Why do the wicked always prosper?

A few years ago I fell asleep nursing my son. When I woke up, my neck and left arm were in excruciating pain and I could not lift my arm. I went to the emergency room and they performed an MRI on me thinking I had had a stroke. I did not have a stroke; turns out sleeping on a flat pillow will do this, but what they found in the MRI was something different all together. I had a fracture in my nose. A fracture I had received some years prior when my ex-husband punched me in the face.

I am now also divorced from my second husband, the straw that broke the camel’s back is when he threw my daughter across the room into a dresser after provoking her to hit him. You would think she wouldn’t have needed so much provocation, after all, he had thrown a potty full of poop on her some months before.

This is my life. My first husband abused me physically, then he went on to own his own business and prosper financially; he does not in any way support his daughter. He does not even call her. If that wasn’t bad enough, my second husband, with whom I have two sons, went on to physically abuse my daughter. After lying on the divorce papers and forging my signature to get a speedy divorce, he now lives happily in Germany with his new wife. They married a month after we divorced.

He now refuses to support his sons because he wants me to send them to him in Germany. As a single mother of three, I am struggling financially, but I refuse to take the easy way out. Why does it seem the wicked always prosper? Jeremiah 12:1 says, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?”

As we go through life, it seems those who lie cheat and steal, are the most successful. However, Psalm 37:1-3 paints a different picture. It says, “Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.”

In spite of how it seems, the wicked will not always prosper, eventually they will have their day. I have to believe that out of all this negativity, some good will come forth, otherwise, what has all this been for? I pray that God will glorify Himself through my life, much like David and Jeremiah. We know and have faith that at the end of hardship, glory will abound. Paul sums it up well in Romans 8:18 when he says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

So what if my husband left me and I make too much to receive assistance but not enough to pay the bills? My children will be without health insurance soon unless I put them on my expensive family plan at work. So what if I don’t have a car? God is faithful; that’s the truth I choose to hold on to.