Waterfall: Don't Look Down

By Elizabeth Armstrong

Waterfall: Don't Look Down is not a step-by-step how-to book for marriage restoration. It's really just 66,000 words that could simply be summed up with, "Shut up and let me fix this. Love, God." Waterfall: Don't Look Down was written for the woman who just found out her husband cheated or the man who had to listen to his wife say, "I love you, but I'm not in love with you." Its purpose is to give biblical hope to the desperately lonely Christian who wants to stay in a broken marriage when the world says to run away. The Christian who has just been betrayed or abandoned needs to understand God hates divorce and his promise and plan is to heal broken homes. That person needs to know if they submit themselves and their marriage restoration to Jesus, it won't be easy. It may actually be almost impossible . . . almost! I'm a Christian woman who decided to allow Jesus to fix the mess my husband and I created in our marriage. Using journal entries I kept after finding out about my husband's affair, allows the reader a uniquely transparent view of the ugly journey to self-accountability, forgiveness, and marriage restoration. The journals also highlight non-fiction events where I was allowed to witness God's communication in ways that cannot be excused away as coincidental. I got to feel his presence, see his interventions, hear his voice, and witness his miracles. My only purpose in writing this book is to let hurting spouses know they have a choice. They can either allow Satan the opportunity to finish what they started by destroying their marriage, home, and family or give the whole mess over to Jesus and then just pray, shut up, and wait. Hurting Christians know Jesus is the answer, but they are desperately seeking someone to tell them the blessings are worth the pain and the wait. Waterfall: Don't Look Down can do just that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644714096

Book preview

No Wonder It All Went Wrong

That’s fine, if you want to pay for our wedding. That was the snarky remark I made to my grandma the morning she tried to convince me to avoid living with my boyfriend before we got married. I was twenty-seven years old and obviously paid no regard to the Christian opinion of the one woman who had prayed the hedge of protection around me every day for most of my life.

I accepted Jesus into my heart when I was ten years old. I excitedly made my way down the aisle of the Pleasant Hill First Baptist Church one Sunday morning in order to pray the prayer of salvation. I obediently followed Jesus in believer’s baptism a few months later. I was saved, and my life would be changed forever.

This is not a testimony of a kid who just routinely or randomly followed some friends down an aisle in order to do what was expected of them on a Sunday morning. No, I was saved. I loved Jesus, and my life proved it for many years. I became a teenager who many would say was the picture of the best kid on the planet to raise. I avoided alcohol, remained a virgin, worked hard, did well in school, and was even named best personality of my graduating class.

My parents had gone through a nasty divorce when I was eight. I lived with my dad; and by the time I was a teenager, I had not seen my mom in several years. My dad was not a Christian, nor did he attend church; so fortunately for me, my house was just down the street from the church I was at every time the doors were opened. I was there every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night, and Tuesday nights for visitation efforts. I knew my peace and contentment came from Jesus, and I sought him every day through Bible readings and prayer. I genuinely wanted to live for him, and I wanted him glorified in my life.

For most of my teenage years, my goal was to attend nursing school and become a missionary. I dreamed of serving God by being a health care provider in devastated areas to people who had never heard about Jesus.

The title of this chapter is No Wonder It All Went Wrong for reasons other than what you might expect. It was not the decision to live with my boyfriend before marriage that started the downhill spiral; it started way before then. It was the summer after high school graduation when Satan started the oh-so-sneaky deceptions to throw me off track. I made subtle and big decisions that would prevent my life from glorifying God for a very long time and cause me to walk away from the Jesus-glorifying dreams I had for so many years.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t go off the deep end. I didn’t turn to drugs, alcohol, or abusive relationships. I didn’t fall into depression or suffer from anxiety. Actually, I just went to college. I carried a full load of classes every semester, waited tables nearly full-time, had friends, had fun, and paid my way through school. I would definitely still be labeled by most as one of the good kids. Like I said earlier, this is the time when Satan introduced his sneaky deceptions and I was deceived.

My parent was not able to pay for me to go to school, and I didn’t qualify for any government assistance to attend state schools, so I ended up going to a private school where I could accomplish a college degree on my own efforts, not based on my parent’s income. At the time, this college seemed like my only option; so in late summer (with little if any prayer on the topic), I signed the papers and agreed to attend Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Missouri. Valley is a beautiful small school known for its country feel and amazing athletics, and I loved it there. My best friend Stef went with me, and I’m confident I can speak for her too. The four years we spent at Missouri Valley could be labeled as four of the best years of our lives.

So where did the spiral start? Where did Satan begin to get his grips in? When was I deceived to the point of everything going wrong? You see, the deception was in the subtleness. Satan was not able to take away my salvation, but that in no way swayed him from trying to take down my life on earth.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy: I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. (John 10:10)

Missouri Valley College didn’t have a nursing program at the time, so I settled on a major in mass communications. I didn’t love it, but it was a degree. Satan’s first goal was accomplished. I randomly landed on a college degree other than the one Jesus had laid on my heart years earlier. By settling, I allowed Satan to steal my dream of being a nurse and a missionary. I never became a raging alcoholic, I never smoked pot, and was not labeled a campus slut. However, I did let down my guard and attended college parties, drank occasionally (which, by the way, was way less than most of the girls doing the walk of shame every morning), and eventually sacrificed my gift of virginity. By believing Satan’s lies of, You are not nearly as bad as the rest of these girls, or It’s no big deal. You aren’t really doing anything wrong, he was able to kill my testimony, my morals, and my biblical standards for my life.

I always loved Jesus; that didn’t change. He was still my savior; but at this point in my life, he was not my Lord. I didn’t find a church in Marshall, I didn’t find a Christian group for young adults, I didn’t continue to read my Bible every day, and I sure didn’t ask Jesus to direct my paths. By being too busy, working too hard, having too much fun, and genuinely loving my life at Valley, Satan’s goal to destroy my walk with Jesus was well under way.

I graduated from college in May 1992 with a degree that proved to be somewhat worthless. Don’t get me wrong, I had the paper stating I accomplished four years of higher education; I even had a minor in business. Satan knew what he was doing when he enticed me to settle on degrees that when implemented in the real world would land me in nowhere jobs with little pay and in no way glorying to God. I ended up working entry-level jobs at TV stations and advertising agencies. I am a conservative Republican and always have been; therefore, I strongly believe every college graduate should pay their dues in entry-level jobs. The fight to the top in this competitive field seemed to be satisfying for everyone around me. I, however, hated the atmosphere and wanted out of this field from almost the time I walked in the door. The sixteen thousand dollars a year I was earning guaranteed I had to wait tables four to five times a week just to make ends meet and pay my rent.

I quickly started looking for a way out. At one point, I scheduled a meeting with the dean of St. Luke’s College of Nursing to see about bridging into their nursing school. They had a program that allowed someone with a four-year degree the opportunity to earn a BSN in nursing in just one year. This is the point I started to pray again for God to open up doors and allow me to backtrack and shift courses back to where God wanted me in the first place. It turned out the program required a forty-hour-a-week commitment to the nursing school with the recommendation that having an outside job would be nearly impossible. There was simply no way I could do that. I had college loans, a car payment, rent, and nowhere could I live for free while I was spending a year shifting gears.

Satan is sneaky. He knew I would get trapped, and that’s exactly what happened. The reality of my life’s stolen goods was starting to become obvious. I still, however, was not at a point in my Christian walk where I recognized that all things were possible through Christ. I didn’t get it. I was only twenty-three years old, and I could have easily just said at that point, Jesus, take everything back. I didn’t though. Instead, I still listened to Satan’s lies without even knowing what I was doing. I gave up on the idea of going back to nursing school instead of fully handing it over to Jesus and allowing him to work out the details.

I spent the next several years working in advertising. It was not all bad; in fact, a lot of it was fun. If it had been miserable all of the time, I would have been self-motivated to catapult myself into change. But since there was a lot of fun along the way, I became complacent. Yikes, complacency is exactly where Satan wanted me. I still did a lot of things with Stef; made some other friends too; had a nice apartment; managed to get myself into some stupid, unfulfilling relationships; and became self-sufficient through some financial struggles. I searched for adventure in things like skydiving and training for a marathon.

I spent seven months training for the 26.2-mile race I completed in October 1996. I got up every morning and ran six miles before work, four times a week. I did long runs and cross training on Sunday mornings with four other people. I spent the better part of a year eating perfectly and getting enough rest; I accepted soreness as a way of life, lost several toenails, was in excellent shape, and managed to use this training as a way to separate myself from the areas of my life that I so very much hated.

Please don’t misunderstand me. There is nothing wrong with skydiving and extreme physical training; in fact, I highly recommend both experiences to anyone who is looking for some adventure. However, once again, Satan was lying to me, and I was listening. I thought somehow, I would be fulfilled through adventure. I thought somehow, I would be fulfilled by running far enough, setting high-enough goals, working harder than the average Joe, and having a body that was strong and in shape. Those things are all good by themselves. In my life, however, my goals became my idols. I used them to fill a hole that was only set aside for Jesus. I could have run a hundred marathons, and that void never would have been filled.

Once I didn’t have a marathon to focus all my attention on, being at a job I hated became unbearable. Right before Christmas in 1996, my boss called me into her office to talk to me about my future. I found it a little odd because I had never had a bad review or been written up at work. I thought I was putting on a good face. It’s not like I walked around telling everyone how much I hated my job.

She started the conversation with, Don’t worry. You are not getting fired. She reiterated the facts I was always on time, did my work, had good reviews, and there was no reason to let me go. She said she had been watching me for a while and realized I was miserable in my job. She told me she hated her job too but was a single mom to a disabled child and was trapped in her position as the only breadwinner for her family. She told me I was too young to waste one more day at a job I hated. She told me she would write me a wonderful letter of recommendation and highly encouraged me to look for a different job where I might be happy.

I went back to my office/cubicle and thought about what she said. Here I was, a healthy twenty-six-year-old woman with nobody to take care of but myself, and I was convinced I was trapped. That was just another lie from Satan.

You would think at this point I would have said, Okay, Jesus, where do you want me? I didn’t, though. I realized I wasn’t trapped, but I didn’t realize I was being lied to by Satan. I just thought I had to make different plans, and I would be happy. I was relieved by the realization I only had myself to take care of; and compared to other people, this should be a breeze.

I ended up landing a job in a small newspaper close to my home in Pleasant Hill. I rented a house out in the country and got a side job as a waitress in a local diner. This was the ending to every Hallmark Channel Christmas movie ever made: girl goes to city, girl hates city, girl misses small town, girl moves back to small town and meets boy of her dreams—everyone lives happily ever after. That’s close, but one very important factor was missing: I still hadn’t surrendered my life to Jesus, and I had not allowed him to take control.

The change of address did not make up for the void in my heart; it also did not change the fact I was attracted to bad relationships. Instead of wasting time with city boys with whom I had nothing in common, I spent my time running around with country guys in my small hick town. I dated some that would end up being just a few more mistakes.

Stef moved back from Texas, where she had been living for the past five years. We were both back at home and enjoying country things like going to the lake, riding four-wheelers, bonfires, country dancing, concerts, county fairs, and just hanging out. I felt relief to be back at home, and it was definitely another fun time in our lives.

I randomly ran into Michael at a gas station in the spring of 1997. I actually knew him very well since we had gone to school together from first grade until graduation. We shared the exact same birthday, which gave us a strange sense of connection all through school. I sent him a birthday card on August 17 every year. It sounds arrogant to say, but Michael had a crush on me through high school. I never agreed to date him because he was smaller than me.

He also had a huge head of dark curly hair. I just couldn’t see myself dating the cute, funny little guy with the afro. So after graduation, our friendship ended. I went to college, and he got married.

Seeing him that day was like randomly running into a long-lost best friend. I didn’t want to leave the gas station because I knew when I did, I probably wouldn’t run into him again. He was cuter than he was in high school (which is saying a lot), was still funny, a little taller, and was not sporting an afro anymore. I did, however, know he was married, so I said my goodbyes and drove away.

It only took a week or two before a friend of a friend called and asked if I wanted to go riding back roads. I said yes; and within a few minutes of leaving town, he pulled into Michael’s driveway. He said, We have to pick up another person. Obviously, there had been some maneuvering on Michael’s part that I wasn’t aware of in order to get us together for our first unofficial date.

I thought something was strange. It seemed weird we just pulled into a driveway and picked up a married man to go riding back roads with two girls and another guy. Why on earth would his wife not care about that? Of course, that was the first question I asked. Michael just said, Oh, she moved out and lives with her boyfriend in another town.

Here it comes, one more lie from Satan: It’s okay if you pursue Michael because his wife left and cheated, so that makes this okay. And so our life together began.

Now, I’m sure it’s pretty obvious why this chapter was titled No Wonder It All Went Wrong. Michael was no doubt facing financial problems; any divorce presents that struggle. I was still working at the newspaper and waiting tables at the diner. Needless to say, neither one of us was well-off financially. After just a few months of dating, we decided to move in together. We knew we wanted to get married, and living together would give us the opportunity to save money in order to pay for a nice wedding. Satan was still lying, and I was still listening. He knew by starting off a marriage outside of God’s will, we would eventually face problems that would be sure to take us down. It took fourteen years, but that’s exactly what happened.

We spent many years in a happy marriage. We were going to church, we had Josey, and Michael turned his life over to Jesus after about five years of marriage. I had completed a master’s degree in counseling and worked as a school counselor in the school I graduated from. Life was simple and good.

There was still one very big problem: I still had never gotten on my knees and asked Jesus for forgiveness for how we started our marriage. We never fully handed our lives over to him, and I didn’t communicate with him every day through prayer and Bible study. Once again, I was complacent. This time, however, I was happy.

I heard one time, Satan is an imitator, and he will use the same tools to reel you in until you recognize those tools and ask Jesus to fight your battles for you.

Chapter 2

Homecoming Day

September 27, 2013. It’s not a coincidence Jesus used Homecoming Day of my daughter’s freshman year in high school as the specific place in time where he would launch us on an exhausting journey of exposing our sins, facing our destruction, trusting in him alone to rescue us, and eventually saving our marriage and bringing us back home again. On this particular day, Michael was home for the weekend. It was very difficult when he was home because he had become so distant to us, it was like having a visitor in the house for a few days. He was distracted all the time and actually had changed so drastically that he didn’t even look the same in photos.

Michael had left the house for a few minutes to go pick Josey up from a horse barn that was just around the corner from our house. He had taken his own cell phone with him but left his work phone on the fireplace mantle. I walked by his phone and didn’t really think much about it until I felt an overwhelming conviction to look through his calls and text messages. I looked through the phone, not really expecting to find anything.

I didn’t really think he was doing anything wrong. I thought he was having a midlife crisis or suffering from depression from being away from home all the time. I continued to look through all of his texts until I saw one that literally caused me to have to hold back vomiting. Some woman I had never seen before was sending my husband selfies and pictures of people having fun at the lake with captions like we miss you and when you know you have found your soul mate.

My first reaction was to just sit inside my closet. I don’t know why I did that—maybe because it was small, closed off, dark, and safe. It was a small space that would quickly become my prayer room, safe haven, a place I felt God’s presence. It became my war room, the place where