Mark Dawes, Religion Editor

The trauma of marital collapse and the journey to emotional and spiritual wholeness is the subject of You Lifted My Head, a 118-page book written by Lurline Iona Halliman (née Ebanks) and published by the British Columbia-based Trafford Publishing.

Hailing from Flagaman, St Elizabeth, Halliman was born in 1962, the last of eight children. At 17, she became a born-again Christian. She is an executive secretary working in a highly profitable company in corporate Jamaica.

In 1987, she got married, and five years later she and her husband became the proud parents of a baby girl.

By 2000, she separated from her husband and plunged into suicidal depression until 2003.

Restoring union

She remains separated from her husband, but lives in hope that the union will be restored.

Halliman told The Gleaner that she wrote the book to bring glory to God who brought her through her pain and to help others who are having similar struggles.

Halliman locates some of the roots of the separation in her inability to understand how men are wired.

She wrote, "I believe one of the causes of failure is a basic misunderstanding spouses have of each other ... I can see where my own marriage might have failed because of certain behaviours on the part of my spouse, which I perceived to be characteristic of him, were in fact behaviours that can reasonably be expected of men in general.

"Some of these behaviours result from the way in which men were socialised and what they perceive society expects of them.

"For example, there was a time when I considered my spouse to be hard, cold, selfish, inconsiderate, and insensitive, and I saw those behaviours as weapons being used against me ... My mission to understand men led me to discover that these common perceptions that women have of their men, and most times men have no idea what we are talking about when we accuse them of those undesirable qualities.

She wrote, "While I do not assume total blame for the failure of my marriage, I acknowledge that my response to the perceived undesirable qualities in my husband did play a great role in its disintegration. In retrospect, I can fully appreciate the need my husband must have felt to find companionship elsewhere. While I do not condone his action, I open myself to understanding, especially since I, too, felt the need to turn to someone else for consolation from the pain I felt in the marriage."

Halliman acknowledged that the marriage was not all bad, but that before it took a turn for the worse, it yielded much joy and treasured moments for her which she embraces in her heart.

The author, who attends Family Church on the Rock in St Andrew, wrote in Chapter One about her own adultery and how it affected her spirituality. It began with innocent confiding with a male friend about the difficulties of the matrimonial home.

When the affair was over, she bore a burden of guilt about it for two and half years, she said in her book. During that time, she wrote, "I repented and prayed for forgiveness so many times, but I could not sense God's forgiveness ... I tried so hard to 'find' His presence, and to find again all the fruit of the Spirit which I had once fully enjoyed ... I sent emails to just about every Christian ministry I could find on the Internet ... just to get a word of assurance that I had not lost my salvation."

Closure came, she said, in a dream in which Jesus made it emphatically known to her that He had forgiven her of adultery and she should move on with her life.

She outlines in her book the physical toll the collapse of her marriage had on her. She lost weight, lost her appetite, had no motivation for church ministry and was on antidepressant pills.

She wrote how God used her physical sufferings to mirror her soul. She was thus better able to diagnose where she, through bitterness and anger, contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. Before long, she came to the conclusion that she had not been a submissive wife.

"I did not realise that certain behaviours in my marriage could be classified as unsubmissive. You may be thinking at this point that I am one of those wives who 'bow' to their husbands," she wrote. "I do not consider myself such, but I must point out that God dealt very sternly with me concerning the matter of submission during the first year of separation."

She continued, "Sometimes we think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and if God does not bring us face to face with ourselves, we stumble along thinking we are the best thing since creation and everything about us is the way it ought to be.

Divine intervention

"After beholding myself spiritually, I knew that I needed God to change some things about me, and as He revealed them to me, I presented them to Him. Little by little, He brought about, and continues to bring about, and continues to bring about change, taking me from glory to glory."

Through a process that included counselling, prayer, Halliman believes she has now attained wholeness through brokenness. She believes her pain was for a divine purpose. With that in mind, she looks forward to fulfilling speaking engagements where she can minister to people in strained and broken relationships.

Looking back at her recent past, she told The Gleaner "suicidal depression is like a spiritual and mental cancer which eats away at the very foundation of your faith and your being. It shakes the foundation of the Christian faith on which you stand, and it bring you to the lowest depth - that of questioning the existence of God because He does not show up at the time you want Him to, to relieve you of your suffering".

She continued, "We've all had experiences in which we feel God has turned His back, and He is just not there. He understands how you feel, but in allowing you to have this experience, He is building and establishing you; and you, like hundreds, or thousands or millions who have gone through this very deep and dark valley before you, will thank Him at the end of the day for having allowed you to be tested at that level.

"Your worst, most unimaginable, most unbearable experience ever will end up being the very thing you thank Him for most, if you allow Him to prove Himself to you through the experience," Halliman explained.

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