Cry out to Jesus

For the marriage that's struggling just to hang onThey’ve lost all of their faith in loveThey've done all they can to make it right againStill it's not enough... There is hope for the helpless Rest for the weary Love for the broken heart. There is grace and forgiveness, Mercy and healing. He'll meet you wherever you are . Cry out to Jesus, Cry out to Jesus...

Most of you have shared parts of my journey over the last 18 years and I need to take the time to sit down and think about the significance of this weekend and the easiest way for me to do that is through writing my feelings out, so here goes… I’m not writing to anyone in particular… Just trying to get deeper in my own soul but wanted to share that with you as well… To be real and honest…

Monday is the 13th anniversary of our wedding. One year ago this weekend we were in Gatlinburg TN at the Hippensteel Inn trying to work through the mess of affair #3 and the chaos of a 3 week old baby boy at home. I think back on that weekend and remember how scared I was and I wondered how this could really be my life… How could this person who I shared my life with be so manipulative, deceitful and distant. How could we raise these 3 beautiful children that we brought into this world in this sham of a life? I remember the ride down there was a 4 hour quiet painful ride. We listened to the radio most of the way and I remember at times I would just sob as I tried to make sense of it all… I know it was probably all of the hormones from my post partum that were surfacing during that time too and I just felt like I went into survival mode. I remember telling Brian I couldn’t do this alone, I wouldn’t do it alone and I could make it through any of these emotions if he would just promise he would stay…

As I type that out now, it makes me so angry… No wonder he didn’t respect me... I didn’t respect myself! Who asks someone to stay and not leave them when they clearly have violated any trust that remained after a third affair (even if I thought it was the second at that point)??? He saw how that changed me, how it destroyed me the first time in our first year of marriage and how much time and energy it took to get us back on any type of path for a future. How much effort it took for me to believe anything that came out of his mouth, any night he had to work over, any time he travelled for work… We didn’t even have children to consider then. The reasons I stayed back then were because I wanted to believe it was just a hiccup… That I was a better person than that and a forgiving person and I wasn’t going to be divorced at age 24. If I had only been mature enough to see that my actions at that age set our lives up for failure… I should have been angry and thrown him out. I should have walked away and let him pursue restoring our marriage if that was what he wanted… I shouldn’t have been the “team player” and try to pull everything back together as I always had and I should have dealt with the betrayal instead of just pushing it down and moving forward…

I became a shell of the person I once was, of the woman he fell in love with… I lost all of my confidence and my personality. I lost that free, spontaneous spirit to become someone else… Someone who had to control everything and work on the appearance of everything, instead of being real. It was a time in my life where I didn’t care who I was, I wanted to be who he needed and wanted me to be… I felt responsible for his affair… That I hadn’t been a good enough wife or partner or he wouldn’t have been tempted… He wouldn’t have given in…

When the truth is, looking back, there were many times I saw his flirtatious nature (that will never change) during our 6 years of dating in high school and college… But now I’ve seen my own as well… I had a commitment to Brian, but I was always dancing with fire… It was almost as if we knew we could be together and get married, but just wanted to test the waters to make sure there wasn’t a better fish out there… I clearly wasn’t perfect when we dated, I deceived him as well by talking to other guys late at night when I wasn’t with him… Some times it was friends that we had just spent the evening with, who were telling me I was too good for Brian, deserved much better… I even almost kissed his roommate one day when we were walking back from class and talking… The month before our wedding, I almost backed out because a co-worker in Tennessee asked me not to marry him… To stay in Tennessee so we could figure things out… He was 6 years older, had a financee and a child from a previous girlfriend… It was just too messy to give up what was safe, easy. I never physically cheated on Brian, but emotionally I had many connections along the way where I could’ve taken a different path. I had serious feelings for 4 different guys during my dating years with Brian, all of whom I could have had a different life with, some of who I’ve re-connected with since my divorce… I chose Brian because he was safe… He would be a good father, a good husband… He grew up 5 minutes from my home and I loved his family. It would be an easy relationship because both of our families were here in Indiana and grandparents, holidays, etc… All of that would be convenient and easy… I don’t think I could have been more wrong in my delusions of how easy it would be. We probably would have had a better chance at a “normal” life had we moved away from our families and friends and built a life together from the ground up… A life without the influence of mother-in-laws and father-in-laws and the pressures of trying to find a job and build a life together.

I guess all of this writing is just to sum up that I this weekend, I know I can be a real person once again… I have done a lot of digging to get my true self back… And I had to face some pretty brutal honesty about myself and the decisions I made that brought us to places in our journey as well. I have seen my own shortcomings and I am honest about my own dishonesty, and I can be more forgiving of his…

On this first year of my “non-anniversary” I am thankful that I am 36 years old, that I am learning who I am again, that I am a better mother because I take time to recharge every other weekend and I can give my full attention to my boys when I have them. I am thankful that this empty shell is filling back up with life and personality and spontaneity once again, that I can make decisions based on what I want and don’t want, and not out of fear or obligation. Thankful that I can create something new and beautiful out of these ashes and make wiser decisions and listen with a new understanding of myself and what direction I want to go in the future… The future is wide open now…. Not dark and painful as it was one year ago… I am making it on my own, even though I never wanted to take that journey, and it gets lonely some times… But I am thankful to have a second chance at an amazing life…

Thanks for sharing it with me!!!