A Secret Story

This blog was first put together when I felt the tugging on my heart to share my story with you; to take you along for the incredible journey God has set my feet upon. My whole life has been a constant change of seasons, filled with valleys, deserts, and rocky mountain roads. God has been working, leading and challenging me for as long as I can remember. He has been drawing me near, teaching me, and showing me more and more of His heart. 

I haven't had it easy; if you've been following my story you have watched and followed some of what God has brought me through. While it is never easy in the moment, I wouldn't change anything I've gone through because while it's been hard and filled with pain, it has brought me closer to knowing the God I love and serve. My greatest hope and desire is that, no matter how hard life gets or what I will go through, that I can bring God glory through it. I want to share my life with you because I want to be a transparent vessel for Christ. Perhaps my suffering and my victories can be for your benefit too. 

That is why I feel compelled to share this other part of my life that I've kept to myself; a secret I buried deep in my heart, ashamed, and embarrassed to admit. I've suffered silently through the past three years, looking for answers physically, spiritually and emotionally. Through this past year, as I've found healing through Christ, it has become apparent to me that I can keep quiet no longer. I have prayed and sought the Lord in this and I can no longer deny the clear direction God has put in my heart to share and encourage others through it. 

This is the testimony I am currently uploading on the web page my friend and I are putting together as a biblical support group. You may already be familiar with parts and pieces of this testimony but in oder to understand the significance of what God has done in me through all of this I wanted to share the story as I wrote it. 

I don't know what God will do through my story in the lives of other women and couples, but I do know that if God could work in my marriage the way He has despite my handicaps then I want to stand up for other women and marriages that may be struggling to understand the great mission we have and true intimacy God gives us through marriage for the sake of His glory. I want to be bold and stand with other women for Christ. 

Here is my story:

My name is Leah Jaffrey, ( most of you may know me) I am a young wife, a mother of two girls, and a disciple of Christ. While on the outside, I may seem to be a normal woman, I have carried a secret that has been a heavy burden these past few years. There is a shame and guilt that has challenged and haunted my life as a wife and woman since the day I married my dear husband. It has had an effect on my marriage, my self-identity, my health, and my view of God. It has forced me to rethink and reexamine everything I thought God intended and looked for in marriage; everything I thought I knew. 

After a long distance relationship for three and a half years and a long year of trying to get my parents blessing for marriage, to an impossibly difficult situation and choice in our engagement, to a wedding that I couldn’t have ever prepared myself enough for- I found out that I was a woman with a rare condition that would instigate trauma, debilitating pain, and the inability to know my husband through physically intimacy. 

My husband is my best friend, the one I most respect, desire to serve, and will always fight for. We haven’t had it easy from the day we met, but our love has grown through the years. We learned to fiercely protect, preserve, and fight for what God has given us. We had to learn early on in our courting years how to work together and pursue God through the storms. We had to learn to put Him first and obey Him and His word above our own desires. While we were in no way prepared for the reality we would have to face together after we got married, we did have experience in pushing through the storms and turning to God through them. 

When I learned that I wouldn’t be able to have sex with my husband anymore, (never without debilitating pain) I was left with so many questions, guilt, and a heavy curtain of shame I couldn’t shake off. I had doctors, friends, and family members both indicate and out-right say things like, ‘I wouldn’t blame him if he left you’ or ‘Your poor husband, you are going to have to work extra hard to please him in every way you can so he doesn’t hate you or resent you.‘ There have been messages after messages of the shame I had become to the one I loved so much and I started to believe them.   

My husband has never made a big deal about my condition, or what I can’t give him. He has been an incredible example of self-sacrificing love and has fervently protected and fought for me despite the words and voices bombarding my life so suddenly. But nothing could change the fact that I felt like I was a failure and less of a woman because I couldn’t do one of the main things a wife was expected to perform, in ways even scripture taught. I couldn’t understand why God would allow this area of our lives to be so dramatically challenged. If I was to be a godly wife, why would I not be able to do the very thing I am commanded to do for my husband?

Since my diagnosis, I’ve battled not just guilt and shame, but also PTSD which has caused pseudo seizures, a panic disorder, and depression. It has ultimately effected my life in ways I never anticipated. I felt stripped, left naked and exposed to the world. In my eyes, I felt like God had taken away my ability to be a good wife, my ability to have a home filled with our children, my emotional health, and all my hopes and dreams I ever carried in my heart. All I wanted growing up was to marry a man of God and raise our many children. I wanted to have a big house filled with the pitter-patter of children’s feet, our doors open to the needs of the world and tender to the calling of God’s commission. Yet here I was, 20 years old, with a husband I couldn’t love (by the worlds standards), a baby I couldn’t be left alone with because I was suffering so severely with seizures and emotional instability, due to my physical diagnosis no chance at getting pregnant ever again, and no hope with a future in ministry due to my paralyzed spiritual and emotional state of being.

Long story short, God took me through a time of great healing spiritually and emotionally. My husband and I ended up moving in with my parents while God took me through a journey of healing and restoration. He slowly started working in my heart and showing me the truth in His word and His design for my life. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and for my husband. I stopped giving into the pressure of guilt and shame from the world around me. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still struggle with pangs of guilt here and there, but my heart attitude towards my husband and acceptance of who I was, freed me to discover and love my husband the way Christ loves the church. My husband and I have set out on a journey of rediscovering intimacy the way God designed marriages rather than what the world and often times even the church promotes. 

I had hit rock bottom, but God raised me up and out of the pit. He put my feet on a rock and gave me direction. While this road is never going to be easy, I will walk through the valleys and up the mountains and trust that no matter what I may face, God can use me and my desires to serve Him where I am.  

My heart’s desire is to draw women back to Christ, back into marriages that are filled with tender love and steadfast determination to live out the calling that God has placed on our marriages. If God can use me through my weakness, baggage, and shortcomings, and if I can pursue a marriage filled with a deep incomparable intimacy, then God can certainly use and work through you. Even for us women, who walk through our lives carrying deep burdens of guilt and shame, or baggage from trauma and tragedies in our past, there is hope. Through God anything is possible, especially when we are pursuing Him above all else. We don’t have to be captives of the world or ourselves - In Christ there is true freedom, even for us. 

With an Earnest Love,

Leah J.