Sam Foreign.

Hello, friends.

Happy Monday.

Welcome to Fed by the Fruit.

I'm so happy that you're here.

I'm also so excited to have my friend Melissa Landon on the podcast today.

Welcome, Melissa.

Hi.

Thanks for having me.

Of course.

I'm really excited.

I think it's been actually really, really fun to have, you know, friends reaching out to me, like, hey, I want to share my testimony.

I think, you know, God gives us a story and he wants us to share it.

So I'm just really.

I'm really proud of you, number one, for being willing to share it and vulnerable and just real grateful that you're here.

I.

Well, thanks for having me.

I listened to.

I've listened to your advocate activate ones before, and when you switched over, I listened to the very first one and felt.

And I was walking.

Well, you'd be super proud of me.

I was getting my steps in.

I was listening to it.

And I felt very moved while you were talking that I reached out and texted you and I said, hey, I listened to your first.

If you'll have me, I would love to be on.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm sure somebody can relate to my story.

I think we can relate to all the stories in some way.

So I thought I was like, I just want to tell my story again.

I feel like I've told my story a lot, but every time I tell it, it reaches somebody different.

It does.

And that's.

That's the thing.

Like, again, God gives us these hard things that we go through in our lives, and if we don't share how he, you know, swooped in and saved us through all of it, then what was it for?

Yeah, I.

That's.

That is my.

Been.

One of my biggest things is everyone's like, oh, you're an oversharer.

That's so embarrassing.

People don't want to know.

People don't want to hear.

And I'm always like, then don't listen.

Right.

It's not.

It's not meant for you.

I've had lot.

Yeah.

Lots of, you know, the overshare thing was quite a bit for me.

But we can back up.

I can kind of back up.

Some of it is.

I'll go back to like 2019ish, give or take.

Was when we moved out to Nokesville and we were kind of restarting with our life.

We had.

I had two kids from a previous marriage and then we had one together.

And we were.

We were, you know, all too well.

We were trying to have another baby and it was very stressful and hard and lots of infertility, unexplained infertility.

And my package got delivered at your house.

I didn't know you from Adam, and I'm very.

This is gonna be very emotional for me just because I can see your face.

So I didn't know you.

I just.

In one of the Nokesville pages, you know, I was like, hey, I have Melissa Landon, whatever, blah, Blah's package.

And so to go.

It's mine.

I came over and got it.

We became friends.

We chatted a little bit in Messenger.

I started following you, your health stuff, all the different things, you know, that.

That you do.

And you were doing a lot of life coaching at the time.

And there was something in me that was, like.

At first, I was very jealous of you.

You're such a beautiful.

You were such a beautiful person.

You're very intimidating, but you get on and you're raw and you tell your story, and it was so relatable.

And I.

So I reached out and I said, I would love to do this coaching.

I've.

I'm going through some stuff.

And I felt very much that God was pushing me towards you, like, every day.

Your stuff was in my feed, and so I felt like just a need.

And we did, and we became good friends from it.

I learned a lot.

You helped me reconnect my walk with God in my faith, because it was very much.

I mean, we've.

I've been believers since.

I've been a believer since I was little.

Right.

We did the church.

We did the mission trip.

We did all this stuff growing up, but it had kind of lagged over the years, which I think happens not to everybody, but it happened to us.

Just different things in my life.

And anyway, so you helped me reconnect.

I was doing my journaling in the morning and starting every morning, you know, with God and talking to God in my faith, and I was trying to share that with my family.

And.

Anyways, so we'll fast forward a little bit.

And then the infertility really, really took a toll and took a hit on my husband and I and our marriage and our struggle.

And it was the pandemic, too.

And.

And constantly I would reach out to you, and you always had just great advice or a Bible verse or a book, or you would send, you know, your daily journals that have the dates on the top.

You would screenshot and send one of those and, like, highlight and be like, this is for you, friend.

This is for you.

And we walked and talked and I put all my.

You know, we put all my faith in God, and we did.

We had a little angel baby, and she's amazing, and she's.

She just turned three.

So.

What was that?

20.

Gosh.

2022.

Yep.

Right.

And so now we had this miracle baby that we had prayed for, and everything was great.

Until it wasn't.

Yeah.

And then the downfall of my marriage started, and I couldn't understand why.

Right.

We had prayed and prayed for this beautiful little baby, and we get this little baby, and now our marriage is falling apart and lack of communication and.

And alcohol and just.

It was terrible.

And again, Once again, I reached out to you, my friend, and, you know, we.

You helped me and you talked and gave guidance, and it proceeded to just get worse and worse.

Um, and it.

What was it?

Summertime of.

Of 2023.

So she was a little over a year old.

She was born 2022.

So by summer of 23, it was.

It was disastrous.

It was just.

There was not.

My marriage was destroyed, and all I could do at the time was point fingers and point blame.

And he did this, and he does this and then.

And he left.

And you very much.

You very much taught me that you have to dig deep in yourself.

Right?

There are two.

It's two.

Two people are married together.

It.

It.

It come.

You come together with God and falls apart.

And God was missing.

Was a big part of our marriage that was missing.

There was other factors.

Right.

There were other things that were wrong.

But it took me looking at myself, and I would pray constantly.

Like, I would pray to God, like, have him come home.

Let him see.

Let him see the errors of his ways.

Like, I was praying for all of the wrong things, but I couldn't see that.

So then I just started praying for, okay, this is now my situation.

This is where I'm at.

Give me the strength to, you know, raise children by myself, to keep a career by myself.

And then that wasn't working.

I was like, what is wrong?

And.

And then I switched my prayers again and I started praying for him and I started praying that he would find God and God would find him and help him through the struggles he was going through and the things that were going through his head, because I can only tell my side, right?

I mean, I can't tell.

Share what was going through his mind.

And I would pray that he would overcome the things that he was going through.

I'd pray that he could.

Would be the good father that I know he could, can be and could be.

That had been lacking because of the demons he was fighting in his head for loss of bitter words.

And I was praying for that and praying for that.

And in the midst of praying for that, I somehow was able to forgive him and see past.

So when he would come and see the kids, him and I were cordial.

We were no longer at our throat, at each other's throat.

And I remember, like, just like.

And he was like, one day I said something and he was like, oh, I can come over and see the girls after church.

And I was like, wait, what?

And I was like, this can't be.

And then I was mad.

Then I was, dare I say, mad at God, because that's terrible.

And I was like, why couldn't these things all happen before everything had gone down, right before the things had been said and things had been done and the moving out and the, you know.

Cause some things you can never take back, Leah.

Right.

Things that are said.

And then I was mad.

And then I was just, I.

To say you're mad at God is such a terrible thing to say, but I was just so upset because I was like, now here he is, you know, sobriety has come in and, you know, he's actively going to church, and when he comes here, we're able to interact with each other and there was no hateful, you know, hateful things to say.

And so then I pray and then I started praying again.

And there is a. I know the short version of the Bible verse, but it's Psalm 56, three for three, three through 11 or three through four.

And I say it in my brain over and over when, like, it could be anything.

When I'm afraid, I trust in you.

When I'm afraid, I trust in you is like the short version that I say.

But it's when I'm afraid, I put my trust in you and God whose word I praise.

In God I trust I shall not be afraid.

And this was something that I repeatedly, every night when I would go to bed or I was having a moment and I would say a prayer for my kids, you know, to get through what we were going through selfishly, for myself or for him, I would always just, I trust in you.

I, you know, you, you know how this is going to play out, you know how this is going to end.

And fast forward, we are.

Gosh, are we.

He's been.

He's been back a year and change.

We both have been sober for a year and change.

There's been a lot of forgiveness, which I never thought I could ever do.

I mean, always outside Looking in at other people's marriages when there was infidelities and hateful, you know, all stuff that had gone, I'm like, oh, gosh, no, that's terrible.

But I think because God had really helped me forgive, I forgave before I even thought that him and I were ever going to be able to reconcile a marriage.

And I was like, I'm going to have to forgive him.

I'm going to have to raise babies with him.

Like, we're going to have to be able to come together, united in some front.

So I really prayed for God to help me to just forgive the situation.

Not thinking there would ever be reconciliation between us or ever getting an apology or an explanation of why things had gone the way they had gone.

I'm rambling.

No, you're not.

You're sharing your story.

So anyways, I kind of got off tangent, but we.

When we were able to finally come back together, he.

A whole light, you know, a whole lifetime of terrible choices and actions was come to light for him.

And I'm not gonna tell his story.

I would love for him to tell his story.

I know he really wants to, but he's trying to figure out how and when he wants to do that.

And God is in the front of everything we do now.

Everything we do.

And I.

Sometimes I do pray.

I'm like, God, why did all of that go down the way it went down?

But I. I think deep down there was no other way.

Right.

My behavior was never going to stop.

My flaws that I was bringing to the table, that's the stuff he was bringing.

We were never going to be able.

Without it, you know, hitting the fan, imploding.

Yeah.

I don't think we would have ever been able to.

It would have just continue.

Would have imploded.

We were never going to see our own error.

We were never going to be able to come together as one.

I had a lot of growing and maturing to do.

I had kids from a prior marriage, and those kids always took precedence to him.

Like, I thought that's how that was supposed to go.

That's not.

For those that are listening, that's not.

Your spouse is supposed to always be your number one.

You guys come together and then your kids and then your life and then your work.

And that was something that we had never done before.

We didn't know how to do that.

Yes, we really reset our whole life.

We.

We just had to come to the conclusion that the old marriage was over and done.

Right.

I mean, we never legally got divorced.

We Were separated for a while, but that marriage was done.

That was.

That was.

It was great till it wasn't.

And we had that.

It ended.

We renewed our vows with Pastor Allen.

We.

We had new vows to each other.

We.

We actually bought new rings.

We got new rings we had in life.

They were blessed.

And we, we reset and started over and we put God in the front of everything we do.

We very much live our life differently than we did before.

Sobriety is.

Is one of the biggest things, but just as a whole, we both come together, you know, with the prayers with the kids, the prayers before dinner.

All the things that, like, we were doing separately but not together.

We.

We united.

And God has really, really just changed the whole.

Our whole atmosphere in our.

In our house is completely different.

Everything we do now is complete is completely different too.

I mean, when we would.

Him and I would go on vacations together, we would map out the bars.

We were gonna.

The bars.

Like, which bars are we gonna go to first?

What shows are we gonna see?

What are what sightsees?

And we would never leave the bars.

Now we, you know, we plan vacations and we went hiking on the last vacation and looked at waterfalls and, you know, the ones with him and I, the ones with the kids, I'm a huge Disney person.

We end up.

We end up seeing Mickey Mouse quite a bit.

But I, It.

It's just like we look back and there are still lots of fond memories of the, the prior marriage, right?

We.

We have children.

We have four children.

We've raised them together.

There's lots of that.

But it's just.

My kids are different.

My older two interact differently.

With him, we interact differently.

We just interact.

It's.

It's night and day difference.

And I thank God all the time.

It is hard work.

It is.

It is very hard because of some things that were done right that we still.

Not as much as.

As the days go by as the years.

Gosh, we're, you know, a year and a half in.

We don't think about all the bad.

And I know I've called you a few times and I'm like.

And you're like, nope, we're going this way.

We're looking forward.

We're no longer, you know, looking back.

So that's.

That's long winded.

There's.

I was just saying to someone yesterday, you know that how they say that the windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror for a reason.

Like, we're not going backwards, we're going forwards.

And so much that you said, like, you know, People, a lot of people can relate with being mad at God.

And, you know, he can handle it.

God can handle it.

He can handle all of our feelings.

He gave us those feelings to have and to feel.

And he can handle when you're upset.

And, you know, just ultimately, as long as you keep coming back to him in His Word, you will.

You will get to the truth.

And I just.

I mean, from the beginning of just us getting to know each other, and it's so crazy, too, because I wouldn't have even remembered that's how our story started had you not reminded me of the package that showed up at my house.

Right.

And that these are just things that, like, God will do in your life.

Like, he'll bring the people.

And that's something that's a prayer of mine all the time, like, bring the people who need to hear this exact podcast or this exact person.

And.

And God will do it.

And he'll do it even when you're not asking for it.

He'll find a way to manipulate everything to get you into a room or get you into contact with this one person that somehow can change your life and that he needs to use for you.

And, you know, gosh, so many things that you said, but the, the hierarchy of how God wants marriage to look like.

And like, if God is first and then our spouse and then our children.

And the water gets very murky when we've been divorced before.

And it's.

I always say this is why God hates divorce, because it was never meant to be like this.

We weren't supposed to be blending families and having step parents and all of these things that make a marriage really, really hard.

But.

But he still provides a way.

He still provides a way for us to, you know, get through those things.

And it always starts with him being number one.

And yes, marriage, our spouse is supposed to be number one.

But I think.

I don't know if you can relate to this, but I think for me, what I always did is I was trying to overcompensate for the fact that my children had divorced parents and they had to go back and forth, and I had to always put them first to, like, make up for my bad choices that led to their lives being where they were, were.

And what I couldn't really see is that their lives were great.

They were going through some things, right.

But their lives were really good.

And I actually just made it more difficult on them by always trying to overcompensate and do all these things.

And mine was I never let.

I Never let him.

I never let him.

Parents because I just.

The situation, you know, the divorce situation they came from was rough.

It was difficult.

Right.

We didn't like each other.

My cousin and I did not.

Like we get along now, but.

Because it's been a long time, but we didn't like each other.

And I really just wanted them to love Tyler and like, be.

You know, I wanted him to be their best friend and a father figure that they could trust and go to.

And I don't mean any ill towards my ex when I say that, but because they lived with us and I didn't.

I didn't realize that I was doing that.

Right.

I didn't realize I didn't allow him to punish them or I didn't allow him to have arguments with them.

I always stepped in.

And yes, like you said, overcompensate for.

For Ford and make it this big, great, wonderful, happy family.

And there are lots of those memories.

But I go to, like when.

When we gave Wyatt.

When Tyler gave Wyatt a truck.

And now, yes, we taught him how to drive, right?

We taught him how to drive.

But we get.

We literally gave a death trap to a 7, 16, 17 year old boy and he flipped it and he could have killed himself and his friend, and he didn't.

But instead of Tyler and I coming together to parent, we parented him separately because we just.

We had never done.

And that was a big.

That was during when all this started too, right?

Like, that was a big explosion.

And I, We.

I realized, like, oh, my gosh, we're not even on the same page parenting him.

And we failed Wyatt, right, As a.

As a teenage boy who almost killed himself and his friend by the grace of God.

Like, I mean, when you look at the truck and you look at the circumstances, him and his friends should never have walked away from that.

So that was, I feel like the beginning of God's like, hello in my eyes.

And it was very.

It was very much for all of us.

But it was also when Tyler and I realized, like, oh, my gosh, we're not on the same page with a lot of things.

Yeah.

And that's, you know, it took a lot of reflecting on myself and my bad behaviors and.

Why?

Because I come from, you know, divorced parents, which is fine.

I mean, but it's not fine.

But, you know, I mean, like, but I'm like, oh, gosh, like, I wonder if I think it stems from that.

And I.

And he.

I never meant to step on his toes, but like, like I said, reflecting was all of the things that I brought crummy to the table.

Realizing that we equally brought stuff that just, it was creating the perfect storm.

And we did.

We just allowed all these things to go down.

But yeah, my, my kids have in my brain.

Right?

Your kids are your number one.

Like why wouldn't your kids be your number one?

But the way the Bible teaches it and it's, it's absolutely.

You're raising them to go off and have their own family.

Right?

To go be something in life and then find a husband, find a wife and create a family and do all the things.

Not until you're left with your spouse.

And if you and your spouse aren't on the same page or it wasn't love.

We loved each other, but we just.

And we communicated terrible.

Everyone's like, marriage is so hard.

I do don't, I don't disagree.

But I think if my.

At least for me, I was always listening to him to rebuttal him.

I was never him to actually listen to what his complaint or what he was upset about or what is.

He was trying to express his feelings.

So that for us is different.

Right.

We now communicate better or you know, we might just be having a day and we're like, okay, I'm having a day and we don't, we just let it eat.

We don't try to argue or tell the other person that that's silly.

You shouldn't have a day because of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you know what?

I feel like I recognize that I've always done and I think that I feel like I didn't deserve this first Jonathan or this life that he has blessed me with.

And I think because of that my protective parts came out and what I decided was that I had to point out every flaw that he has because it would bring him down a little more to my level and it would make it so that I do deserve to be here or with him.

I'm, I'm.

He's just as bad as me or.

And it became this like self fulfilling prophecy.

Like all I did all day was look for his flaws or if he messed something.

I couldn't just let anything go.

I had to bring it up all the time.

Like I.

And I have to still catch myself from doing it.

Like I, it is, it is.

I recognize why.

But when I try to explain it to him because I've told him like, look, I feel like the reason I do this is because I've never felt like I deserve this.

And even having people over to my house, I don't I don't have people over here.

And I think it stems from I don't feel like I even deserve to live here sometimes.

Like, this doesn't feel like something I should get to have.

And so I've had to work through a lot of that.

And there's just so many things that people, you know, like you said, like initially I was jealous.

And it's like, I love that you admit that because that's like so many people feel that I feel that about other people.

And you know, it just can really get in the way of something really great.

You know, if you're just.

Social media kills it.

Right?

Social media is great for, for businesses.

But again, we should have left that on LinkedIn.

That's really argument because I can't say, see, you're fabulous when you go on vacation.

I would love to see your vacation or what you're eating or your kids or, you know, you, you, you have so many things that like, I follow and you like.

But I, I, I agree with you on the.

It's a jealous thing because we see what people put out, if that makes sense.

Right?

Like we put the fairy tale of the lives.

Sure.

My marriage crumble.

People are like, oh my gosh.

Because I was very open about it.

I was, you know, I, my podcast is not nearly as great as yours.

I do some videos and I did and I do some things and stuff, but I was very much like, I was, was half a contributor to the Fall of it.

And everyone was like, oh, no.

He was xyz.

And I said, oh no.

And they're like, well, look so great.

And I was like, well, because you're only putting the great out there for everybody to see, right?

People.

I don't.

And then because some people love to see the downfall.

I did have a lot of, you know, you, like, that's, it's, it's the pros and the cons.

But I, I was jealous of you.

Cause I was like, look at her and this fabulous life and the house.

I saw your house.

Your house is beautiful.

And then I got to know you and I was like, she's got this same struggles.

Different struggles, right?

But same struggles that everybody else has.

I, I mean, that's again, your story.

Everyone knows your story.

But I, I was, I was moved by you because I was like, I was such a terrible.

And you didn't even know it was in my head.

I'm like, oh my gosh, it's perfect little ball.

And like when you are one of the most loving Caring, genuine people.

I mean, you, you really are.

And following your, your, your walk and your story and, and now the switch of the podcast.

When I listened to the first one, I was so moved.

I'm like, oh, my gosh, that is so your calling.

The name is perfect.

What you're doing is perfect.

The stories that you're sharing are perfect.

I mean, I fully believe my package got delivered to your house on purpose because I was going down a path then with the fertility stuff, then with the separation and all of that, if I didn't.

I mean, I had a couple of friends, too, but especially you very.

Kept me very much like, God has a plan.

God has a purpose.

Stick with it.

Stick with your prayers, stick with your journaling.

Stick with, Stick with him.

And I did.

And it was hard.

And there were days where I was like, this does not make sense.

And now, you know, what are we in 20, 25, three years later?

Two.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh, my gosh.

Okay.

Well, I just love that you can, you're able to see, you know, hindsight's 20 20, they say, right?

So coming out of it, like, in the midst of all that, none of that could have made sense.

It was so painful for you.

I, I mean, I remember the laps we made around the pond, and you were just so broken and so sad.

And to think that, you know, I think sometimes we just think, well, if God's good, we're not going to go through hard things.

And the truth is the Bible tells us we will go through hard things, but there's purpose in our pain.

And you can see now, I mean, even just, you know, the alcohol, like, what an absolute blessing.

You guys weren't going to have a healthy, you know, forever marriage if just that, even, just that one thing continued, you know, and, like, for someone to try to be like, a mentally healthy human and have be altered by alcohol every day of their life or whatever, I don't, you know, don't claim to know, but, like, that's just a demon that had to be dealt with.

And what an amazing thing to show your children now.

Like, look, we don't, we don't need this for fun.

And I used to, I grew up thinking, like, if people don't drink, what do they do?

How boring.

Like, what the heck?

And now I haven't had a sip of alcohol since finding out about my heart stuff, and it's just like, you know, this is, I kind of love this.

Like, I, I, I love to have a clear mind.

And the Bible called, calls us to be sober minded.

Like it's one of those things that's culturally so accepted but it's very clear in the Bible that it's not okay.

It's so.

It's such poison too.

I mean, not to go down, you know, the sit on the soapbox.

Because I, you know, I loved to drink, I'll be very honest.

But I drank and I smoked and I acted a fool.

Yes.

Say inappropriate things and I, I would, I mean I had no shame.

I mean I would just say and do whatever and blame it on alcohol and lived that life and pandemic made it worse for us or two.

I mean I think it did for a lot of people.

We just, I just sat on my computer and you know, did loans and mortgages and drank all day 247 and as did he.

And we ignored real life.

And Yeah, I mean it's, it's funny too.

I don't miss it.

Someone said the other day, do you miss it?

I said look, I love a good Bloody Mary, but I can still have the bloody Mary.

Like it's the tomato juice and all the things in it.

Like I don't, I don't miss it at all.

And I kept asking him, I was like.

Because initially his was like I'm gonna go year sober just to prove he could do it.

And then as he kept going, he's like, yeah, no, I have no desire to, to, to do that.

And so here we are.

And it's.

And I mean thank God, thank God he took that desire from him.

Yeah, yeah.

I really, I mean really night and day difference with him, you know, with just God in general.

Like I would love for him to tell a story.

He really does need to tell a story and I think he will in due time but.

Cause he's the only one that can explain it.

I mean he's explained it to me.

We, you know, we've talked at nauseam of how our marriage got to where it got and how it ended up imploding.

And then like I said, by the grace of God somehow, because I was like never going to forgive him.

Like in my head I was just going to hate him forever.

I was never going to co parent.

I was never going to.

And then like one night in my prayers I switched, excuse me, and started praying for him.

And I was like this is ridiculous, but here we go.

And it was almost like a second I did that.

It's somewhere in my brain and I full believe the devil wanted me to hate him forever.

Wait was me in my head and Some days he's still there.

Like, I literally was driving on the other day, some song came on the road and I was like, oh, not today.

Satan literally didn't change it because I was like, had I listened to that song, it would have brought me back.

It would have sent me down the rabbit hole.

Then it would have just been a disaster.

And I, I, I, I switched it and I did my when I'm afraid I'll trust in you prayer.

And I was like, no, we're not, we're, we're looking forward.

I have a, I have a little thing that I do like that too.

And mine is always, holy spirit, control my thoughts.

Because sometimes when I start to spiral, I'm just like, holy spirit, control my thoughts.

I know this isn't what you want me thinking and this isn't where you want my mind to be, so just please control my thoughts.

And it stops it really, really quickly.

I use that little, that's like my little hack I use all the time when my mind starts to go somewhere I don't want it to go.

But do you have, like, what would you say to someone who was going through like, infidelity or their marriage falling apart?

Like, whether it's like what you do in the moment, in the pain of it all, or how you come to forgiveness?

Because I think that's a lot of people would look at your story just like you looked at other people's and thought, oh, no, I could never.

I think it does depend on this, the situation.

Right?

I mean, I can't speak.

I mean, again, I don't want to, I don't want, I don't want to go too far down.

I mean, obviously you can, you can guess what went down.

I do think it depends on the situation.

Uh, for me, I do believe that the, the quicker one can come to forgiveness, it's, and it's not for the other person.

Right?

I, I came to the forgiveness because I was very bitter about the situation.

I knew my faults, but I couldn't understand why it couldn't be fixed.

Why, why it was, why it was the way it was.

And I had to come to the conclusion that this was now my life.

And I had to get up every day and go to work.

I had to raise children, and I had to raise children in a non.

I hate to be pet of and use bitter, but I had to do it without any hateful thoughts or towards, towards him.

So more I was like, you know what?

This is my life.

This is the situation.

The quicker I was able to forgive for something.

An apology I was never going to get for action that never.

That didn't seem.

Were wrong.

Right.

This.

They were my fault, quote, unquote.

The quicker you can get to that, you'll have more peace.

Because I got there before.

Like I said, I never thought in a million years we would be able to reconcile that I would be able to forget things that were said and done and vice versa.

I mean, I. I said really cruel things along, you know, the six, eight months of the separation or however long it went.

But someone that's going through it.

I think that you have to find a way to forgive the betrayal and you have to do it for yourself.

And it really.

And then.

And some days.

And I would get a therapist.

Yeah.

Someone that can help you walk.

Walk through.

Walk through the thoughts in your head.

Um, but there were.

Especially in the beginning, there were times I had to forgive.

Several times, like again in my head.

And like, no, again.

You know, Satan loves to remind.

Loves to remind.

And I was like, we're not going there.

We're not doing that.

So that was when I came to a place of, this is it.

This is my life.

This is what we're doing.

We're moving forward this way.

I felt a sense of peace.

I know that sounds really weird, given it this situation, but.

Cause, I mean, I had little.

Little kids and he was going to be around for forever.

As much as I wanted him to just go away, that was not going to happen.

So that was how I was able to, at least in the beginning.

Right.

If you take the reconciliation, because a lot of people can't reconcile after infidelity and a marriage falls apart, that's just hard to do.

But we were able to.

We talked through it at nauseam.

He will say at nauseam.

We talked through and walked through it and how we got there and how we're going to get out of it and get out of it together.

And like I said, we put God first.

Yeah, we both did.

And we just reset and restarted and we just try.

It's more so me that will.

Well, not.

It's been a long time.

And even this conversation is great because I'm like, I don't have that feeling I had in the pit of my stomach.

Normally if I talk about it, I get.

I get that pit.

That feeling.

And like, I relive it.

Yep.

God's not letting me relive it.

I'm telling it to help other people, but it's not that same reliving it that it used to be.

Yeah.

So I think what I'm hearing you say is you just had to.

It's like radical acceptance of where you were.

You had to just accept where you were in life because nothing you could do could change it.

And then you just had to choose to forgive someone else's actions, even in the midst of deep, excruciating pain, to set yourself free.

Yeah.

Because you could see that you were just drowning in it until you chose.

And it really is.

It is a choice you have to make.

And I love that you said, I've had to make it more than once.

I've had to make that choice, same choice over and over.

And I will give your husband credit in that I know there were times that you needed to talk about it when the last thing he wanted to do was talk about it.

And you guys had to get into those really, really hard, like, into the mud and the muck of all of it when he felt for sure like, oh, no, do I have to do this again?

Because he knows he's having to come back to these bad decisions that he made that really hurt you.

And it was a very rock bottom for him too.

So he also didn't like to relive it.

Exactly.

Talk about it.

I'm reliving something that I wish I didn't do or I wish I could take back, or I wish we could have found a way to come together before it imploded.

And I very much am.

Like, I think.

And I'm thinking, right, because I don't know God.

I.

My assumption is that that was God's plan the entire time.

I know that sounds.

I feel like God wouldn't want, but I don't think there was any other way him or I were ever going to see.

Right.

The path that we were on was.

Was separate.

And I think at some point it was going to implode.

And it.

And it did.

Yeah.

And it's.

I don't know, It's.

It's crazy.

It's, it's.

It reminds me of my story.

Like, he used a really hard thing to save your life, to save your marriage.

You know, to save.

To save it.

He had to break it all down.

And my kids have such a better relationship now with their stepfather.

I mean, they, you know, because it was.

Alcohol was such a huge part here too, in the house.

And like now, like, they can see, like, what it did.

What.

You know, and they said the night and day difference is a night and day difference.

I mean, they have such great relationships now that they weren't Having before.

So I mean, it's unfortunate and.

But yeah, I think you just have to.

And you.

And this is one piece of advice I do is you can forgive it, right?

You.

You have to forgive it sometimes multiple times.

You.

For you'll forgive it.

You don't ever really forget it, if that makes sense.

It's there.

You lived it.

It's a part of your life.

But if you decide to forgive it and you're going to move forward other than the initial, there were questions that I annoyingly had to have answered.

Yeah.

And so he begrudgingly answered.

We, you know, like I said, talked about everything at nauseam and the ones that is was okay then that was it.

If I, I had to really come to God and be like, okay, I got my answers.

I really, I need help forgiving and quote unquote forgetting, if that makes sense.

Like, you never really technically forget.

But I don't need the constant reminder.

We're really trying to rebuild.

And so it was a constant with God, like, okay, we, we're going to do this.

We're doing this with you.

I need your help to continue to move forward and rebuild our marriage and rebuild our life and show these kids love and show these kids God.

Because my, My kids came from broken and I didn't want them to have broken again.

And so.

Yeah.

So once you've make the decision that that's what you're going to do, you, you.

You can't go backwards.

Right?

Exactly.

And I just do want to just acknowledge like how many times then I would start to see you at church and like, all of you, like your family, you were coming, your.

The girls, everybody's coming to church together.

You know, Tyler would come to church when you were gone.

When you were gone for a weekend, we would see him sitting in church.

And it just, you could tell like that someone who.

That's a family who is really taking this seriously and who cares to.

For their lives to be different going forward and to have God at the center of it.

And it just like, I know that, you know, Alan and people in the church rallied around you guys and that was, I'm sure, very helpful.

And I think that having a church family, especially when you go through something like this, is so, so important because it was.

I started going, I was going somewhere else and then you were like, come and do you remember the very first service that I brought you that you brought me to?

Yes, I do.

My eyes out.

Because he was talking about love and marriage and I was like, what did you do?

Like, I do remember I went to.

Several by myself, and then him and I started reconciling, and I was like, he's going to come.

And then he came, and then now, yeah, we're part of the family.

Like, he's good friends with Pastor Allen.

And as Don, we donate music.

We he music equipment.

And we're active now.

Volleyball takes us away a lot on weekends, but we watch online.

We're there, we're active.

We did the chili cook off.

Like, it's, It's.

It's.

It's great.

We.

I don't know.

Like I said, it's.

It's just been.

It's been a wild ride.

And it.

I just continuing.

Every morning when I open my eyes, I thank God for.

For the life, for the forgiveness.

Some people ask, how'd you do it?

And I'm like, God, sobriety and forgiveness.

Those are the three.

Repeat on repeat.

Yeah, and.

And I don't.

It's.

I don't know.

Like, I just.

Knowing.

Knowing that you can't do any of it in your own strength, you know, like, if you had tried to do all of that in your own strength, if you had thought, like, oh, I can just forgive.

My flesh can just forgive.

No.

Yeah, it's.

It's.

It's darn near impossible to do without God.

And like, you mentioned, peace that made no sense.

Well, that's literally what he does.

Peace that surpasses understanding.

Like, you think that you can never get to a place of peace from a circumstance.

And like, same with me.

And somehow I could be laying in my bed at night not knowing if I was going to live or die and see my children grow.

And yet there was this peace around me.

I could go to sleep and feel like I was literally sleeping in the arms of Jesus.

And it's like, man, thank God.

I love when you say that, too.

Oh, man.

So.

He's so good.

So.

Well, this was amazing.

I think you're right.

So many people are going to be able to relate.

Unfortunately, a lot of people go through a similar, you know, marriage is.

It's not easy.

But he never said it's going to be easy.

So stop thinking it's supposed to be easy and, you know, like, do the work.

And that's also a part of, like, maybe if you can see areas in your own marriage where, like, oh, we're sliding here a little, or we seem to have a lot of conflict around this thing, or, you know, we are drinking or, you know, whatever it is, like, start to get a handle on Those things as soon as you start to recognize them, because they'll just get away from you so quickly.

Life is, you know, life is busy.

We have.

We're.

We're bad.

We'll do really well at the date nights or the, you know, trying once a quarter to get away.

I mean, we have four kids, so it's crazy.

We both work full time, and that's wild.

But we.

I also have noticed when we don't make time for just each other, we get on each other's nerves 100.

It makes no sense, right?

You're like, I'm asking you to spend time, but we don't spend the quality time and, you know, go other than sitting scrolling on our phones, watching tv.

Yes.

This is so relatable.

We watched the majority of our shows, which is.

Which is crazy.

But spending the time together, bringing the family together and, you know, we lost a lot of friends through all this, and that's okay.

Yeah.

And our little family is really.

We decide that's all we really need.

Right.

We have.

God, our little family and.

And that this.

We're okay with it.

But it is hard.

But embrace the hard.

I mean, absolutely.

If you're not gonna.

I mean, if you don't embrace the suck.

I mean, sometimes that's all there is.

Right?

And I think too, like, just on that last note, to your point, spending time with your spouse, away from your children and away from your home, because for us, no matter what it is, we can spend time together in our house.

But it.

I do not get the connection that I get when we take the time to actually go away for the weekend or even.

I was about ready to murder Jonathan last Saturday.

Friday.

Last Friday.

Like, I was just mad at his existence.

And he's like, oh, man, this is bad.

And I'm like, yeah, it's bad.

And we.

He begrudgingly.

I got in the car with him to go to the gym in the morning, and I.

He goes, okay, I can see that you're not going to work out with me, so see you at the end of the workout.

And I was like, yes, do not speak to me.

He hadn't done anything wrong.

We just were so disconnected.

And all we did.

We did a workout separately.

And then we went to Tremors and had a cup of coffee, and then we went to a bagel place and had a bagel sandwich.

And by the time we were done, I couldn't have loved him more.

I was a completely different person.

And the rest of the day was wonderful.

Just from spending an hour of like real time together away from your children, away from your home and all the things around you that need to be done or all the distractions.

And he just said to me the other morning, oh, boy, I need to take you somewhere.

I said, yes, we need to go somewhere.

It's just the most important thing for.

Us, time together that not the intimate that we all think exactly.

Is like, you need to do that or, you know, like you said, go, go away.

We go away all the time.

But we're in volleyball tournaments.

Right, Right.

Not the same Littles.

We're cheering on Sydney.

We're doing.

We're doing stuff or work trips.

And so, I mean, again, it doesn't have to be a lavish way.

But yeah, like you said, even just a coffee and a bagel and just some.

How are you?

It changed everything, which is so silly.

You would not think that.

And I don't even know who would want to go to coffee and a bagel with me, the way I was acting.

But thank God he's patient and we went and then he.

To have the wife that he knows and loves, you know, for the rest of the weekend.

I'm working on it, Lord, I'm working on it.

Well, okay.

The last thing I always ask my guests to share either a favorite Bible verse or a book that you've read recently that you could recommend.

So one of those two.

Oh, I don't necessarily have a favorite Bible verse, which I should.

I don't.

I like.

Well, you shared a great one.

Yeah.

The one I'm afraid I trust in you.

That's the version I say in my head if I.

It doesn't matter what.

So powerful.

Yeah.

It calms me.

I used to have panic attacks when I was younger and they tried to medicate me and I was like, I don't want to do any of that.

So that's the mantra I say over and over if anything's going awry.

And the most recent book that wasn't Mortgage Related Theory by Mel Robbins.

Okay.

And I enjoyed it.

I think it.

I think you can take parts of it for.

For me, it was.

I.

Well, I use it for business aspects and I also use it in personal.

Just because when we decided we were going to reconnect, we did lose friends because friends wanted to be a friend.

I don't know.

I think a lot of them were just here for the tea.

They just want to know the drama that my friend.

But very much just let them.

Right.

Because we.

We stopped getting invited to things.

They were doing stuff and One of her.

Her theories is let them.

Let them not invite you.

Let them think you're oversharing.

Let them.

But the two parted.

Then let me.

Right.

You're only responsible for your own behavior and your action.

So for me I'm a very much.

If.

If you make me mad I'm going to just word vomit and say things I can't take back.

So hers has really helped me control my own personal thoughts of let them do that.

Because a lot of times whatever I'm concocting in my head of why is has nothing to do.

Right.

Like they didn't so and then yeah so the let them theory because it's like them let me.

So it's really more so how you can control your thoughts, your day to day process.

Starting your morning.

She goes through lots of it in the book it's not just about let them but even putting your phone down right.

Don't look at your phone first thing in the morning, get up, think of whatever your mantra is, whatever your powerful statement.

I was just thank God that he opened my eyes.

Amen.

Yeah.

I have another day with my children and, and life and so yeah other than that and then mortgage books but no one cares about that.

Some people do.

Some people do.

Okay and then tell us where can people find you and the name of your podcast.

Oh so you can find me all over social media.

Melissa Landon.

I'm also a licensed mortgage loan officer, so you can find that.

I'm at Sarah CMG Home Loans and I recently I took all of this trauma drama and I created an own, my own little podcast video series.

I initially had started it which is very much me on it, talking, sharing.

I shared a lot about this and then this past year we've turned it a little bit and and I now have a producer.

Sounds so crazy to say.

And legit content stuff for me.

And we talk.

I interview lots of different people.

It's called Rate the Dream Life, Love and mortgages.

We talk about moving.

We did a military appreciation month.

Right now we're doing a moving series where I've interviewed a moving company, a interior designer, a stager, all things.

Most of it's housing related, life related, love related.

We go over all kinds of fun things.

I love it.

Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story.

I love you so much.

And if you didn't know, Kristen has a timer on her phone where she prays for me and I've never had a friend do that.

2Pm 2pm Pray for Melissa.

Melissa.

Yes.

All right everybody.

Happy Monday.

Thanks for being here.

Later.

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