CHAPTER
4
HOSETTA: FOR BETTER OF WORSE
“…This people (my covenant people) honoureth
me with their lips, but their heart is
far from me…” (Mark 7:6 KJV).
*
Hosetta could hear the
vows she made, on her wedding day, “for
better or WORSE,” but she had no idea what the latter part would look like.
Just because she was
understanding about George’s addiction doesn’t mean she was prepared for how it
would affect her life or his.
She attempted to be
understanding because she loved her husband, but that doesn’t mean she
understood what being an addict meant for him, or for her or for their family,
or their future together.
For the first two
years, Hosetta kept George’s addiction locked inside her heart. She honestly
didn’t know what to do, what to think, or how to handle it.
She could no longer
handle the revelations or details of his addiction, he shared with her.
Eventually, she asked him not to tell her the details anymore.
When they were simply
friends it didn’t seem as bad, but now it was becoming TOO much. Now she was
his wife and the mother of his child.
They also shared the
same space now. And she was finding dirty magazines, sex movies, sex toys and
condoms all over the house. Once she’d caught him masturbating and it was
humiliating for him and her. She threw up in the bathroom.
She was the typical
co-dependent trying to control the addiction. In the beginning and in an
attempt to stop him, she threw away his pornography, watched him constantly to
see if he was flirting, and questioned him every time he left the house.
Her normally trusting
nature had taken a hike. She judged him. She was angry at him. She would ignore
him. She would stop speaking to him, regularly and she tried to keep her
distance all in an effort to make him stop.
George’s normally honest
nature had also taken a hike. He started to lie to her like he’d never done
before.
He also became
critical. His criticism made Hosetta feel bad and she was turned off about
hanging out with George any more. He was FULL of strife and absolutely NO FUN to spend time with.
The addiction was
changing them and changing their marital relationship. Arguing and constant strife
seemed to be a permanent visitor. And that “dang” chasm grew wider.
Hosetta wasn’t the
type, but the devil was busy, and she began to think of having an affair
herself. For a while, the thought of having an affair was a constant temptation
as a payback for what he was doing to her, but she never acted on it.
Hosetta couldn’t count
the number of times she thought about leaving George for good. But George
wasn’t her boyfriend or simply a friend. He was her husband. She had made her
vows to him and to God and she sincerely wanted to keep them.
Yes, Hosetta had made
her vows to George and to God. When her vows to George were weak, destroyed,
damaged, broken and became lost in the chasm, she fell upon the foundation of her vows
to God.
God had whispered in her
heart, before she married George, that “this” marriage was his will and George
would be the love of her life.
God’s ways are certainly
not the ways of humans and his thoughts are “nothing” like human thoughts either. As a
young woman, Hosetta was excited that her marriage to George was God’s will,
but she imagined it a lot different.
When her marriage to
George, became WORSE, she questioned God’s will. She imagined, because God had
ordained it, that theirs would be a marriage made in heaven and it was.
God was ALL in the
marriage, because the indwelling Holy
Spirit empowered her to be a witness, to her husband. She was a witness, to
George, as God's willing vessel. God worked "in" and "through" Hosetta to reveal his presence, his goodness, and his power by enabling her to exercise his kind of forgiveness,
Godly love, mercy, grace, longsuffering, unselfishness, humility, temperance,
and on and on; toward her wayward husband.
In addition, in order
to show all those “heavenly” traits Hosetta had to choose to allow the Holy
Spirit to equip her, with what she needed, in order to love George like HE loved
George and she did.
Thus, George became the
“love of her life” because she had
NEVER loved anyone like she was learning and being empowered to love George.
In the beginning,
however, Hosetta didn’t know what to do, or how to keep loving him, or who to
tell. George’s addiction wasn’t something you could discuss, even with your
BFF, over a cup of tea and a donut.
Deep inside Hosetta
knew she had to do something or else she was going to drive herself crazy,
trying to keep her family together by herself.
Being co-dependent is
very hurtful and Hosetta couldn’t SAVE George. It hurt too bad and she wasn’t
Jesus, who "was" the SAVIOR. It was too big of a responsibility to keep covering up the sexual
behavior that she hated, so George could keep his immaculate, ethical, and public
reputation.
Hosetta was tired of appearing
to be cheerful to their friends and family, with a broken heart. She could no
longer avoid conflicts with George, just so they could keep up their facade of
happy family.
George’s disrespect was
becoming constant. Hosetta found herself compromising her own standards about
phoniness and even blaming herself for their problems, which were really a
result of George’s choices.
Hosetta honestly felt,
at times, she had no options out of the nightmare their life had become.
Hosetta was normally an optimistic person and could find a rainbow in every
situation, but not this time.
Hosetta experienced
sadness and unhappiness like never before. She loss interest in the adventure
she called life. She began to neglect
her personal interests and church activities, she started eating sweets, she hardly
ever slept peacefully, she fleetingly mulled over suicidal thoughts, she experienced unusual mood
swings, she went through unfamiliar depressions. and she had feelings of
remorse about having married someone like George.
Hosetta even began to
feel undesirable as a woman. Her and George’s intimate life was a dementia memory. Hosetta also became reasonably concerned with the demonic spirits he might be
connecting with and the diseases he could catch, which he’d already had several
times. It disgusted her and she simply couldn’t get physical with him anymore.
Hosetta had every
reason and biblical grounds to leave George, but she didn’t. Hosetta knew this
for sure: God loved George and he had empowered her to love George too. George
was a wayward husband and an adulterer. In the book of Hosea, God's people were wayward and adulterous, but he loved them. anyway Hosetta was appreciative of God's kind of love, but honestly, she didn't necessarily want to experience it the way she was doing with George.
She also knew why God wanted
her to marry someone like George. God had told Hosetta he had called her to “know him” and he also said “...How can you know me unless you share in my
suffering?” He told her to read the book of Hosea, which told about a
wayward people and the wayward bride name Gomer.
Hosetta realized, after
reading the bible, that studying about God’s love is NOT the same as
experiencing that love or applying that love to real life. It was costing her
something to love George, but it had cost God, his son, to love mankind.
Hosetta had vowed to
love George “through sickness and health”
and “for better or worse.” Here she
was, in these pivotal moments of her life, challenged by her vows, challenged by her love for
George, and challenged by her devotion to God. What was she going to do? Who was she going to serve; her flesh or God's instructions? Choose, this day, Hosetta, who you will serve!
She choose to SERVE GOD! Listening to a talk
show, one morning, Hosetta learned there were Sex Addict Anonymous (SAA) groups.
She contacted one in their area, made an appointment, and her and George begin
to attend.
Hosetta went for a
whole year and listened to everyone else. One woman said: “...I tried to overlook what he was doing. I
thought maybe if I ignored it, it would simply go away and I wouldn’t be afraid
anymore or ashamed or worried. But the signs were all there... he was having
another affair. I did all the co-dependent things to make him stop. I threatened,
blamed myself, nagged, criticized, tried to be a better wife...nothing worked...”
Another woman said: “...I thought if I did whatever he wanted me to
do sexually, even if it was against my values, it would make him stop. I would
be enough for him. I guess deep inside I was afraid of losing him, afraid he
would be disappointed with me or something, but it has slowly began to dawn on
me that even if I was the Happy Hooker...he would still act out...”
Susan said: “...I have lived in constant fear that someone
will find out about what my husband was doing. I’ve stopped socializing with
people and recently it occurred to me, I no longer had any friends. I am often
consumed with feelings of isolation, loneliness and fear...”
Amanda said: “...my husband is so preoccupied with his
addiction that he neglects his other responsibilities. I find myself taking
over his duties just to keep up the family and the appearance of a normal life...”
Connie said: ...my husband had us on such a tight budget. I
couldn’t understand it. He had an excellent job. I found myself pinching
pennies just to scrape up enough money to buy a nineteen-dollar pair of tennis
shoes. Then I discovered Samson was buying his prostitutes silk and satin
nighties. I felt like killing him...”
Betty said: “... he molested two of our sons. He’d been
sexually abusing the oldest one for years, now he’s gay. I felt like a fool for
being so blind... and marrying him in the first place. I hate him...”
Hosetta never said a
single word about herself or what she felt. She had been attending, the group,
every week, on Tuesdays, for eighteen months when they asked her did she have
anything to share she shook her head. It had been months and week after week, and again and again, Hosetta said “no.”
Sex addicts were a real
sub-culture, but they were not the kind of people she thought they would be. She
had stereotyped them, in her mind, but realized they were varied and diverse.
There were no typical victims.
The victims of sexual
addiction could be anyone from the janitor working in a company to the
president of that same company. She was in a group with doctors, lawyers,
housewives, career women, business owners, local celebrities and most of them
lived in the suburbs, or an upper middle class neighborhood or even in the local mansions.
Their backgrounds
didn’t matter, nor where they came from, or what they did, or where they lived.
Their common ground was sexual addiction.
Hosetta, however, was
in the other group, that provided emotional support and guidance for people
involved with someone with a sex addiction.
Hosetta had to face the
cold reality that there was nothing she could do to help George. She also
learned she needed to first help herself.
It was likely that she
was making it possible for George to continue his behavior by covering for him
all the time. And in so many unhealthy ways she was sacrificing herself for
someone who was capable of making choices for his own sobriety.
After 18 months,
Hosetta could no longer hold it together and she broke down, crying, while
listening to one of the other wife’s experiences.
When she looked up,
twelve pairs of eyes were looking back at her. Her stomach churned and the
facilitator asked: “Hosetta...would you
like to share anything today?” Hosetta smiled and she could see how eager everyone
was to finally hear from her and to finally help her.
Hosetta hated to be put on the spot, but she found
herself saying: “Hi. My name…is Hosetta
Jarrett and I’m a co-dependent of a sex addict.” Hosetta really lost it then,
but Patricia, the facilitator squeezed her hand. She continued: “My husband’s addiction has literally turned our lives into a nightmare.
I feel afraid, lost, disappointed, and hurt that he’s not the man I believed
him to be when we first married. I didn’t sign up for this. I thought this
would be a marriage made in heaven, but now I’m filled with disabling shame to
be married to someone like George...”
Hosetta felt a weight lift
off her shoulders as the tears flowed freely down her face. It felt so good to
get it out, to have people understand where she’d been and maybe where she was
going.
These people were
walking or had walked in her shoes and they wanted to help her. She passed out
the other day, on her daily walk, and it scared her. The doctor said it was
stress and she was probably emotionally and mentally exhausted, especially
since her hair was falling out too.
But after, Hosetta
shared her feelings, for the first time in months, with the group, she felt she
was going to be okay.
Hosetta got good at
taking care of herself and the baby and keeping her hands off George’s
responsibility for his OWN sobriety.
She concentrated on
being the wife God’s indwelling Holy
Spirit was empowering her to become. She treated George with love, grace,
mercy, and undeserved respect.
Hosetta choose to
sustain her commitment to the marriage in obedience to God. However, she got
the impression George thought she was tolerating and condoning his behavior,
but she wasn’t.
She did, however,
decide to leave his sobriety to him. George acted as if his addiction was no
longer a problem, because she had backed off and was staying in her lane.
To her surprise, one
day, he told her he wanted to see a therapist about his personal resentments and
grudges, he had in his heart, against her.
George felt they needed
a referee, because she had done SO MANY things to hurt him and he needed to get
it off his chest.
She couldn’t believe it! He was still involved
in his sexual addiction, but he wanted to talk to a therapist about his
resentments against her and how she had hurt him.
Hosetta was concerned
about showing George God’s kind of love and grace, because she knew he would
take it the wrong way. God’s kind of loving grace meant that Hosetta didn’t
treat George according to his wrongs toward her, but with unconditional love.
Grace was the hardest
lesson to learn and the hardest to extend to another, especially someone like
George.
Hosetta was also
concerned about showing George God’s kind of loving mercy, because she knew he
would take that the wrong way too. God’s kind mercy meant that Hosetta didn’t
give George the kind of punishment he deserved as a wayward husband, but showed
him unconditional love instead.
Hosetta had explained
to him, on numerous occasions, that she loved him, but didn’t approve of his
behavior, nor was she simply tolerating it.
She was a Christian and
she was simply showing him God’s grace and mercy in hope that one day he would
become the man she knew he could be “in” Christ.
George had no clue, how
hard it was, to walk in God’s kind of love for a chronically adulterous husband.
Now he wanted to talk to a therapist as if they were in a NORMAL, marital relationship having issues. He didn’t want her to bring up his sexual
addiction, because he said it wasn’t the cause of ALL their problems.
George stopped seeing his
sexual addiction as the source and root of all their problems. As long as it
was there, the chasm remained, for her, and grew between them and even the greatest
therapist in the world couldn’t fix it.
Yet and still, Hosetta
relented and went with him, but she only went once. All George did was talk
about her, what she did to him, what she didn’t do for him, his resentment for
her, how she failed him as a wife, and a never-ending sea of complaints. George
was FREE to say whatever he wanted.
However, George told
her it wasn’t fair to bring up his sexual addiction, because they had other
problems that had nothing to do with his addiction.
Hosetta didn’t say a
word to the therapist and left the session swearing she would never go back
again. He could freely talk about her, but she was limited to what she could
say about him.
For her, his sexual
addiction, was at the root of it all. The fact that she couldn’t talk about it,
as part of improving their marriage, upset her. She hated his behavior and
blamed it for destroying their marriage. The chasm GREW.
They argued about what
he’d done in 1989, what she’d done in 1992, what he didn’t do in 1998 and what
she didn’t do in 2000. They both would whip out their list of wrongs they’d
felt the other had committed against them.
Nobody was listening,
or understanding, or giving in and nothing was being resolved. The chasm was too wide and they couldn't hear each other any more. It was like a
broken merry-go-round, that she didn’t want to ride anymore and her heart was
shouting...let me off...let me off!
His sexual addiction
was ALWAYS there between them rearing its ugly head. George was in denial about
it and professed he hadn’t done any more wrong to her than she had done to him.
When George would say
he’d done no more wrong to her than she’d done to him; she would feel convicted. Hosetta
was far from perfect and she had many flaws and imperfections as a person, a
mother, and a wife. She had done things to hurt him too.
Every time George
accused her, judged her, or complained about her, she felt convicted. She also felt as if she
had no right to say anything about his addiction any more.
It took a long time
before Hosetta realized it wasn’t the shared mistakes, failures, shortcomings,
weaknesses, and character flaws or imperfections that couples have, WITHIN the
safety and sanctity of marriage, that defiled the marriage, but adultery, which took place outside the marriage, WAS what defiled it.
Just because Hosetta had left his sobriety to
him, didn’t mean she wasn’t aware it was still there along with his chronic
adulterous ways.
She wondered whether
George was under the impression, because she rarely, if ever, bought it up any
more, that she was adapting and condoning his behavior. Whether he was aware of
it or not, George was NOT keeping his addiction and marriage separated.
No, George didn’t have
to deal with Hosetta, as much, as far as his sexual addiction was concerned. Hosetta,
however, had to deal with him - his addiction, and the transformation it was
making of him as a person, a husband, and a father - regularly.
George had changed and
no matter how hard he tried, he continued to display all of the classic
characteristics of a sex addict. Hosetta was STILL dealing with his addiction "through" his CONDUCT!
George was intimately
shallow, he was dishonest, he had a jaded attitude about love, he was
emotionally inept, he was self-deceived, he was restless and discontented, he
had depressive moods, he was prideful, he was stubborn, he spent nights away
from home, and he was narcissistically selfish.
There were a lot of
things said and done that had hurt them both. Hosetta remembered a time George
spilled out all his complaints against her and she listened, without defense.
Then she apologized for it all and promised, to the best of her ability, never
to hurt him like that again. George had tears in his eyes and said thank you.
That day, Hosetta had
to remind herself George was the “love” of her life and she was to love him
unconditionally like God had loved her.
If she was honest,
initially she thought George OWED her an apology not the other way around. BUT,
if she was to love like God, George didn’t owe her anything for the love she’d
shown to him. That’s why she stopped and listened without defense.
She wasn’t perfect and
she had made many mistakes too. Some of the things George said about her were
true and, in her heart, she tried to justify or defend them against the many
wrongs he’d done to her, but sin was sin.
If she merely told lies
and George committed murder, was her sin a lesser sin than his, not according
to the Holy Bible. God was not partial…sin was sin. It was a cold reality.
It was so easy to look
down her nose at him and judge him as a more sinful person than she was,
because of the things he’d done, but he wasn’t.
All her unkindnesses,
her nasty attitudes or remarks, her mistreatments, her judgements of George
revealed she was just as flawed as he was and it humbled her. So the day George
complained she listened and extended compassion and grace to his hurts.
Hosetta couldn’t just talk
about the love of God, she had to literally experience it, with George. She had
to APPLY God’s love, even when it hurt.
How many times, over
the years, did she forgive George or apologize to him. If she were to count the
times she had to forgive her husband it would add up to a lot of forgiveness, but
isn’t that what Christ had done for her.
Hosetta understood more
and more, first hand, why God said there is no greater love than HIS.
God’s kind of love had
required more of Hosetta than she had ever intended to demonstrate to another
human being.
George’s sexual
addiction had taken every drop she’d had and she couldn’t do it anymore. It was
God and only God’s indwelling Holy Spirit that could strengthen her, empower her, and enable her love
George, like God did.
God’s kind of love was
costly. It demanded a free will offering and sacrifice of oneself. Longsuffering
is a part of God’s love and it is longsuffering that becomes the one of the great challenges of walking by faith. It had for Hosetta, especially when she thought, at times, George
didn’t deserve it
Was she any better? Did she deserve God’s love more than George did? What is a
multitude of sin?
When people do as much
wrong and commit as many atrocities as George had, it is humanly impossible to
continue to love them apart from Christ. He had abused her heart too often. She wanted to WALK away, but God didn't. In spite of it all, God STILL loved George and he empowered her to do the same. Hosetta was his willing vessel!
Emotional abuse, of any
kind, was just as damaging as physical abuse. It gnawed and tore at a person’s
self-esteem, happiness, and well-being. George criticized her, judged her,
blamed her, accused her and kept himself, purposely, distant emotionally.
When she’d given all
she had, ran out of all her human resources .... she found herself going
forward ... empowered by the indwelling
fruit of love produced by the Holy Spirit. Hosetta began to understand more
and more how NOTHING could separate people from God's kind of love.
God is love. Love is
WHO God is all the time. God doesn’t change. His love NEVER changes and it
never stops or separates.
Hosetta was tempted to
separate her love from George on a regular basis. One day, in prayer, she’d
asked God why HE continues to love people who have offended him so horribly and
he said “... if I continue to love them,
beyond their faults, it gives them a chance to get it right with me...”
Truly, there is NO GREATER LOVE than God’s.
Hosetta knew, if it
wasn’t for God and his indwelling Holy
Spirit, she would have buried her marriage in a twenty foot grave, years before!
George remained very
ethical in “some” of his behaviors. She will admit, George used to apologize
too, but, after a while, he said he wasn’t going to apologize anymore, because
he was only going to do it again. George was ethical, but not righteous.
Hosetta didn’t always know there was a difference.
Nonetheless, all these
offenses, they accused each other of, became like tiny splinters in their souls.
And for Hosetta the chasm between them wedged those splinters deeper and deeper
into her heart until it was nearly destroyed.
For Hosetta, no matter
what they were fighting about, his addiction was in the midst, influencing and
orchestrating the width of the chasm.
The bible says sin
separates the relationship between God and his people Well George’s ongoing
practice of sin (sexual addiction) separated them. And the chasm thrived as it
grew wider and wider while precious years passed by.
George was, indeed, the
love of her love and it was no walk in the park. It was costly, and most of the
time, it didn’t feel good.
Together, they
attempted to weather life’s storms as normally as possible, but George’s sexual
addiction was a typhoon or tsunami which changed their lives, their
experiences, their characters, and disrupted whatever normal used to be to
them.
WORST WAS AS AWFUL AS YOU
CAN IMAGINE.
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