I’m writing about women who marry adulterers today because I’m watching Actor Timothy Busfield, Melissa Gilbert’s husband who is in front of a judge in a prison orange suit because he was accused of child sex abuse. Melissa Gilbert who played little Laura Ingalls Wilder on the series “Little House on the Prairie” is sitting behind her husband accused of child sexual abuse sobbing. How absolutely tragic. Prayers for her broken heart.
While I’m seeing Melissa sitting in the courtroom it made me recall three friends and relatives whose husbands committed adultery and how egregious the pain and suffering it caused.
Here are three women that went through it, that I went through it with them.
Beth was married to Michael for a lengthy period of time. Michael worked as a delivery man for Frito Lay and Beth managed an elementary school kitchen. They had a beautiful home in Surprise, Arizona and appeared happy until one day when Michael came home from somewhere and left his cell phone on the table opened. When Beth picked up his phone she saw little naked girls on the screen. She jumped in her car in her pajamas and called me. i drove to Safeway in Surprise to meet her, and she showed me the pictures on the phone. Beth was entirely beside herself and didn’t know what to do. She made Michael leave the home and they stayed separated for six months before she let him back home. She married a pedophile. She told him to get help. He never did. I don’t believe there is any help available that can cure pedophilia.
Dana, my friend is a very successful realtor in Phoenix, married to David who has a luxury flooring company. They have two homes. One is in New Mexico where they spend a lot of time. David would travel often for his work across the country. Dana was my friend from church and David was gone a lot. They have two beautiful sons. Somehow Dana found a telephone bill that had a number David was calling often in the state of Montana. He had done a massive flooring job for this rich widow he became involved with. It turned out David was involved with this wealthy woman for 18 years and Dana never knew it. Dana even found out the widow had a life insurance policy with David’s name on it. The story involves more of David’s adultery with another person too. Dana didn’t handle it well. She really loved David she said. She called crying one day and said she couldn’t make it financially without David and was fearful of losing everything. She was crushed.
My friend Grace caught her husband on their 13th wedding anniversary dinner at Red Lobster when her husband’s phone suddenly went off and he dashed without a word to the men’s room. When Grace knocked on the men’s room door after waiting forever for him to return to the table, she hears her husband saying to someone, “I miss you.” She ran in the men’s room and asked him, “who do you miss.” She grabbed his phone and took off in her car she said, leaving her husband behind. Her husband was having an affair with a man. Needless to say, Grace threw him out of their gorgeous home and never let him back in. She divorced him. They had been married for 13 years. She told me once she had a large phone bill from a phone sex company she fought with the company over, thinking it was fraud. It wasn’t. Her husband was a bisexual. She realized his secret on her wedding anniversary. How emotionally gut wrenching for her.
In the Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament, when a person committed adultery, God’s law commanded death by stoning. God knows His creation and the severity of injury to the victim caused by adultery. The crushing emotional pain on the victim and the breaking up of families torn apart by selfish sexual sin. There is no going back to trusting the man or woman who commits adultery; and the marriage is never the same. Sexual immorality, homosexuality, fornication and adultery are sins in violation of God’s laws created to protect us. They dishonor our own body and bring spiritual consequences. Exodus 20:14, Leviticus 20:10, Proverbs 6:32, Proverbs 5:3-5, etc.
Prayers for Melissa Gilbert and everyone who has or is experiencing the pain of betrayal, adultery.
Always Christian with love at Anne Fisher Foundation.