For many long years of separation, Joy McLean had faith that God could reunite her and her husband.

That there would come a day where I would stand before my husband again as a pure and spotless bride.

And I might be 90 years old, but I believed with all my heart.

I wanted to believe, and I would not stop hoping and

praying for that. This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss-Swalgamuth, author

of Holiness, the Heart God Purifies, for June 28, 2019. Over the last couple of days, Joy McLean has been telling her story. Here's some of what we've heard.

Today I took a vow to love and honor my husband, and that's just what I intend on doing, no matter what.

I had asked Mark to go to counseling, and when they told him that he had a drinking problem,

they need to address that his heart turned hard.

Why are you asking me these questions?

Why are you challenging what I'm doing?

Because I have a right to do it.

When he would call me a name or he would call my mother a name, I would just want to drive

and just run my car into a pole just to end it. I have a right to do what I want to do. When I discovered that she was cutting herself, it was just like another slap in the face. I just didn't know how much more I could take. You know, why shouldn't I be able to do this? This is what I want to do, and I'm not hurting anybody. He wants to hurt me. I didn't know what he was capable of doing to us.

And he's making threads.

And I could hear my dad come in, and I can hear him start slamming doors,

and yelling and cussing, and I knew that God had his hand over me.

So many people would have just left him immediately.

And if not immediately, a couple years into it, five years into, ten years into it.

But she stayed with him.

And honestly, that was probably the first time in 22 years.

I thought, I don't think there's much hope anymore when he can know that he might

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