One mistake tore his marriage apart, but “God rebuilt everything I had destroyed”

At the lowest point of his life, Andy Lim found himself on the 16th floor of an HDB flat, staring over the ledge and contemplating ending his life.

His wife, then seven months pregnant with their second child, had just thrown him out of their home after discovering he was having an affair. No amount of confessing, apologising or begging on his part had changed her mind – she wanted a divorce.

With his indiscretion now exposed, everything had come crashing down: His marriage, his family and, most painfully to him at the time, the reputation he had spent his whole life building.

Sitting down with Salt&Light close to three years since that day in December 2022, Andy recalled: “I felt someone tell me to just jump. It was too late to undo or redo anything. Everything was gone. No one could save me.”

Chasing success

Since he was a teenager, Andy had been driven by an ache to succeed. “I was the kind of person who felt I had to earn love and recognition,” said the 37-year-old.

The only child of divorced parents, he grew up feeling inferior and unworthy. The feeling intensified when he entered the Institute of Technical Education (ITE).

“That was around the time Jack Neo’s movie I Not Stupid came out. It called ITE ‘it’s the end’. I really thought my life was over,” he said.

Teenage Andy during his days in ITE.

After a breakup left him feeling all the more rejected, he threw himself into his studies, determined to prove that he was worth something.

He scored a perfect GPA, was accepted into Ngee Ann Polytechnic and later Nanyang Technological University, where he graduated with First Class Honours in Art, Design and Media. He was even featured in the media for clinching an international design award.

After throwing himself into his studies, Andy (pictured here with his would-be-wife Sheryl), graduated from Nanyang Technological University with First Class Honours.

He finally felt like he could lift his head at family gatherings, that his parents had reason to be proud of him. The more he achieved results, the hungrier he became for success. “I became very focused on earning money,” he said.

Fearing that the career prospects in the design industry were poor, he signed on to the Air Force after completing his National Service. Though he was not selected to be a pilot, he quickly rose through the ranks as an air traffic controller, becoming a Major at 31.

He was chosen for pilot training while in the Air Force, though he eventually did not pass. Photo by the RSAF.

By this time, he was raking in a five-figure salary every month. He had a four-room HDB flat, a car, a wife and a young son. “From the outside, everything looked stable and successful. But deep down, I felt stuck and unfulfilled,” he said.

“Even after achieving all that, there was this emptiness I couldn’t shake off. I kept telling myself that maybe the next big thing would make me feel better, but it never really did. No matter what I achieved, it never filled the void inside.” 

No way out 

More than just empty, Andy felt trapped.

Sometime in 2022, about eight years into his Air Force career, he was burnt out and desperately wanted to quit his job.

Even though Andy had a stable career, he felt empty.

However, a feng shui master had told him that his career would always have to be in the military. At the time, he was deeply engaged in feng shui and had spent up to S$40,000 on various consultations, items and ornaments in hopes of multiplying his wealth.

Conversations with his wife, Sheryl, about his resigning would also end up in intense arguments over money and their financial commitments.

“I felt very depressed. Like that, my life is gone already. My life is already determined. My job is just to feed the family. There was no sense of love. It was just filled with obligation, a duty,” he said.

On the outside, Andy and Sheryl’s marriage looked good. But inside, it was filled with bitterness and resentment.

He coped by drinking and gambling. He splurged on limited edition shoes and clothes, and changed cars every year. “I just wanted to feel good,” he said.

While he was keeping up a façade for friends and family that all was well, his family life was unravelling. He was bitter with his wife; she resented him. Their quarrels were explosive, and Andy often took his anger out on his son.

“And then I made one of the worst decisions of my life.”

The affair

It started with going out with colleagues after work for drinks. Then they started drinking regularly at bars and KTVs with social escorts, a fact Andy hid from Sheryl.

As one thing led to another, he found himself in a relationship with one of the hostesses. She was just a plaything to him, he said.

“I just wanted the feeling of being in a relationship again. I believed that there was no harm as long as I went back to my wife. I didn’t know back then how detrimental it would be to my whole family,” he told Salt&Light.

Whenever he came home to Sheryl, who at that point was seven months pregnant with their second child, he would feel guilty. “But whenever we quarrelled, I felt like I was justified.”

About a month into the affair, a friend asked him if he was serious about continuing the illicit relationship. After some thought, he decided that he would take his mistress on one last trip to Phuket with his friends, before ending things.

But while Andy was on that trip, Sheryl discovered the affair.

Acting on a gut feeling, she had logged into his Instagram and email accounts, in which she had found messages, hotel bookings and attraction tickets for two.

It was 4am by the time she had gathered enough evidence to prove he had been unfaithful. She texted him: “I know everything. Come back now.”

At a loss for what to do and in a panic, he could only pray in desperation: “God, help me. I don’t know what to do. Please, please, please. Help me, help me.”

Back home, he found that Sheryl had changed the lock to their door and thrown him out. He confessed everything and begged her on his knees to forgive him. He was in the worst state she had ever seen, but she was unmoved.

“I wanted to kill him”

With nowhere to go, he called up a friend who agreed to take him in. While waiting for his friend to come home from work, Andy found himself staring over the ledge, wondering if it would be better if he just ended his life.

As he considered acting on those dark thoughts, Andy looked up at the horizon and saw a beautiful sunset filled with colours. “It warmed my heart. Something just spoke to me saying, ‘Don’t do it.'” Then, his friend came back.

After a few nights at that friend’s home, Sheryl allowed him to return home – but only to be a father to their children.

“It was very painful. I was crying and crying until I was peeing blood, because I was dehydrated. There was a lot of hurt. There was no trust at all,” she told Salt&Light.

She entertained thoughts of revenge, like stopping him from seeing their children and cheating on him too. She took every opportunity to quarrel with him “because I had the right”.

No amount of self-help books or counselling could repair their marriage. Andy turned to feng shui again, splurging on a S$5,000 pendant and inviting a more expensive feng shui master to relook the feng shui in their home. But their quarrels only intensified.

“I felt I would always be in guilt and shame. There was no purpose in the marriage anymore,” said Andy.

Sheryl added: “When I looked at him, I was full of hatred. In my heart, I wanted to kill him.”

Not beyond hope

Life went on like this painfully for months.

One evening, as Andy drove past a church near his home, he remembered one of Sheryl’s close friends who had often invited them to her church for an annual Christmas production.

They had only gone once, when Sheryl was pregnant with their first son, after running out of excuses to say no. “As part of the production, they had feathers depicting the angel’s wings falling from the ceiling. After some time into the sermon, one feather slowly descended and landed on her baby bump. We felt something special then, but we brushed it off,” said Andy.

Andy and Sheryl with friends at the first Christmas event they attended, when an angel feather landed on her baby bump.

He had not thought about Christianity again, until he hit rock bottom. That day, he told Sheryl: “I want to go to church. Can you ask your friend? Maybe we can ask the community to help.”

They went the following week – August 26, 2023, he still remembers – to Impact Life Church, not really expecting much.

But Sheryl, who was resistant to Christianity then, found herself tearing up as the church sang an original worship song, Victory.

The lyric “breaking chains that held me from coming home” spoke deeply to her – her father was a medium, and she felt that going to church would betray him and their deities. But, not understanding what she was feeling, she fought to hold back her tears.

Andy (left) and Sheryl (right) with Sheryl’s close friend from polytechnic, Pei Jun, who would invite them to church for Christmas every year. She is now their cell group leader.

After worship, six baptism candidates stepped forward to share their testimonies. To the couple’s shock, each testimony reflected as aspect of Andy’s broken life – from battling childhood trauma and feelings of unworthiness to struggling with lust and marital woes. Yet, God had saved and redeemed each of them.

It was as if God was telling Andy that He could redeem him too. He recalled: “I was bawling. I said, ‘This can’t be real.'”

During the sermon that followed, the Pastor said: “You know, some of us have tried self-help books and counselling, yet nothing helped.”

It perfectly described their situation. By this time, Sheryl was crying too. “I realised that I was very broken, even though I kept trying to seem like I was okay. Deep down, there was a lot of hurt that came out,” she said.

Both husband and wife responded to the altar call that day. Andy said: “I didn’t even talk. I just kept crying. The only thing I said was: ‘I’m a sinner. I need God.'”

Stronger than the wind and waves

In the weeks and months that followed, Andy and Sheryl immersed themselves in the Bible, sermons, Christian books and podcasts, drinking up all they could about the God who had saved them.

One of the first things they were convicted of was to renounce all their feng shui practices.

“We prayed, ‘God, if this is not real, then show us’,” recalled Andy. In response to his prayer, God showed him through the account of Jesus calming the storm (Matthew 8:23-27) that He is mightier than the wind and waves. Feng in Mandarin means ‘wind’, while shui means ‘water’.

“We realised that feng shui was spiritual deception,” said Andy, recalling that a feng shui master once told him that he could never become a Christian.

So, they discarded all the ornaments they had, and even forfeited a S$1,000 deposit they had put down on a new item they wanted to purchase.

Andy’s baptism in 2024.

As Andy continued to seek and obey God daily, he also experienced significant breakthroughs. For 21 years, he had been addicted to pornography. But the moment he realised that could find strength in God to overcome it (1 Corinthians 10:13), the addiction went.

He also found himself free from the ache to chase success and material things.

“I read about King Solomon, how he had everything the world could offer, yet said it was all meaningless, like chasing the wind (Ecclesiastes 1:14). That hit me,” he said.

Meditating on Psalm 23 “really pierced me”, he added. “I realised I didn’t need to strive anymore. If God is my Shepherd, He will provide. He will restore and He will lead.

“I felt a lot at peace and rest that God would take care of me.”

The redemption he never expected

Perhaps the most significant breakthrough, however, was in his marriage.

Following her encounter with God, Sheryl realised that she could let go of the hatred that she once had for Andy.

“There was no more bitterness or recalling of the past and holding it against me,” said Andy, who is immensely grateful for his wife’s forgiveness.

Sheryl explained: “In the past I would think, ‘Why are you so problematic?’ I didn’t understand why guys struggled with lust. But as I was listening to the Gospel, I realised that everyone is broken in this world. We are all sinners.

“I realised that it was not what he wanted, all the temptations. I no longer saw it as just his problem, but a problem that a lot of people face in our broken world.

“And I had faith that God would help and redeem us.”

Andy and Sheryl with their two boys, Skyler, 6, and Asher, 2 1/2.

As time went on, they noticed a change in the way they communicated. Their quarrels were no longer explosive. Instead of fighting to have the last say, Sheryl would turn to the Holy Spirit to help convict her husband. Andy would begin to apologise on his own accord.

“These things would never have happened in the past,” Sheryl told Salt&Light.

They learnt to pray together, to pray for each other, and to reach out to older couples in church for advice.

“In the past, we were just complaining about each other. But when we talked to our marriage mentors, they pointed us toward God. It was so different. No one was condemning. No one took sides,” said Sheryl.

The couple stressed that this change did not happen overnight, and that their marriage is still a work in progress as they surrender themselves and their family daily to God.

For Andy, who once felt his life was beyond hope, just watching God heal his heart and broken marriage leaves him in deep awe and gratitude.

“The guilt, shame and brokenness didn’t go overnight, but slowly, God was peeling back the layers. He rebuilt everything I had destroyed.”

Read Part 2 of Andy’s story here: 

He obeyed God’s call to leave the Air Force and run a café – only to lose S$70,000 of his savings

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