It was late June of 2011 and I was lost. What defined me as a man up to that point was my money and my family. I operated on the condition that I was valuable because of my performance. I was 36 years old and I was at the top of my game. I had a high income, a beautiful family, and I had all the trappings of an upper class American life…the cars, the home, the STUFF. And then in an instant all of it was meaningless.
The year 2011 started out like any other. My wife and I took a trip to Utah in February to go skiing. We had a great time and I came home refreshed and ready to attack the goals I had set for my business for that year. My future looked bright and I was really firing on all cylinders when one day I discovered that my wife, whom I had never so much as had an argument with in the 6 years we were married, was having an affair. And not just any affair…she had decided to leave our marriage for another man.
Even now as I write these words, I can’t possibly convey the betrayal and the emotional devastation that I felt. That was April and for 2-3 months I begged and begged her to stop flying out to California to see this man. I begged her to look at the 4-year daughter and 18-month-old little boy we had and I just assumed she would eventually “wake up” and we would get through this mistake and continue our lives. But as the months wore on, the evidence that maybe I had never really known this woman surfaced. Things she had kept hidden from me, the foul language, the clothing, the poor decisions in friends, the drinking, the smoking, and yes even the drugs were a daily reminder that this marriage was over.
I was crushed. I didn’t go to work, I lost 40 pounds (that part wasn’t so bad!!!), and I couldn’t sleep. But it was worse. I had lost my purpose. I was wearing the “L” on my forehead for all to see. Just another failure… just another divorce. I was no longer anything special. I couldn’t “perform” my way out of this one. I was lucky in that I had several very good men around me who were telling me that while no one is innocent in divorce, this instance was about as one-sided as it could be and that if she really wanted to throw her life away to go on her own, then that is what would happen. They all told me the same thing: there is something bigger going on here that I couldn’t see, that her problems weren’t with the marriage and our family…they went deeper than that.
I listened to all those words of advice. I took them to heart. I was reaching out to God in prayer every day, but I was emotionally raw and beaten and I just couldn’t “get up off the mat”. I was defeated.
And then I heard a man named Victor Marx speak.
It was near the 4th of July holiday and I went to church so that I could hear something that would remind me that God was still there for me. I just wanted some good ole fashioned preaching… instead, what I got was a guest speaker. I was pissed off. I didn’t WANT to hear a guest speaker. And then when Victor began to speak I thought it was a joke! Who can understand this guy??? He’s speaking in some unknown accent (later I found out it was Cajun). And what the heck is he going to do with those NUNCHUKS???? Are we seriously going to get a Karate demonstration on the day when I literally couldn’t breathe? My wife had just minutes beforehand asked me to leave the house so her 50-year-old boyfriend could come and hang out at our pool while he was in town “for a visit” … “Oh yeah,” she continued… “leave the kids. He will want to meet them.” THAT was my day and here I am sitting in church watching Karate dude????? (and no, I didn’t leave the house and the kids for the boyfriend to come over and enjoy!)
What happened next changed my life, my kids’ life, and several other people’s lives as well. Victor began using humor to reel me in. I am a public speaker myself so I knew what he was doing. He was using self-deprecation to make a connection and he landed BIG time with me. After he caught my attention, he talked about his military background. I needed that. I needed a man, and tough dude, to get my attention. I couldn’t handle anymore “skinny jeans” preachers talking about “oh brother this and oh brother that” …I needed a warrior. Victor is that guy.
Victor talked about his childhood and everything he had gone through. If you don’t know his story, you need to go to YouTube or his website and immediately watch his movie or read his book. But then he landed the knockout punch: he talked about WARFARE. Specifically, spiritual warfare, and he directed his talk to the men. He discussed what it meant to be a spiritual warrior locked in an ageless battle against real demons. I absolutely knew what he was talking about. Victor gave me the ability to see beyond my hurt and to my future. He showed me if I was going to be a real man, a true warrior, then I needed to suck it up and face the REAL enemy. The real enemy wasn’t my wife or her behavior or even her boyfriend. The enemy was/is Satan. And this battle was for all the chips. He called me out and I responded. Literally from that day forward and with the help of men who poured into me in an intimate way, I went on war footing.
I sat there and I promised myself a few things: I would be friends with this Victor Marx “karate guy”, I would fight the battle like a warrior, I would pray for my wife and I would build a life moving forward with or without her.
By late July of 2011 I was divorced. It was 3 months from the date she filed. It was a runaway freight train in terms of the sheer rapidity of the events. But I held firm. I was tough but also kind in my negotiations with her. By January of 2012 I met a woman named Jayme whom I later married. Jayme and I have full custody of my two kids and I also have a step daughter. In 2015 Jayme and I had a little girl together. We lead our family according to a set of principles we agreed on before we even married. But nothing is more important than the fact that we know evil, we’ve seen evil, we’ve battled evil, and we respect the fight against evil.
As a man who has never known the battlefield on Earth, I can absolutely tell you that warriors aren’t just our military veterans (God bless those heroes!) Warriors are necessary to battle the war of the spiritual world. The spiritual world is where concentration camps, and ISIS and the Gulags started. The idea came before the physical event. Those ideas were planted in men by our spiritual enemy. When those events crop up it requires heroic warriors to go and fight and kill the bad men. But BEFORE those events pop up, we need spiritual warriors to be on the lookout for the Devil who prowls looking to devour our children, our marriages, our families, and anything else we hold dear.
I’m not sure Victor could have ever known the impact he would have had on one random dude in the audience of some suburban mega Church all those years ago. But the impact runs deep. Because he was calling God’s warriors to wake to the battle and while I can’t say if anyone else answered that call, I can tell you for certain it changed the direction of my life and the life of generations of my family to come. I’ve since become friends with Victor and my family supports his ministry financially and in any way we know how. I think all I want to say is simply, Thank You. Thank you, Victor, for helping me understand the fight I am in and helping me to become a warrior, and thank you to Jesus Christ for securing the inevitable victory against the Enemy.
-Guest Blog by Joseph DeLisi