I was 22 years old, married for just over a year, when my mom said the words that opened my eyes. “That dog won’t hunt.” It’s a phrase my southern mom has used for years when the story being told doesn’t add up to truth in her powerfully discerning mind. Mom’s never been wrong when she utters that sentence. When I described to her the goings on in my marriage and she came back with those words, I knew she’d just declared what I hadn’t wanted to face. My husband was cheating.

I never considered that betrayal would enter my marriage. I suppose that was a bit naïve given the prevalence of betrayal in the marriages around me – my dad’s first marriage, two aunts, some cousins, several friends. Throughout my childhood, marriages around me kept falling apart due to adultery. Yet it simply didn’t occur to me to be on guard.

My world shattered that day. Everything I thought I knew to be true suddenly came into question. Who was I? Who was this God that would allow my life to get so off course? Who was this man whose last name I shared? Where was the future I’d so meticulously planned since my girlhood days? How would they respond at the megachurch for which I worked? What sentence could I say to my husband to put everything back the way it had been – if only in my mind? Could I forgive him? Stay married? I knew the Bible allowed for divorce in the case of adultery, but it doesn’t demand such. That left me with choices to make instead of a dictated path.

My dad is a marriage counselor – how’s that for irony? I spent hours on the phone with him, wrestling over what course of action to take. Just as suddenly as I’d decided to forgive and stay, though, my husband decided the future. In a phone call from his mom’s, he explained that he simply wasn’t “created for marriage” and had “made a big mistake.” He moved out on December 1 - my birthday.

For the next few weeks, I lived in a haze of disbelief. Questions and thoughts swirled through my mind like a southern twister in a thunderstorm. One kept coming to the forefront. How could one woman do this to another? I couldn’t wrap my mind around someone purposefully causing this much pain and confusion in another’s life. Weren’t we women supposed to stick together and help each other out?

Throughout my life, as others were hit by betrayal, I’d had an image of the “other woman” as manipulative, scheming, cheap, tawdry, and desperate. The entire Hollywood cliché formed my image of her. But I couldn’t reconcile that image with a woman my husband would be attracted to. And if that image was wrong, then what belonged in its place?

I read a lot, cried bucketloads, threw up my hands, journaled my heart out, and prayed even more and eventually picked up When Godly People do Ungodly Things by Beth Moore. Beth shared scripture which revealed that satan plots against each individual Christian. He’s fine if the ultimate demise he’s after takes years to accomplish. What else does he have to do but wait for his own defeat? And so he plots – he plans, step by step, how to pull a believer down into the muck and mire.