As a young woman, like tens of thousands of other teen girls growing up immersed in 1990s purity culture, I told God I trusted Him to choose my spouse. I desired to give that aspect of my future to Someone who was wiser and more well-informed than my own heart.

When I married, two days after graduating from university, it seemed God had clearly answered my prayers. I’d submitted my rational, logical checklist to Him, and He had written in a name at the bottom. Innocently, I assumed following a neat and tidy formula would guarantee a fairy tale ending of happily ever after.

It didn’t.

Newlywed Betrayal Trauma

One year after the wedding, I discovered I’d unwittingly married a sex and porn addict. The next decade proved painful, destructive, and emotionally shattering as our family boomeranged around the cycles of compulsive entitled sexual behavior, denial, deception, and abuse. I learned more than I’d ever wanted to know about things like betrayal trauma, coercive control, gaslighting, manipulation, and the many ways that sexual entitlement can be more insidious and mind-bending than the most addictive substances such as cocaine or heroin.

I also learned just how much strength is buried deep in side a mother’s heart, when forced to make excruciating choices to keep your children safe, when you are faced with raising them in an abusive “normal” baseline versus starting over all alone in the middle of life.

For years, I wrestled with God over questions that seemed unanswerable.

If You loved me, how could You do this to me? I gave You my heart, and I asked You to keep it safe, and You handed me a dud. How could You let this happen, unless You simply don’t care? How could you apparently tell me to marry someone, knowing it would go so terribly sideways?

I never doubted God was capable of miracles.

For years, I had prayed for him. Waited. Hoped things would change. Pleaded for him to get professional help. Clung to every last shred of belief that this time the promises of transformation were real.

God was powerful. I didn’t question that. 
God could change things, certainly.

But WOULD He?

Did God actually want good things for me?
Did God carry me in His heart and cherish me with supernatural affection?
Did God care that my girlish desire to marry and be a missionary had exploded into ten thousand painful pieces?

“Do you believe God wants good things for you?”

That’s where my faith broke down. Sure, God has infinite capability. But my heart rebelled against the reality of His character. 

If God’s character was one of love, then He was supposed to care about what happened to me. And the evidence for that felt scarce.

I remember one tearful late night phone call with a friend, shortly after becoming a single mother. He pointedly asked, “Do you believe God wants good things for you?”

My mouth was frozen. 
Words would not come. 
I could not say it out loud, not even to repeat the words of someone else. 

In my heart, I no longer believed God wanted good things for me. The very idea sounded like some childish delusion. A farce.

Guilt enveloped me — I should know better.

I should believe.
I’m supposed to believe.
Yet I don’t.

I’m a generally rational, logical woman (just Google INTJ personality types!). But in this reality I not only saw intellectual absence of evidence that God cared for me, I also felt a deep emotional vacuum where it seemed God’s love should have been obvious — if it was true. 

I talked to my counselor about it, wrestled through the options before me. She reminded me that I was forgetting one key element…

Choice.
Human choice.

God governs on the moral tenet of free will.

God does not force. He does not require good choices, He merely asks for them. He does not insist upon transformation, he merely offers it. 

God never changes someone without their consent. The one thing tying His hands is our rejection of the process.

To experience total heart transformation, the person being changed must be willing to embrace humility, transparency, accountability, and restitution. Those rarely happen instantly or simultaneously, but if they're experiencing genuine heart change, those elements will be consistently growing. They'll keep choosing to consent to the gospel over and over in visible ways.

In other words, my years of life stolen by an addict weren’t God’s fault. It was simply the result of someone choosing self and addiction instead of God’s offer of freedom -- over, and over, and over again. Years of choosing to reject the purifying process of total heart transformation which could have rooted out his addiction permanently.

During the season that followed escape, the season of rebuilding from the ashes, God filled my emotional vacuum. He brought people into my life to demonstrate His caring and love in ways I couldn’t deny. He provided for the needs of my fragile little family as we found new footing. 

He protected us as we navigated the earth-shattering fallout of betrayal and deception even though I'd had no clue what was happening right under my nose.

Shard by shard, God reassembled my heart.

He filled in the cracked places and pieced together the brokenness into a brand new whole.

I learned to let go of shame that weighed me down from choices that hadn’t even been mine.

I learned to embrace the knowledge that I am cared for and loved, regardless of the destructive decisions others make.

I learned to accept that there might yet be happily ever after somewhere in my future, even though it wasn't likely to look anything like what I'd imagined as an innocent young girl.

During a deeper study about the biblical story of King Saul, I sensed God closing in the final gaps of my own doubt about His identity.

Usually, when we talk about the anointing of Old Testament kings, we think of David. But the story of Saul being anointed as the very first king actually has noticeably more detail and length than David’s.

Five full chapters in 1 Samuel outline Israel’s rebellious request for a human king, rejecting the governance by God in a theocracy. They wanted to be just like everyone else, not special, not unique. God told them it was a bad idea, but acquiesced to their request (free-will, anyone?) and designated a young man named Saul as the best candidate.

I’d forgotten just how many dramatic signs and symbols God provided, showing Saul was to be king. It was unmistakable. Unforgettable. Undeniable. No one could argue that any one else was the chosen one. There were too many miraculous prophecies and signs pointing to his chosenness. If any man ever had a list of reasons to humbly believe God had selected him for a special calling — it was the young King Saul.

So how exactly did Saul go from celebrated inaugural king of God’s people to ending his life story with so much jealousy, arrogance, spiritualism and corruption that the only solution was for him to be replaced?

Selfish Choices Can Destroy Divine Plans

It wasn’t that God made a mistake by anointing Saul.

It wasn’t that God should have chosen someone else, or that He failed to guide Saul effectively.

It wasn’t that Saul should have been forced to be a good king and remain humble, like he was when Samuel found and anointed him (1 Samuel 9:21).

Saul was free to make whatever choices he wanted. And over time, Saul’s choices proved increasingly toxic. Over and over again, he chose himself and his own aggrandizement instead of obedience to his calling. 

He indulged jealousy and hatred toward David’s battle prowess. 
He fixated on destroying personal enemies instead of leading God’s people wisely. 
He let pride and entitlement rule his decisions.

It wasn’t that God chose Saul mistakenly, it’s that Saul lost all respect for having been chosen. 

He decided he knew better than God, that his own wisdom was more reliable. Like when he decided sparing the richest Amalekite spoils for the purpose of sacrifice was a better idea than God’s direct instructions to destroy everything in sight (1 Samuel 15).

When Saul realized his poor decisions had created exposure and vulnerability — he cemented his rejection of God’s guidance in his leadership. Instead of turning to prayer with humility and asking God’s wisdom as Solomon did generations later, he sought answers from the occult (1 Samuel 28).

In essence, if God allowed Saul to continue in kingship without experiencing the full weight of consequences for his betrayal, corruption, and entitlement, God would have been divinely enabling Saul's evil actions. God gave years of repeated opportunities for Saul to change trajectory, until his egotistical self-absorption were so complete that the only option was to be deposed from kingship by death.

Evil Must Be Met With Consequences

Saul’s original state of divine chosenness never eliminated his ongoing freedom of choice. Just like every other man and woman, Saul's human choices ultimately received consequences.

It’s the same when a marriage goes sideways due to abuse, addiction, or other toxic behaviors.

God may give signs and show landmarks to guide our decisions, but He does not force anyone to continue living in kindness, honesty, and humility for a lifetime. We are each still free to choose self, addiction, pride, unbelief, shame, indulgence, and exploitation.

It took years of healing for this cognitive knowledge to shift from my head down into my heart. Years... to embrace the emotional healing of accepting that my survival through an abusive marriage, that my experience of being abandoned in exchange for sexual addiction and betrayal beyond the sacred vows of marriage — was never God’s desire or intention. Years to release the pent-up anguish against God for not overriding free will and forcing my story to turn out “happily ever after”.

But during those years, I realized that the promise of God leading two people together is not a guarantee of any fairy tale ending. Actually, there’s no guarantee of happy endings when two people choose each other without God, either. 

Regardless of how a relationship begins, we each write the middles and the endings through the little choices we make every single day. We write the happy ever (or never) after through the small, seemingly insignificant decisions that weave our shared fabric of truth or deception, trust or betrayal.

God doesn’t push ideal choices on us.
He doesn’t force good decisions. 
But he does make them available. 

He hopes we will take these available choices, and allow Him to weave something beautiful. Too often one partner or the other (and sometimes even both) gravitate toward the option of fastest thrill or greatest immediate gratification.

Happily ever after is a choice.

Some would argue that happily ever after is a fairy tale phenomenon. Something unattainable in real life, a dream existing only in made-up stories, the fluff of childhood naiveté.

I disagree.

Looking back on the reality that was, the life which could have been, the beautiful life ahead of me when I innocently said "I Do" at the tender age of 21 — I no longer doubt God’s character of love toward me. Now, I simply believe happily ever after is a choice.

A choice for two people to lean into each other as both lean toward God.

A choice to take notice of the small decisions every day that either build foundations of trust or walls of self-protection.

A choice laying the bedrock of all choices to follow — setting oneself aside in the service of those we love. Every day offers a fresh set of choices waiting to be made.

Fairy tales may not exist, but you can still choose happily ever after.

Or not…

All the choices are yours to make.

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