And so, one conversation, one flirty word led to an affair. That affair lasted two weeks and I ended it after two weeks, not because of some miraculous thing from God or that I found God or anything. It was that another man had approached me. That led to yet another affair. That one lasted two weeks as well. And my third and final affair was right after that one and that ended about a month later. What happened was, I didn’t have the confidence so maybe someone had advanced me but I never paid attention. Okay, do you see what I’m saying? What happened was that I became a personal trainer and I got in the best shape of my life. So I was having confidence in myself. I felt very confident in my skin. I felt very confident in the clothes I wore. I felt very confident for the first time in my life. So right after that, I mean right after that I started just (and I don’t want to say this because it sounds like I’m bragging but I’m just being honest) I started getting a lot of attention from men. The wrong kind of attention obviously but I started getting a lot of attention from men that I had never had before. It was overwhelming. I like to compare it to people like people in the ghetto. Okay, so if somebody grows up in the ghetto not having any money and now all of a sudden they are an NBA superstar and they have millions and millions of dollars, they weren’t taught how to deal with all of this money that they have all of a sudden received. So what do they do? They go and blow it and in five years they’re bankrupt because they don’t know how to handle it. So when this attention came to me, I didn’t know how to handle it. I was so overwhelmed with it that the devil just tempted me way more beyond than what I could handle.
So, here I am three affairs in three months and I was at the lowest place in my life that I had ever been, ever. I had so much guilt and shame covering me. Not just from the affairs but from everything that I had ever done in my life, which was a lot. Prior to this, I had attempted suicide with putting a gun to my head. But I didn’t know how to load the gun. So the Lord had other plans for me. I can see that now. I was in the car with my Mother-in-law in Madisonville Tennessee and I had asked her (because I was getting ready to attempt my next suicide a couple of days after this) so, I just turned to her and I said; “What can someone do to ever be forgiven for all the sins that they have done in their past?” I had had it. Though she didn’t know the situation, I knew she was somebody I could talk to. And she just said: “Shannon.” She said the most beautiful words. She said; “Shannon, you just have to surrender your life to the Lord.” I just said; “Lord, take this life, take this life I cannot do this anymore.” And, I unlocked my heart and He walked right in. At that moment, He changed my life forever.
The love that I have for my husband is so unexplainable. My husband and my marriage have flourished. We started a ministry. It’s called “The Resurrected Marriages” and we tell our testimony at various places, retreats, different churches, different classes and we try to talk to people about the pitfalls of marriage and what you can do to prevent things that happened to us. Prevent it from happening to them like this is what to do and this is what not to do. I have also started a ministry “Surrender Ministries for Women” I mentor women who have struggled in bondage, secrecy of adultery, abuse, addiction and I have gone to many venues and told my testimony. The result, the response I get from it is overwhelming of how many people are living in darkness and they don’t know how to get out of it. I have bad days just like everybody else does but I now have someone that I can go to, that I can lean on, that can take all that away from me and know that my identity is in Christ and not in anybody else, no man, no abuse, no anything. It’s all in Christ alone.
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