The most traumatic thing for me was discovering my ex husband was not the man I thought he was, and that he was engaged in unrepentent behavior that caused the death of our marriage. I think I will always have trust issues because of this, and don’t think I will ever fully trust anyone ever again.
This is much like mine. All the most traumatic things happened to me during and right after I converted to the Catholic Church!
My life was pretty peaceful before I decided to convert. I was very settled in my Evangelical Community. So the loss of that, and the rejection from that cherished community was quite painful and traumatic for me. Then a year of grace after my conversion, and then my marriage (which was not good, but I had learned to live with it) began to unravel, till it ended like yours, in deceit. And his guilt made him combative and accusatory, and he made up lies and stories about me, which was so shocking, so I had an awful divorce and custody battle, and that was all very traumatic. Also losing the home I loved and worked so hard for, and my financial security I had worked so hard for, and my place in society and identity in life as a wife and homescholing Mom.
It was very traumatic but I remember that I have my health, and my son has his, and that is a lot to be grateful for, but most of all I am so grateful to be Catholic. If i had to choose, I would choose to do it all over again if thats what it took to be Catholic…
I am grateful for Gods amazing plan in my life. That I became Catholic when I had no prior interest or desire to (in fact the opposite), and as I was perfectly happy in my Evangelical faith and happily a part of that community, I truly see God’s grace coming into my life. How good He is! I had the Mass and the rosary and confession and all His graces to get me through it all.
[Years before, as an Evangelical, my husband had some men from Church over for a meal before a hunt, and most of the talk was about that, but one sat thinking and asked, “How does one grow in holiness?” No one had an answer, but I knew that I had always wondered that, too. What a great puzzle it was! Somehow the Bible studies and Bible reading and Bible conferences, and Christina music and Christian radio and lots of church attendance* wasn’t enough. I wasn’t growing in holiness, not really, and I knew it. But how? It must be another one of those “who can know?” things that I had to resign to. But
God heard my inner plea to know, and then one day, in His Love, like a Father who wants His child to grow, and wants him to have his desires, He showed me: you need the graces of His Church to grow in holiness. Thats His ordinary way!]
I know that He saw my peaceful complacency in life, and He knew that I would need all the graces that He desires that we all have in order to get through the series of tramas that was ahead for me. And I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without those graces. I just don’t know. I am grateful everyday for how God has carried me through all of this. My life now is absent of the emotional stresses I lived with in my poor marraige, but now I have so many practical crisises that continually arise but I therefore must constasntly turn to Him in faith and trust. With all the security I had before, I did not do this so much. So its
all been vehicle of grace.
But Ailina I do think I can trust again. I am certainly more distrustful than i was, but understanding why my husband acted as he did (dispicably), through understanding something of his psychological makeup (or disorder, I should say) and of the fears that drive him, as well as understanding some of what happens to people when they say yes to the devil’s temptations, I have learned a lot. I don’t think i would make the same mistake again.
… (I think i am kidding 
).
God knows our hearts. 
). When i see how awful this world is, its a wonder we humans try so hard to hang onto our lives here… But i guess we need to until we are called…
). If that’s the case, it shows how important PRAYER is…