Need some advice, hope you can help!

[angela]

Okay, your post hit VERY close to home. Although our situations are not exactly alike, there are some similiar issues that I had to deal with (mostly trust). I am going to tell you part of MY story. I am no way, shape or form suggesting that this is the answer for you. My answer for you is to TRUST your Heavenly Father. I understand the trust issues with your H, I REALLY do - but with your current situation more trust needs to lie where it is appropriate, meaning with God and Christ and the Holy Ghost.

I wish that I had the time to go into my situation, but I don't at the moment and I am not sure I want it entirely out on this board just yet. (You can always send me a message, and I would be more than willing to go into more detail with you.) I will just say that my husband was a non-member. He wasn't only a nonmember, he had several problems that he was dealing with, and the major ones included pornography and fidelity. I know now without a doubt in my mind that the Spirit directed me to stay with my husband and try to help him with his problems. No doubt in my mind. To the world it seems absolutely STUPID. Even to most LDS people, it seems ridiculous to stay with a nonmember that had such problems. (My H and I eventually separated - HE chose to leave me... But that's another long story.) Anyway, I started to question over and over again if I had really felt the Spirit and if that is what kept me with him, or if my promptings were my own imagination. One night after he left me I was getting ready for bed. I usually leave BYU TV on in the background. I was having a bad night and I started to watch a talk, but decided by the title that it didn't apply to me. (It was about recovering from abuse.) Anyway, my baby woke up a few hours later to nurse and I turned the TV back on. That same talk was on and I reluctantly listened to it. It came to a part that I will never forget:

There’s a beautiful verse that many of you are familiar with in the book of Obadiah. You probably haven’t read that recently, but in Obadiah chapter one, verse 21, we read the following: “And saviors shall come up on mount Zion, and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.” So you’ve heard that phrase, “saviors on mount Zion.” It has much more than simply temple work and family history, as important as that is, because each of us in various ways are called upon, are asked to be, saviors on mount Zion.

A dear friend named Carlfred Broderick, a wonderful marriage and family therapist, a professor at USC, a former bishop, stake president, patriarch, most importantly father, husband, and even a guest on Johnny Carson from time to time, shared the following story: “The term ‘savior on mount Zion’ is ordinarily reserved for those engaged in vicarious work for the dead. But I believe that term might also be applied to another group of saints. These have been called to sacrifice for the sake of saving the living, often of their own household. I first began to think in these terms as a result of counseling to women who had hard life assignments. The first had convinced her boyfriend to join the Church and one year later to marry her in the temple. Unhappily, the conversion didn’t take and soon thereafter he returned to his worldly ways, which included all the minor vices and several of the major ones. They had children who seemed to elect their father’s lifestyle rather than their mother’s. I watched this good sister struggle with her rebellious family over the years, and I’m ashamed to admit that I had sometimes judged her harshly. For example, if she had asked my opinion, I could have told her before she married him that her husband-to-be was more committed to her than to the gospel. Also I felt that she had been overly permissive with her children; in short, I self-righteously judged that if she had made better choices--as I had, for example--her life would have turned out better, as mine had, for example. It eventually became necessary to excommunicate her husband, and in agony of spirit, she asked me, her stake president, for a blessing to guide her as to what her duty was under the circumstances. In that blessing I learned a few things that even now make me burn with shame for my earlier spiritual arrogance toward this sister. The Lord told her that she was a valiant spirit in the premortal existence who had volunteered for hazardous duty on earth. Not for her was the safety of a secure marriage to an equally valiant partner. Not for her was a relative ease of rearing naturally obedient children. In the blessing she was told that the Lord loved her husband and children despite their rebellious spirits, and if they were to have any chance at all, it would be because of her Christ-like patience and long-suffering with them. True to her promise, she is succeeding against all odds in her mission. To everyone’s surprise, her rowdy eldest son straightened out his life and went on a mission. He came back on fire with the Spirit and committed to the gospel. Her second son, who had often stated his intention of playing football instead of going on a mission, was helped by his older brother and has also completed a successful mission and is headed for the temple. Her daughters are slow to come around, but I began to see some softening there as well. Even her husband, the toughest of all, is beginning to mellow at the edges and to talk about putting his life in order. No action yet, but I am prepared to believe in miracles in this family.” So again a part of our call is to be saviors on mount Zion. That in no way denotes that we should endure abuse that comes to us. There are appropriate ways to handle these challenges that occur, but indeed to remember that the Lord in his infinite and perfect knowledge knows the answers to our questions and can guide as we face the various challenges that we do.

"That He May Succor His People": Healing from Abuse through the Power of the Atonement

My advice is to pray to your Heavenly Father. You need to do this with an open heart and mind. I don't know what your answer will be. You need to be prepared to accept to go whichever way you are led. If all you can pray for at first is for help to have a pure heart and an open spirit, then so be it. It will not work if you go in biased one way or the other. Without the advice of your HF, you may be led to go the way of the world. You may cause undue contention between you and your husband. Take it up with the Lord, and TRUST that he knows best. I was prompted at times to confront my H about certain issues, but I was ALWAYS guided to do so in a LOVING nonjudgemental way.

Heavenly Father knows what lies ahead of you on your journey. He knows what YOU need to develop your spirit and gain experience (even if those things cause pain and sorrow for a relatively short time when compared to eternity).

I hope that I got my message across like I intended to. It's late and I still have a 2 year old up distracting me. As I said before, I am not trying to sway you either way... Just giving you one side of a story.