The "crisis" wasn't the first time I had been betrayed by someone I trusted. When I was a child I experienced sexual abuse by a close relative. I never dealt with the ramifications of that abuse until I reached my mid-twenties. Getting married quickly revealed intimacy issues and a host of other self-protective behaviors I had never associated with my abuse.
This baggage alone was enough to have to deal with. My reaction to the abuse was a deep shame that kept me from being physically intimate with my husband for a time. Counseling and working through some of that pain helped and a commitment to do the work that needed to be done.
I find it remarkable that God chose to put my husband and I together. Between my intimacy issues because of abuse and my husband's secret sexual addiction, we were not a good marriage arrangement by this world's standards. But God is sovereign and He knows what He is doing.
I continued to work on my abuse issues and found great insight in reading "A Wounded Heart" by Dr. Dan Allender. He put everything into perspective for me. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone that has been effected by childhood sexual abuse. It has the potential to be life changing.
I would be remiss in writing this blog without talking about childhood sexual abuse, especially since it had such a major influence on my life. This baggage meeting with my husband's addiction threw me straight into the arms of God. I don't know how I could have survived it any other way.
