Snuff The Candle

In the fall of 2007 I had been attending bible college majoring in worship arts full time with two part time jobs and a family to support. Christmas 2007 held an abundance of stress with a good friend and former bandmate being shot the week before finals. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t think straight. All I wanted to do was fly out to Denver and be there for my friend. I ended up Failing all but two of my courses and was kicked out of college. I kept my job as a construction worker and paid the bills and lived life day by day.
Tessa and I’s marriage was lacking. There was this rift between us that I couldn’t put my finger on, we weren’t close anymore, we just existed with no deep connection, like two empty bottles floating through a vast and empty sea. I started having very disturbing dreams of dark spirits talking to me and I would wake up calling out for Jesus to help me. And I would dream that Tessa was having affairs. This disturbed me so much that when I would dream that my whole day would be overcome with anxiety and apprehension. Slowly the dark dreams stopped happening so frequently but this dream of the affair kept coming night after night. It got to the point where I couldn’t take the thought of not knowing, I was too overcome with anxiety and stress over this dream.
One night in August of 2008 I was tossing and turning in my bed next to my wife thinking about this dream I’d been having. I had to have some peace of mind, it was driving me crazy. So I asked her if she had an affair.........”yes”. I felt like I was going to be sick, it couldn’t be true, this was just another dream. But it wasn’t a dream it was the truth, the sickening, heart wrenching, soul draining truth. I asked her who the man was and she told me a name I would have never guessed, a man who was someone I looked up to, someone who was a mentor to me in the past. She told me how sorry she was between her sobs and she begged me not to leave her, but I couldn’t stay there.
I left the house around midnight and drove over to a friends house and told him what had happened. I sat on his front porch and looked up at the full moon and asked “Why God, why would you allow this to happen?” I took off my wedding ring and put it down. I called and confronted the man who had betrayed me, said what I needed to say and sat in the darkness of a city park picnic table.
I didn’t know what to do, should I file for divorce? Should I try to work things out and risk having my heart torn out again? I didn’t have a clue what to do. I didn’t ask for this burden but suddenly I was in this powerful position that could change my life and the lives of those close by. I didn’t want to choose, What a horrible choice to have to make. “God what should I do?”
A couple days later while I was on break at work I randomly opened my bible to Ecclesiastes and read chapters 6, 7, 8, and when I reached verse 9 of chapter 9 I read “Enjoy Life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun-all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.” and then verse 12 reads “...as fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpected upon them.”
I had my answer, I was to stay with my wife, I was to love my wife as Christ loves the church. I was to forgive not only my wife but the man involved as well. Forgiving Tessa was a little easier because I could see how desperately she wanted to be forgiven and how sorry she was. But to forgive this man, I didn’t know if I could do that. I called him up and told him that I could never be his friend again but that I would forgive him. I did this out of obedience to what the bible teaches about forgiving others if we want to be forgiven by God, and I wanted this man to know that I was trying to forgive.
Sometimes I would feel forgiving and at that moment I was, but bitterness sneak