God, Interrupt Me If I’m Wrong
After 20 years of marriage and a devastating affair, I tried to decide whether to leave without first asking if it was God’s will.
I say the Lord’s Prayer every morning before I grab my cellphone or start my day. However, I have been avoiding one specific prayer.
Not because I don’t believe God can answer it. Not because I don’t trust Him. But because asking him this one prayer requires me to loosen my grip on a decision I already made.
I have been trying to get up the courage to lay the question of whether to stay in my marriage at God’s feet. I believe, wholeheartedly, in praying before making major decisions, in seeking His wisdom, His discernment, and what honors Him before deciding what to do.
I also have a history of what happens when I don’t. I have two near-catastrophic examples to be exact, marriages 1 and 2, where I moved ahead without Him. And in 2017, I made a promise to myself that I would put God first and seek His guidance before making life-altering decisions. I haven’t always been steadfast in that promise.
When it came to my current marriage, I made up my mind the moment I discovered the affair that it was over. I have never been a woman who tolerates cheating. Infidelity is something I abhor. I don’t even entertain it in the stories I read or watch unless the betrayed spouse comes out whole, healed, independent, and loved faithfully in the end.
Real life hasn’t made it any more acceptable to me. I’ve distanced myself from individuals who’ve engaged in adultery because I believe we have more control over those choices than we admit. The line doesn’t just get crossed. It gets approached, entertained, and then stepped over.
My hard stance didn’t come out of nowhere.
It was shaped early, rooted in an upbringing grounded more in the Old Testament than the New. To this day, I live by the Ten Commandments. And number seven is not ambiguous: “You shall not commit adultery.”
So, when I learned that my husband of 20 years, the last person I would have imagined and who knew my history, had been cheating on me, I was blindsided.
Then came the revelation that shifted it from painful to devastating.
It wasn’t a moment. It was 13 to 15 months. With his boss. A Catholic school principal. And for four months, he lied about her identity, telling me his affair partner had moved out of town.
That wasn’t confusion. That wasn’t weakness. That was strategy.
So, I made my decision.
But the more I sit with it, the more I realize my pain isn’t just about what he did. It’s about what it revealed.
How do I overcome deception that was sustained, calculated, and protected?
This was not a one-time lapse in judgment. He was living a double life for over a year. That is persistence, not impulsiveness.
The deliberate concealment. His position as an administrator. His willingness to cross boundaries in a space where parents place their trust
All of it forced me to confront truths about him that maybe I subconsciously overlooked:
He had a low regard for me, our marriage, and our covenant with God.
He demonstrated poor impulse control despite repeated opportunities to stop.
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He was comfortable living a double life, concealing prolonged infidelity and justifying it.
And, he did not come clean out of integrity and initially blamed me. He only confessed when confronted with evidence, forgetting my background as an investigative journalist. And even then, it was measured. In therapy, he revealed just enough to keep everything from collapsing. Enough to manage his image. Enough to preserve how others see him, because his actions contradict that image. To this day, he is hoping that I don’t tell anyone.
And his ability to cry on demand? Fuckin’ Oscar-worthy. (Forgive me God)
That kind of betrayal didn’t just break our marriage. It exposed his character in layers. It showed me how easily he can protect himself, rewrite the story, and delay the truth.
It didn’t just shatter my trust in him. It shook my trust in myself, my judgment, my instincts, my ability to discern what’s real.
Betrayal like that doesn’t just break a promise. It makes you question reality.
I have been sitting with this for months. Waiting. Trying to get my resources in order. Trying to decide when and how to tell my family so I can start divorce proceedings.
And all this time, I have just been asking God for discernment, because I already made up my mind. Discernment isn’t all encompassing.
That’s the part I am struggling with. I haven’t asked the harder prayer:
“God, does my decision to leave align with Your will?”
Not ask Him “bless what I’ve chosen.”
Not “help me execute my exit.”
But “interrupt me if I’m wrong.”
I’ve avoided that prayer because I already know what surrender requires.
It means being open to an answer I may not want to hear.
It means trusting that obedience to God is not the same as agreement with my pain.
It means acknowledging that I can be justified in my hurt and still need guidance in my next step.
So here I am.
Not unsure of what happened. Not confused about the weight of it. Not minimizing the betrayal.
But struggling to ask:
“God, help me know whether to stay, wait, or walk away, and give me strength to obey what You reveal.”
I thought writing this out would get me there. Unfortunately, I am still not there yet.
God help me!
Read more of my story and recovery essays on my blog at lizbleu.com.
