My story started in 2018 in my kitchen one morning after my husband had left for work. I was crying out to God and telling Him I didn’t think I could stay married to my husband for much longer. We had been married for five years at that time and had three very little children, not to mention faith in God since our childhood. Despite our happy looking family, I saw absolutely no way out of the fighting that was destroying the life we had built together.
Why was I crying out to God when I didn’t really believe that anything could change?
Never had I ever in a million years thought that my marriage would be the one sought out by divorce. But there I was with Ugly staring back at me. All I knew for certain is that I didn’t know what to do!
Crying out to God that morning was more out of pain and loss than it was out of hope that anything could change
I didn’t want my marriage to be what it was but had no idea where to start to change it. In all honesty, I had given up. God, in His goodness and grace, said, “No.” He started speaking life into the dry bones of my marriage that morning. I had no idea that they were very soon going to live again.
crying out to God brought his hard truth, then hope
“It is better for a man to live alone in an attic than to share a house with a quarrelsome wife,” were the words that rang in my spirit. I knew it was the Lord speaking. Instead of finding comfort in in Proverbs 21:9, I got mad. The one and only person in the entire world who knew exactly how I felt seemed to be against me too.
Didn’t God know that I was right in pretty much every fight that I had with my husband?
Didn’t He see that all I wanted was more out of my husband as a spiritual leader in our home? I sat down at my kitchen table and began to cry. A moment later the voice spoke again ever so quietly.
“I didn’t say that she was wrong…”
With Compassion, came accountability
Instantly I found comfort and looking back now I know I was too proud of a wife. Yes, the quarreling woman in Proverbs was indeed fighting with her husband. But here was God pointing out that maybe she too had good reasons for fighting with her husband. Maybe the reasons she fought with her husband were a lot like mine. Perhaps she was just too frustrated with her husband and maybe fighting was all she knew to do too. Maybe it wasn’t what she wanted.
God was setting the stage for my biggest revelation!
God, without a moment’s notice, pierced my heart a third time and stopped my justification dead in its tracks.
“There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end leads to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)
For the very first time in my marriage, I realized that I had been the wrong one. God was using His life-saving, brutal truth to do it. In only a few moments He brought me to realize that quarreling with my husband for whatever reason was the wrong way that would lead to death in my marriage. I thought to myself, filling with hope, if my way of fighting is the wrong way then that means that God has a way and it’s RIGHT! Maybe that means God’s way can even heal my marriage.
God whispered, “Yes, Danielle!”
With direction, came peace
Peace wrapped itself around me that morning and so began my journey. That next year was spent writing and living the truths found in The Quarreling Wife. So too was the foundation to A Woman of Virtue laid, and I’d like to believe that God had you and your marriage on His heart the whole time.
a good marriage can only be a byproduct of what God does in my own heart!
God changed my marriage, but it was only after He opened my eyes to my wrongdoing. He has changed my marriage but it is because of His goodness and the miracle He’s done in my heart. I say it all the time and I say it in my book, “A good marriage can only be a byproduct of what God does in my own heart.” I stand on that truth daily and while having myself and my marriage transformed, my husband has changed.
I just know the future of my children’s lives and future generations has too!