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In 1997 my husband and I signed on the internet for the first time. Motivated by an article I read concerning support groups on-line, I told my husband about a 12 step program called Friends of Bill W., as he expressed that he really wanted the felllowship of other newly sober people in his life without having to go to face-to-face meetings. Shortly after he joined the group, I noticed he seemed distant and told me he needed some time to actually meet some of the people to whom he began talking to on a daily basis. He left for a weekend retreat that turned into the begining of a nightmare for me. \ He came home and within three weeks I broke out with horribly painful sores that the doctor diagnosed as herpes simplex II. I of course was shocked, hurt, and did not know how to react. I had what I considered a very sound marriage, although we had worked through some feats in the past. With the catastrophe adultery causes a marriage, we seemingly could not shake this problem so soon after dealing with the alcoholism, I "thought" was a major issue in our marriage. My husband left after I requested he do so and after 7 months he begged me to take him back and I did. You see the woman my husband was seeing, had a husband in prison and he was about to be released. The story couldn't possibly get worse, or so I thought.I forgave him little by little, I had always heard that if we could not forgive others, God would not forgive us when the time came to be with HIM forever. After being home two years, I then found out that I had cervical cancer which resulted from exposure to HPV, a cancer causing virus. No children by my husband, and now this. I not only had to take medication for herpes on a regular basis and try to forget the affair, I have to look at a scar across my pelvic region because of the hysterectomy I had to have a little over a year ago. Yes, I am still working on forgiving. I actually tried to talk to the woman who gave 3 sexually transmitted diseases to my husband which he passed onto me, she refuses to talk to me. I thought that if I could just ask her WHY??, I might be able to go on. Believe it or not, her husband actually began talking to me about forgiveness. He has helped me more than anyone in this whole painful ordeal; afterall he and I were the "survivors," as he put it. I'm still working on the pain, still wish I could have had a child or two by my husband, but trust God to be the one to dictate what my life brings. I have grown so much spiritually and can only attribute it to a verse in Phillipians, I have "a peace that surpasses all understanding." I don't always feel it and I have to recharge my forgiveness ability each and every day!! But I wouldn't trade the person I have found inside myself for anything, I had no idea what I was capable of living with.
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