This text is addressed to readers with a certain spiritual awareness and elevation. I admit that it is not suited to everyone, and its content may seem troubling to some souls. The article is therefore intended for a forewarned readership, as it may offend certain sensibilities. May each person receive it with discernment.
This first story explores a troubling paradox:
a body that flourishes in sin but wastes away in virtue.
Between desire and faith, between vitality and guilt, it brings to light a health that lights up in the forbidden, but goes out when faith takes its place again.
Last week, a woman confided in me in these terms:
“I am a married woman. I have three children with my husband. We live in a house in Ontario and I am grateful for everything we have. We have a comfortable life.
Lately, I became involved in the social work at church and I met a man. A handsome man in his forties, charming, respectful, attentive. The kind of man who listens, who makes you feel valued, who knows how to look at a woman as though she truly mattered. At first, I saw him only as a member of the group, until he approached me.
At first it was only a few words. Then a few messages. Then meetings. The bond wove itself gently, almost unconsciously and innocently… until our bodies spoke louder than our principles. We had given in to the desire of the flesh.
He is married too, with two children. Our innocent closeness had ended up leading us into sin.
From then on, my relationship with my husband changed. Prayer became heavy, my mind confused. My desire for intimacy with my husband went out. And like an echo from heaven, or perhaps from my own guilt, everything I saw on social media spoke of adultery, of transgression, of judgment.
So I put an end to that relationship. I fasted, prayed, asked forgiveness. I cut off all contact with my lover.
But that did not bring me back into balance. At home, I was present in body but absent in soul. Intimacy was no longer a moment of sharing, only a mechanical act. I felt empty, ill, torn. My migraines came back, my vitality went out. My husband complained: he said he was living with my body but never with me. And sometimes, even during intimacy, I would think of my lover. It was hard, almost unbearable. The more I resisted, the more I suffered. Curiously, during that period, the posts about infidelity disappeared from my feeds… but my own unease remained very much there.
At an appointment, my doctor asked me whether something was deeply troubling me. I answered no… when I knew I wanted only one thing: to get back in touch with my lover.
After several months without a word, he wrote to me again. He asked that we see each other again. I agreed without hesitating. I had been waiting for him in silence, but with my whole being. I did not dare contact him for fear of being judged, since I was the one who had ended the relationship.
When I saw him again, I felt myself come back to life. All my ailments vanished in the days that followed. I was light, joyful, full of energy. Like a teenage girl in love. I was living again. And my husband, happy to see me transformed, kept telling me that he was finally getting back the woman he had known.
The worst of it? He had no idea that this renewal came not from him, but from my lover.
That same week, I saw a few posts about adultery again. I even had a dream in which a clear voice asked me to end that relationship.
I am afraid of losing everything if my husband finds out the truth.
But I am just as afraid of falling back into illness and exhaustion if I put an end to it once again.”
This story struck me as troubling. It forced me to reflect on these five questions:
What do you do when sin warms the heart but cools the faith?
Must one choose obedience at the price of suffering, or joy at the price of transgression?
How do you reconcile what the body demands with what the soul condemns?
What is peace of soul worth if the body withers in the absence?
And what is health of body worth if the spirit dies away in remorse?
This story did not only move me… it opened my eyes to another reality, almost a mirror image. That of a man for whom marital happiness strangely depended on a love outside the marriage. Another voice, another heart, but the same inner dilemma.
I will share his testimony with you in the next article.
M. Z.
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