Ep. 2- Autumn's Story
/Becky sits down with Autumn, one of the cohosts of the podcast to hear her story. Autumn is a mom in the thick of the teenage years with her three children. She has been married to her husband, Chris, for 23 years. She loves being with her family and playing games, especially card games, and she works part time from home.
Autumn grew up in Utah. She knew God was there growing up. Her mother was active in her church but her father did not go to church. When her parents divorced, Autumn always “wondered why God did that to my family”. She feels fatherlessness has been a key player in her life. She prayed and believed full-hearted, read scriptures, and even went to church alone when no one else attended. At the age of 17, she decided to gain a testimony of her own to find out who God was, who Jesus was and what role He played in her life. She knew she was a Daughter of God. She felt loved by the Lord and always tried to do what was right. She felt connected to her Savior and knew He could heal things that were broken.
Disconnection from the Savior came later, in the early part of her marriage. Autumn had been married about 7 years and had 2 little kids. She sensed that there was something off with her husband but couldn’t put her finger on it. Life was lots of “surface living”, like ships passing in the night. Her biggest fear was that he was having an affair because her father did when she was growing up. But her husband denied having an affair. After the birth of their 3rd child, her husband came to her and told her he was going to be going through church discipline because he was having an affair, like she has suspected. After a 6 hour meeting, he was disfellowshipped from their church.
6 months later, another affair came to light. Autumn’s best friend’s husband called her and told her that her husband was having an affair with her best friend.
“I was devastated. To the point that I wanted to die.”
Autumn went into another room in her house and took all the pills in a box. She has no idea what they all were. She called her mother and mother-in-law to tell them good-bye and to take care of her children. Her husband rushed home and found her on the kitchen floor. Autumn woke up 3 days later in the ICU. She was monitored closely because each time she asked her husband about the affair, doctors and nurses rushed in because her heart rate would skyrocket and they were concerned about a heart attack from the pills she had taken.
Autumn spent a week at UNI, the inpatient psychiatric unit in Salt Lake City, where she spent her nights in the dark and quiet on her knees in deep conversations with Heavenly Father about what she was going to do. She received support from her ecclesiastical leaders in whatever decision she needed to make and her family told her to leave her husband. Through those urgent prayers for guidance, Autumn knew she just needed to stay in her marriage at that time.
Autumn and her husband started a recovery program about 3 months later, after their individual and marriage counselors encouraged it. She didn’t want to go to a program for sex addiction. She wondered what a sex addiction was and if affairs were a sex addiction. Autumn worried she would be the only spouse in the room. But the first week there, she knew it was the right place and that Heavenly Father had guided them there. She threw herself into the work, but her husband was half-heartedly doing things. She felt frustrated and knew something was off. She felt he was having another affair. Autumn started checking his phone, hacking his computer, checking his recovery work. It was crazy-making. She wanted to be his support person and to do it together but it wasn’t working.
One day she knelt down in the kitchen and just sobbed to God to just “please let me feel peace for 5 minutes”. And she felt so much peace and a heavy burden lifted off her shoulders as God said to her, “You give me Chris and let me take care of you. You worry about your recovery and I will do the rest”. Autumn did feel scared. She didn’t know what that meant. She could be divorced. But she knew Heavenly Father had them and would take care of them. Her husband gave his last full disclosure after that and she knew he was telling the truth and that is when his real recover started.
After this, Autumn worked hard on her recovery but found herself WORKING alone. She didn’t trust anyone and didn’t let God help her. It was hard for her to give her marriage to God after she had seen her parent’s marriage fall apart. At times she felt disconnected, angry, and sad. She practiced obedience but wasn’t giving God her love and her heart because it felt like her heart had been taken out. Autumn says it felt like “my heart had been ripped out of my chest so many times”. She says she built up walls around her heart and that day, kneeling and sobbing in the kitchen, a small rip had happened in that wall. Her fear turned into empowerment, walls were torn down, and warmth filled her soul. Her relationship with God filled her again.
“I wasn’t going to give up control of my marriage. But as soon as I did, the miracles came and the changes happened.”
Autumn felt like she was walking next to God. He was working beside her. She learned to trust God’s timing and let go of expectations. She says that trusting God’s timetable is when the changes came.
Autumn personally found a lot of help when she was asked to help with her church’s addiction recovery program (which she had refused to try) and she went for herself. She walked in and knew it was the right place. She had never felt such love for Heavenly Father’s children. She knew she was ALL IN. She did the 12 steps alongside everyone else while she was facilitating. Autumn often speaks about her 5 Areas of Recovery-- Counseling, Support Person, Familial Support, Ecclesiastical Support (Higher Power), and her Savior Jesus Christ. She also concentrates on her daily check-in with herself. Additionally, having clear and strong boundaries with her husband and with herself helps Autumn take care of herself and manage if she is triggered. She says that Satan tries to attack and tell us that we can’t take care of ourselves but we have to. Autumn especially connects with God through nature and she stopped doing that in the middle of the hardest times. But she learned she needed nature in her life.
“When I bring that into my life, I am so much more happy and so much at peace.”
Autumns says that even with her husband having 10 years of sobriety, recovery isn’t done. It is a lifelong priority for her. Time, prayer, and giving things to God have been the most healing things when it comes to feeling triggered, which still happens everyone once in a while. Autumns says prayer looks like different things for her, saying it out loud, in her heart, writing it out, screaming it out, crying it out through tears. Prayer is a huge release for Autumn.
“He loves me no matter what. No matter what I do or where I come from. He loves me for me. And I need to go to Him.”
Autumn has found restoration through Christ in her healing journey. She said she wouldn’t change this journey. It has molded her into who she wants to be. She has been able to let go of animosity and anger and has been able to forgive those who have harmed her. She says she has seen glimpses of who her husband was intended to be before he even started recovery. Autumn has been able to give herself some grace in this journey through what Christ has done for her. She says, “God has created so much power in you. When I did give up hope, that is when I wanted to die. I gave my power to Satan.”
“Don’t ever give up on you. Ever.”
Autumn’s Recovery Resources:
ARP
Qualified Therapy- LifeStar for addict and spouse
Brene Brown
Daily affirmations- Jesus Calling, Hazelden books for Recovery & Life in general
Meditation
Being in nature
Autumn’s Music:
“Fear is a Liar” - Zach William
“Superwoman” - Alicia Keys
“Brave” - Sarah Bareilles
“A Beautiful day”- U2
“Nobody”- Casting Crowns
“Who You Say I am”- Hillsong Worship
