When things go wrong ~ you’ll find,

They keep on getting worse for some time;

But when things start going right,

They often go on getting better and better.

                                                         C S Lewis 

With one successful career ended, another successful career under scrutiny, the Reverend had work to go to that would not be impacted in any way by our circumstances.

This was both a good and bad thing, good because it kept us financially solvent, and able to sustain life, bad because the Grey One had long opportunities to disassociate to chat to and meet up with her.

She was the one he chose to confide in and would do so while he was at work.

When I learned that he was entrusting his grief and pain with her it was a bitter pill of rejection to swallow.

It is very difficult to think again about this period and what followed in the months to come. There are details i have never told anyone. I was very weak in the struggle against my own demons. For the moment it is suffice to say that i wanted to sleep but i didn’t want to wake up… Adrenalin pumped fiercely every waking hour.

The Reverend and I were readjusting to a colossal life change.

But we were not leaning on each other. 

Our children continued to ask subtle questions about their father’s morals. All I would say was that they needed to ask him those questions, not me. Of course my answer meant there were questions that needed answers.

He was speaking to and seeing the women, but he denied it, also denying that he was on any pornographic or dating websites.

Then the expected decision was made. My husbands credentials would be removed with immediate effect. He was no longer a Reverend.

He and I had given over three decades to a vocation and calling that we both loved, and have now lost following the exposure of a lifestyle of the Grey One’s sexual addictions.

He was still my precious husband, and father to our kids and papa to all the grandchildren.

He was also still lying to us.

He was slowly and gruellingly disqualifying himself from his family.

He was still the Grey One! His Grey grew even darker. It seemed he felt safer in the darkness with the elusive Grey identity than he did with honesty, because the truth would make him vulnerable.

Then I was asked the big question by one of my children. I was taken by surprise with the direct approach, there was no subtlety woven through their words.

Has dad ever been with anyone for sex who he had met online?

I could not lie; there was no skirting around the truth. No opportunity to blag my way out of this one. Even if I had not answered, apart from the fact my eyes welled up with tears, my face told the truth. Silence alone would have been an answer to such a direct question!

Of course my honest answer required more questions.

The dam was weak and history burst its banks of all the Grey One’s past, and more poignantly the very present ~ her.

Though I said I would never expose the Grey One, I could not lie for him. For the first time, I had done it. I had opened up my mouth. I was unprepared for this impossible position.

I could not lie to our children.

All the hidden mysteries behind the scenes of the Grey One’s unseen story were now exposed to his much loved children.

I had arranged to see my daughter the next morning. She knew instantly something had changed and that it wasn’t good news.

What a week for my family. They were loved and supported by their spouses as their relationship with their father fell apart. Relationships were at an all time low between them and their dad.

Little did we know things would still get far worse.

My parents had planned to visit for a few days the same week his children found out their father was living a double life on a far larger scale than they first knew. With him being involved in an affair with her for as long as he has.

This was a tricky week as it was… Then my parents arrived for a four day visit.

I didn’t want them to know anything unless they needed to. If my mum has an reason to worry to the point of robbing herself from sleep, she wouldn’t refuse the opportunity.

My puppy got lots of walks, so that I could talk to the family daily, they were devastated beyond words. There were no words that would put together the foundations that had just disintegrated from beneath their feet.

I don’t know if I fooled my parents, probably not! They were far too polite and appropriate not to meddle. I’m sure they sensed things weren’t okay…

… especially when events such as this happened.

We all went for a day out together. My parents, my daughter and her two youngest children and me. We drove past the car parking place where the Grey One parked his car each day near the train station. The grandchildren pointed out Papa’s car with excitement. We continued to enjoy the day out, when driving home a few hours later we drove past the same car park and my father noticed the car wasn’t there!!

My heart plummeted, my tummy rolled with familiar rotation at high speed, i was nauseous. His car should have been there for another two hours or more. It was only three in the afternoon; he wasn’t due home until five thirty.

Suspicion prompted me of the possible events. He jumped on the train at lunchtime, used his car to visit a hotel room or at least meet her, and then when he came back to the car park his space had been filled so he parked elsewhere. Then he hopped on the train back to work. A long lunch break yes, but he would have worked on the train journeys.

He may not have imagined us driving past the same place twice. It wouldn’t have dawned on him to even consider we might drive past there once.

Of all the weeks when the children discover their father’s affair, it becomes a reality to our daughter as she saw his car, then she saw his car had mysteriously gone!

My parent’s left. It was time to let the Grey One know that his children knew about his affair and all other sexual behaviours he has been caught up in. He was very angry with me.

He felt like he had been exposed all over again, sadly, he had.

Surely, i asked myself, he didn’t expect me to lie for him, when there had never been a reason to lie before.

There was never a situation that demanded I tell a direct lie to protect him. I could justify remaining silent, but I wouldn’t be able to justify speaking lies.

The exposure in August raised many questions.

Again – I hadn’t helped my husband by keeping his secrets. We were both so wrong, because now that I am not doing so, it’s as though I am betraying him.

The burden of enduring anxiety would rise and fall depending on how reliable his plans were in a day.

If I was with him, they were my best days, because if I was with him, that was my favourite place, right by his side, the only place i could find calm in the centre of unrelenting and unbearable turmoil.

She would regularly interrupt our times together with messages and photographs. There was some comfort in-between the moments of pain she caused, in that he was with me, it was me he saw last thing at night and first thing in the morning as we slept together.

He would never defend a lifestyle with such double standards for anyone else. How can he be so blind to think the rules are different for him?

As a young Reverend in his twenties, he was so shocked by the marriage of a woman in our congregation. He looked after her and cared for her while supporting her through a divorce.

She was a women in her sixties or seventies. Her husband had been involved in an affair with another women for many years, she lived not far from where he had lived with his wife. He was sleeping with his mistress every night, but going home to his wife, to get fed. This was his habit every day. The Reverend was outraged at his arrogance and the disrespect he showed his wife and daughter.

Now in 2016…

Though the circumstances are different, he has become that man.

He is today, and every day causing intolerable suffering and distress by his dishonour and disloyalties as we are forced to bare the betrayals of his abandonment and rejection of his marriage and family. 

I am so confused right now, as he is not an unkind or mean or rebellious person. I can only equate his behaviour with spiritual deception or blindness, or mental illness, such as depression.

If people pleasing to the point of recklessness was a mental illness, then we are all suffering this debilitating disease.

For many years my trust in the Reverends ability to defeat the Grey One and bring him to an end has been at rock bottom. He is still surrendering to the Grey One’s whims and fantasies. I have felt the loss of hope, and belief in him sifting his soul to sort out his morals for a very long time.

He is his most powerful enemy against himself.

One day i sincerely hope he will see that he alone holds the key to the first steps into his freedom and find the strength to turn the lock and walk away from the person he has become. only then can his family and his God intervene.

There is nothing anyone can do until he makes a choice to get out of the place that he made a choice to get into.

There is no handle on the other side of the trap door, he must turn it. Then cut the ties completely with everyone and everything that has kept him in the basement, in fantasy land. Only then will he be able to become the person he truly is  ~

Handsome Born of Fire and Gift of God ~ The One I deeply love and have lost… 

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