Caryn & Eric
Sauk Rapids, Minnesota, USA
Hi, I’m Caryn and Eric is my husband. Our marriage started to break down when our youngest daughter was going through a tough time mentally. About a year after we had conquered those family issues with our daughter, my husband started talking about us taking in our niece, who also had some mental health issues. I said no to my husband a hundred times. Life had evened out, things were pretty good, and there wasn’t much drama anymore. We brought her into our home eventually, and I now realize this was truly the beginning of the end of our marriage as I knew it. Unfortunately, our niece was a master manipulator and knew exactly what to say to convince me that she wanted to live with us and just wanted a “real” family and “real” rules. Things at home changed and got out of order, and needless to say, life became a mess. Eventually, I started talking to another man, and I know this part of our marriage breakdown was my fault, and I accept full responsibility for that decision. After several years, I asked my husband to leave, but I didn’t move forward with completely ending our marriage relationship; neither did I move forward into a solid relationship with the other man. Eric did not stop pursuing me. Until he did because he had started seeing someone from work, and it was getting serious. God still had plans for me. After I lost 30 pounds, while nearly starving myself to death and not sleeping for more than an hour a day, I was connected with a friend at church whose husband had left her. She was standing for her marriage. She had me over to her house, and I told her everything, and she told me everything. It was eye-opening, to say the least. I had lots of questions and didn’t want to give myself any false hope in this. The very next morning, I found myself at a red light that WOULD NOT CHANGE! If you know me, you know it is a miracle in itself that I didn’t just run that red light since there wasn’t a car in sight at 5 am, but I just sat there and listened to that little man inside the box on the red light that tells you when it is safe to walk across the street and when you should WAIT. I kid you not, God (represented by the little man inside the box) told me over and over and over again, “WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!“ for a solid 5 minutes! That is when I knew what to do and stood for 18 months. My husband Eric still kept in contact with me, and we even spent weekends away together. Eric told me on Valentine’s Day he was ready to get back together, and he moved home on my birthday in May, two days before our daughter’s wedding. We have been restored for 18 months. While we’ve had some rough patches, we are definitely not going to be separated ever again, and I’m grateful for God’s grace in our lives.”
