For the first few years after I left Mark I was floating two feet off the ground. I was free!

I know that sounds terrible, but our marriage was typical of many. After 27 years together and five children I was at the point in my life - our life actually - that I could no longer stay with Mark. Lots of little things built up over the years until finally I couldn’t cope anymore and I felt my only option was to leave.

In the first four and half years we were apart I never had any intention or inclination to go back. I was happy!! I no longer had to think of the ‘right’ answers. I had my own personal growth with God and an awesome relationship with Him. I was brought up by parents who loved God and leaving your husband was not the done thing so it was a very big decision for me. Although at the time there seemed no other option, I realise looking back that I had two other options; I could have stayed but that would have seen us in the same mess today. We would be no further ahead, maybe even worse off. There would have been no stumbling across the conversation with God, no Freedom Diaries and no spreading the news about the conversation to others.

The other option would have been to have a conversation with God but of course, like most Christians, neither of us knew that it was possible. If we had we could have let him explain in words we could understand how to sort the whole big mess out without having to separate.

But often it’s not until you are absolutely desperate and can see no solution, that you will find God in the midst of it all, or more importantly that he will find you. 

There was one other thing that would have helped me, a thing I learned once we were apart, but would have helped me if I’d understood it back then. That would have been to look for good. I could have looked for the things that I had first loved about Mark. If I had focused on those good things about him, one good thing would have added to another until a new picture of Mark began to develop and the big bad picture of our marriage would have begun to recede.

I have learned during this time that if we look for good in any circumstance, it is always there waiting to be found. The more you focus on and look for good in people or situations the better you will feel and function and the clearer your head will be. Looking for good and practising kindness helps us, it helps our marriage. If I had understood the incredible power of that back then, things might have been different.

While we were apart I discovered the power of looking for the good, it changed my life and made it great! It was living this way that lead me to realise that I too was having a back and forward conversation with God. As I began to see the good in myself, I realised that God would actually want to talk to me. As a result, I am now very enthusiastic to encourage and build people up. To tell them “you ARE worth it and you DO have choices and God is right there waiting to talk TO you ABOUT you.”

Until we separated, I had been involved in the family business and being a mum. Suddenly I was on my own and I needed a job badly. Before the children I had been a nurse and then a police constable. To go back to either of these professions I would need to retrain but I needed something right now. Friends in the kiwifruit industry asked if I would help out in the bin dump during picking season. I loved the outdoors and I loved the job.

One particular day I drove into an orchard that had a bin dump at the very back of the orchard. It was a very narrow, winding, muddy road. When I got in to the site there was a huge truck and trailer parked there - an 18 speed tractor unit with a b-train combination on the back with its curtains all open and half loaded with kiwi fruit bins. I was blown away! “How did you get in here??” “Not by helicopter, lady, same way as you did!” I was hooked. I decided right there on the spot that I was going to drive one of these beauties and over the course of the next year I got my truck and trailer licence and now drive big rigs for a hobby (well, it’s my job actually because I get paid to do it!)

At the beginning of 2014, after Mark and I had been apart for four years, our youngest daughter was going to attend Mt Aspiring College in Wanaka. She was the only one still at home so I went too! Not to school but I got a great job down there driving a beautiful Kenworth.

Moving to Wanaka in the South Island of New Zealand meant I would be 1500kms from Mark. It was a fantastic move for me. I no longer had to hear his motorbike roaring up the road or have him knocking at the door to mow my lawns. From the time we moved down in January until Easter that year I barely gave Mark a thought. I was happy and loving my life.

Then at Easter time he rode down with some biking buddies to ‘Warbirds over Wanaka’ air show. He txted me to see if he could bring his mates round for a coffee. It was nice to meet them and then off they all went back to the North Island. After they left, I became very unsettled and bothered. My mum was staying with me and she asked what the problem was. I told her I had a horrible feeling I might have to go back to Mark. I felt like washing my mouth out!! Mum told me I would need to sort this out with God – that he wouldn’t ‘make’ me do anything I didn’t want to do. She said that I would know the right thing to do and have a peace about it.

Then three weeks later Mark emailed me a conversation he and God had about us. After I read that email, I had no doubt in my mind what my next step was. It wasn’t just me or Mark feeling this, but actually God himself was talking us back together. And when he talks somehow peace comes. That was May. Mark and I had conversations with God and he told us both to put our marriage back together slowly, to remember our adult kids would be watching and to do things in a way that would be acceptable to them. So we shared the whole thing with them and in December that year I went back to Mark – just as God (unbeknown to me) had promised Mark I would.