Things did not go well after this. There was a lot of screaming, yelling and crying on both sides. She broke up with me almost immediately after our conversation, saying that she didn’t want to ever see me again and there was no way I was ever going to have any sort of relationship with this child.
I had planned on going to see her that weekend. And even though she said she didn’t want me to come anymore, I went anyway. For some reason, she let me stay, and by the end of the weekend she said she wanted to try and make things work between us.
Needing a Miracle
Although I could see she had a desire to try, I could tell she was badly hurt and there was a lot of inner healing that needed to take place for her and I to ever be okay. I knew only a miracle could save us now. I also knew deep down I deserved no such miracle.What I did not know, and what I would learn much later from her, was that for most of her life, Jamie had been suicidal. She had told me once that she had tried to slit her wrists a few years back, but I had thought it was an isolated incident from when she was younger.
Jamie had a rough life growing up and had experienced a lot of pain from the way people had treated her, including bad relationships, and other things that she herself couldn’t manage to forgive herself for. I didn’t know this either at the time, but she was planning on killing herself once the baby was born and leaving it with a member of the family.
Jamie went on to tell me that a month before I told her that I had cheated on her, she’d had a dream about Jesus. In the dream they were in a long hallway and He was speaking to her, but she had no idea what he was saying. She couldn’t make it out, but she told me she had just remembered waking up with the most inexplicable sense of peace.
One day not too long after I had gone home to visit her, I received a call from Jamie, and I could barely understand her she was so excited. I asked her what was the matter, and she told me I would never believe what happened. She was at her desk that morning, organizing her files. Later she told me that normally during this time of day she would get depressed and think about what I had done. Yet for some reason this day was different.
A New Dream
She decided to pray for the girl I had committed the sin with, that this young girl might be saved. She identified with her in some ways and with times in her life when she had been the ‘other woman.’ She prayed this young girl would be saved from the misery that she was facing.As she began praying, she said that all of the sudden she was in the room from her dream. And again Jesus was speaking to her, but this time she could understand everything he was saying. She was in a big room and there was a large cross at one end. Beside the cross on either side she said she saw my sin and her sin in the shape of dark clouds. She noticed though that they were on the same level. And then she said that Jesus told her that he loved me in a way she never could. He said that really I had hurt him so much more than I had hurt her. And that he still forgave me.
Giving and Receiving Forgiveness
She told me she remembered standing there stunned, thinking to herself, “How could I not have forgiven him?” And through this revelation she told me she realized that because I had been forgiven, that she was as well. And as she realized this she saw her sin cloud drift away. She felt all of her hurt, pain, sorrow, and the sadness she had carried around with her for so long, lift off her shoulders all at once.She said she had never felt so light in her life, and all of the sudden she was filled with this intense joy and a desire to tell others about what had just happened to her. As the clouds lifted, Jesus took her to different times in her life when she had tried to kill herself . Except now each time she saw him in the room with her.
I asked her what he was doing in the room and she replied, “Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” I asked.
And she answered, “Waiting to stop me if I ever tried anything.”
Never the Same
Jamie was never the same after this. God changed her entire life and took away the pain she had known and lived with her whole life. He replaced the pain with a joy that is written all over her face.I had made a horrible mess of my life, and I had almost lost everything that was dear to my heart. But because I had decided to follow Jesus the rest of my life, he had blessed me and answered my prayers for Jamie and myself in a way I never thought possible.
I knew that it would take an act of God for her to ever be able to truly forgive me, and for things between us to be made right again. However, I had no idea of the immense scope and nature of what God had planned. After I gave the situation up to God, and said that I would follow him to the ends of the earth, even if it meant that Jamie and Rhianna wouldn’t be coming with me, God gave me back what I thought I had lost.
Now things were better than they ever were before. Today, because I have made this decision to follow Jesus, I have the most amazing family. I have a wife that loves Jesus as much as I do, and the most beautiful little girl you have ever seen.
Matthew 6:33
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (KJV)
