen something on the retreat. Well all our dirty laundry came out on the retreat and many people there told him that he was doing wrong by leaving his family and having this affair (and they did tell him with love) but that is still not enough proof of what God expects. The ironic part is that on the first night of the retreat he asked Jesus to show him right from wron and to give him courage. I asked him why he’d done that if he never intended to accepted God’s response? He is not close to any one except the other woman. From what I understand she is not Catholic and I read one of her letters and she said that she “prayed every day to God that (her husband and) I would have a change of heart and let them be together and that she was sure that God would protect them”. That still makes me sick. Thank you again, I had just started to feel like I was crazy. There are all these mixed signs. He goes on a retreat with me, then he’s taking action toward this indepent life, then he comes and hangs around the house under the guise that he wants to see the kids but hardly even talks to them; so some days I don’t know up from down. When I last talked to him I told him to actually find out the truth. To not just go by what I am saying but to go and find out from the church and/or a priest for himself. Who knows if he will. I really do just want to do the right thing. If that means fighting to follow God’s instructions, so be it. Thank you for the prayers, I really couldn’t ask for more.
 
You are not crazy. You never need to apologize or defend your attempts to save a marriage. While you may not be successful and your husband may leave you, I find it difficult to believe that it would be GOD’S will that he sin. God doesn’t want us to sin. God wants us to love Him, know Him and live with Him forever…how can we do that if we are living in sin?

The confusion comes if we accept that nothing happens in God’s universe by mistake. If your husband insists that his needs and feelings are more important than his Sacramental Marriage and so he acts in a sinful manner, that is not a mistake. It is an evil, but it is not a mistake…for from all evil will come great good.

So many good men and women have, throughout the ages, drawn closer to Our Lord because of the sinful actions of others. This is your opportunity to be heroic in virtue.

On the other hand, if you would like me to ask my Guardian Angel to give your husband a good swift kick in the pants once a week for say, oh, ten years, I’d be more than happy to do so…
 
Tell him God never tells us to do anything that is against his Law… Adultery and Divorce are coming from that other guy that likes to deceive us…
 
my goodness, i had the same thing happen to me after 20 yrs of marriage and 5 kids. he said the same thing. that God sent this new rich woman to him. I never even saw it coming!!! check out this site. It helped me a lot. rejoiceministries.org

I think that satan has been deceiving many people into the same thing trying to destroy the family. God loves the family. It is one of the first things he created. He also said He hates divorce in Malachi. Before his death, Pope JP II said that lawyers should stop these divorces and judges and lawyers should refuse to be involved in them because divorce is intrinsically evil and the annulments are being handed out for reasons they should not be handed out for.
My x lied to get an annulment which leads me to beleive that my marriage is still valid in God’s eyes. The more I pray about it the more He makes me feel this way. Not easy. Hang in there. Let me know what you think about the site.
 
St. Paul said not to be unequally yoked, but if one of the two become a believer than the believer should honor the wishes of the nonbeliever. It may be a bit of a stretch to apply it here, but FWIW:
1 Cor 7:
12 To the rest 8 I say (not the Lord): if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she is willing to go on living with him, he should not divorce her; 13 and if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he is willing to go on living with her, she should not divorce her husband. 14 For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through the brother. Otherwise your children would be unclean, whereas in fact they are holy. 15 If the unbeliever separates, 9 however, let him separate. The brother or sister is not bound in such cases; God has called you to peace.
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Alan
 
People (me included) so often do their own will and then say that is what God wanted for them–it’s God’s will. But God’s will is often the hard way, the path most people don’t want to follow.
If he is breaking a commandment, you can rest assured he is not doing “God’s will.” I know it is hard but you may also want to pray for the “other woman” that she follows God’s will as well. If your husband won’t see the light, maybe she will.
 
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