Shan’s Story
As I sit here, contemplating my testimony, the heartbreak, the brokenness, my rock bottom, I am reminded of the Lord’s hand over my life, my story and my heart. I share my testimony because my hope and trust is that the Lord will use it to encourage others going through something that feels unbearably painful, that there is beauty that can come from the most broken of places.
In 2014, I got engaged to the man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. We’d had many ups and downs, a lot I’d swept under the rug which in hindsight, I wish I’d dealt with and let God into, but I was so in love and couldn’t wait to be married. We’d already been together for five years and I was so excited. I’d always dreamt of getting married and having a family of my own.
We had a legal ceremony to be married before moving over to Dubai at the end of that year. In June 2015, we went back to South Africa and had a big wedding with our family and friends. That year, we joined City Lights and it became a home away from home. We also decided I would move jobs at the end of the academic year so we could get housing and I could get a better salary etc. I got a job at a really good school and started working there in August 2016.
In June 2016, we went on a staycation to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary. We had a great time and everything seemed normal. The following weekend I left for South Africa to see our families, as I was a teacher and it was school holidays.
While I was home, things began to change. Something felt very off. “I love you’s” became less, and tensions rose. I needed to get back to Dubai to start the new school year at my new school, but we were having challenges getting documents for the work visa, and he didn't want me to come back on a tourist visa to start work. If I didn’t come back, I was at risk of losing my job. It felt like he didn’t want me to come back. I ended up getting a tourist visa to get back in time for work and he was furious with me. I couldn’t understand what was going on and why he didn’t want me to come back. I remember contacting Lauren and Starla from the airport and asked them to pray as I could feel something really bad was going on. A friend had to pick me up from the airport as he wouldn’t.
When I got back to Dubai, he said he didn’t know if he wanted to be married anymore. I begged him to fight for our marriage and for us to go to marriage counseling. Eventually we did go for one session and the therapist told us to make a decision if we wanted to fight for our marriage. I immediately said yes, and he said he needed time to decide. He decided to go for a drive to think about things and I got on my knees and prayed. I pleaded with the Lord for our marriage, for him to want to fight for us. When he came home, hours later, he said he was going to pack his bags and he’d booked somewhere to stay. I’ll never forget clinging onto him, begging him to stay, to fight, to love me. I cried myself to sleep that night and every night going forward for a long time. My world as I knew it was crumbling. I felt so alone. I didn’t understand what had happened.
I had to move house alone to the school accommodation, which was a traumatic day in itself as nothing was in my name and the official notice hadn’t been given to move out, which I had been told had happened. I had to plead and negotiate with a group of men in a men's only office, begging to be allowed to leave. I went back and forth trying to get him to sign things and to get money as I’d had to max out my credit card to get out. I cried out to God and questioned where He was in all of this. It felt like He didn’t care. “Surely He’d intervene somehow if He did?” I thought.
A couple days before I started my new job, we planned to meet. On the way there, I felt the Lord put on my heart what was going to happen in our meeting, that he would ask for a divorce, and I felt the Lord say to me that one day I would share my testimony at the Honour Women’s conference. To which I was like, “yeah right God. You can’t use me. I’ll stutter, I can’t speak in public.” That night, he told me he wanted a divorce. My heart broke.
The next few months were a rollercoaster. I kept finding out things that had been going on behind my back, and he went back and forth saying he wanted a divorce, and then he didn’t know what he wanted. He kept changing his mind. During all of this, we discovered I had pre-cancerous cells on my cervix and I had to have a surgery. I felt hopeless, like God wasn’t hearing me. I had so much anxiety. I’m so grateful for our church community as I don’t know where I would have been without them.
By February 2017 we were officially divorced. I drifted from the Lord and started looking for love and acceptance everywhere else. I compromised, I became someone I knew I wasn’t called to be. I felt so lost. Eventually, I hit rock bottom. One evening, I surrendered to the Lord on my bathroom floor. I turned back to Him.
The Lord started teaching me about His Father’s heart for me, about my identity in Him. He surrounded me with the most incredible community of women, sisters in Christ, family. Financially, he taught me that He alone was my provider, that I could trust Him. He taught me how to manage my money. He provided for me in so many ways. One of the ways was that He lay on a friend’s heart to bless me financially, and she cleared my debt of around 50,000AED. I’m still so incredibly grateful, thank you.
Through it all, the Lord took me on a beautiful (yet hard) journey of restoration. There was so much He needed to do in my heart, so many things I needed to let go of and grow in. I drew closer to Him, gave Him my singleness journey, my longings and my heart and surrendered to His plans for my life.
In 2019, I spoke at the Honour Women’s Conference, just as He had told me in 2016 that I would. And a few months after that, in April 2020 while running a Singles Course with Nix, I met the LOVE of my life, Justen. The most wonderful, kind, loving, faith-filled, strong, adventure loving, resilient, hardworking, (and handsome!!) family man. The day I first met him, I knew He was the one the Lord had for me and that one day he would be my husband, I even called my mom and told her, I just knew.
This has been the most redeeming, restorative and beautiful season of my life, and here we are, almost six years later, married and with three beautiful daughters. I am so, so grateful to the Lord. He is so good. He is so gentle. He is fiercely protective and has incredible plans for our lives, if we can just surrender them to Him and trust Him with the pencil to our love story.
If you find yourself in a broken place, whatever it may be, please know that even when it doesn’t feel like it, the Lord loves you so deeply. There is nothing He cannot restore, nothing He cannot redeem. I pray you surrender to Him and let Him into the brokenness and let Him heal you. Draw close to community. Having faith-filled friends to walk the journey with makes all the difference. You are never alone. He loves you, and our church, we will love you though it all. Your brokenness is welcome here and your redemption story, your testimony is waiting for you.
