I lifted the phone out of my husband’s hands. He was so tired that he’d fallen asleep in bed while texting. I’d come home late from an out-of-town trip to find him in bed. As I went to plug in his phone for the night, I saw a conversation on the screen that took my breath away.

He had been texting a woman, and a quick glance through the texts indicated that there had been more than just a texting relationship. My husband had been unfaithful.

I wanted to throw up.

58548These are the beginning words of an article I wrote this month for Today’s Christian Woman magazine.  (If you click on the TCW graphic to the right, you can read the whole story about rebuilding trust when it’s been broken in marriage.)

Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes perseverance is needed.  Over the past three years of dealing with our son’s mental illness, the dark season in my marriage, and my own battle with breast cancer, Mandisa’s song “Overcomer” has become my own personal theme song.

I don’t know what you’re facing right now, but I would guess it’s something.  What I want you to know is that you have the power within you to rise above your circumstances.

One of my favorite scriptures is Romans 5:3-4:

… we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

Being a Christian doesn’t protect us from bad things happening, but it does promise us that we won’t have to walk through those hard things alone.  God gives us the strength to rise above.  As we rise above, we are matured in our faith.

If you need to rise above your circumstances…you’re not alone.

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