I wanted to introduce you to this book properly, but had to share this bit from the middle of the book first. I don't know why, just go with me. This is a great book. The subtitle is: The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs True, that.
I started this book waaaaaay before the adultery, but our marriage was already being admitted to the Relationship ICU with multiple diagnoses of neglect, lack of communication, disrespect, and lack of intimacy. I was half-heartedly trying to get some answers. But. I was still asleep and blind in my way, and just stopped reading somewhere in the middle. It has been on my nightstand for almost two years now. I picked it up recently to add to my lineup of simultaneous reading, and I have brand new eyes reading it believeyoume. You can link to the amazon.com page by clicking on the photo.
There's a "crazy cycle" to marriage relationships. In a tee-tiny nutshell: If she feels unloved, she is disrepectful. If he feels disrespected, he is unloving. It's simple but so true.
Much more to follow on the basics there, and I'll talk more about what I learned in the post about this book that should have preceeded this one, but whatever. My blog. My rules. My brand of crazy, here.
Chapter Fourteen Esteem - She Wants You To Honor and Cherish Her
Over the years, many men have come to me and said, "You know, Pastor, my prayer life isn't what it should be." I respond, "How are you treating your wife?" "No, no," the husband hastens to explain. "My prayer life isn't where it ought to be." "How are you treating your wife?" "No, no, Pastor, I'm saying my prayer life; I'm not talking about my wife." I smile and say, "I am talking about your wife."
...Tucked into I Peter 3:7 is one more phrase that every husband should heed. Peter adds that the reason the husband should treat his wife in an understanding way, as a fellow heir in Christ, is so that his "prayers will not be hindered." That is why I would often tell men who came to see me for counsel that, if heaven seemed silent to their prayers, perhaps they were not honoring their wives as God intended.
These men were sure they were doing all the right things, walking in integrity, and serving the Lord, but when they prayed, the heavens semed as brass. They kept wondering, "God, why aren't You hearing me?" And as we probed a little deeper, we often saw that the answer for these men was that they weren't living with their wives in an understanding way that honored and esteemed them. As soon as these men started obeying Scripture, their prayer life improved.
...Your wife does not want to chair the relationship but she does want to be first in importance to you. This is what Peter means by "show her honor" (I Peter 3:7). Your wife wants to know that you have her on your mind and heart first and foremost. This is what I mean by "esteem"; when it's there, your wife will feel treasured as if she's the most loved woman on earth. Also, she will want to respect you in a similar way that the church reverence Christ. Remember that your love motivates her respect, and her respect motivates your love!
Have I been sleeping? I've been so still Afraid of crumbling Have I been careless? Dismissing all the distant rumblings
Take me where I am supposed to be To comprehend the things that I can't see
Cause I need to move I need to wake up I need to change I need to shake up I need to speak out Something's got to break up
I've been asleep And I need to wake up Now...
I am not an island I am not alone I am my intentions Trapped here in this flesh and bone
And I need to move I need to wake up I need to change I need to shake up I need to speak out Something's got to break up I've been asleep And I need to wake up
These photos were taken (many hours after the snow melted yesterday) by my husband, who is also amazed the children and I got out of this car on our own.
My small children are the bravest kids on any block, I am so proud to know them.
We slid off the side of a mountain, rolled over, slammed against a tree, looked at each other and calmly climbed out of the broken window, up the mountain, and down the road until flagging a car. They were amazing.
God hit a big RESET button in my heart for what is truly important. Miracles happen every day.
God wants you to persevere even while you do not see what you are believing Him for.
...those who participate in this life with an attitude of Thanksgiving, will receive its full promise. -John Mcquiston II
This wise woman has said exactly, exactly, exactly what I think here. OMGosh, ya'll, I could put this on billboards across the nation, I feel so strongly about it: I don't know about you but I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have learned as much, as fast, if this hadn't happened to shake up my life. I realized at one point during this that my husband is the only person on this earth that could hurt me deeply enough to start me on this path of discovery.
I’ve found a way to make you I’ve found a way A way to make you smile
I read bad poetry Into your machine I save your messages, Just to hear your voice You always listen carefully To awkwards rhymes You always say your name, Like I woulden’t know it’s you At your most beautiful
I’ve found a way to make you I’ve found a way A way to make you smile
At my most beautiful I count your eyelashes secretly With every one, whisper I love you I let you sleep I know you’re closed-eye watching me, Listening I thought I saw a smile
I’ve found a way to make you I’ve found a way A way to make you smile
For reasons that don't concern ya'll, this song has a visceral effect on me. Even before the words start, the first bars of music are powerful enough to squeeze my heart. Tightly.
It's effect has been consistent and unchanged over time, so I thought I'd share the lyrics. Actually just heard it within the last few hours on my iPod random shuffle.
It was a song I had liked before, but I can remember when that changed: exactly where I was, the date on the calendar, the view from where I was sitting (literally and figuratively) when this song became alive to me in such a gut-wrenching way. Hello, Mr. Dark Cloud Never thought that we would meet so soon Never thought I'd bundle up in June
Funny how the fog rolls Funnier that I'd know who to blame Never thought I'd have to own this pain
If all that's good and true comes from heaven Then what's a girl to do when it rains?
And I'm sayin' why, why, why, why? I'm shakin' a fist in the dark, and I'm askin' why, why, why, why? Why does it keep getting harder To say thanks?
Tell me what's a girl to do...
Even fields of flowers Dressing in their best because of You Knowing they are blessed to be in bloom
But what about November When the air is cold and wet winds blow Do they understand why they can't grow?
And I'm sayin' why, why, why, why? I'm shakin' a fist in the dark, and I'm askin' why, why, why, why? Why does it keep getting harder To say thanks?
And I could not pretend to know the difference Between the storms You send and those I find
The following is a mish-mash of words I've read from all over the place that have spoken to me about myself, my husband, marriage, and all the usual suspects. Mat 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Those who want to come with me must say no to the things they want, pick up their crosses, and follow me.
Jesus carried his own cross. We had nothing to do with that. Like Jesus, we have to carry our own cross, whatever that cross may be. It's only through experimentation that you will discover what God wants you to do. You can't learn anything about the grace of God without being in a community (i.e. alone). If you are alone, you can't learn to bear the burdens of others, love others, forgive others and learn from others. -from the blog I Will Not Eat The Darkness
*Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past
*You hurt him then. Today he hurts himself with this knowledge. He makes himself miserable with the facts of the past. You are not hurting him still, he is using your past actions to hurt himself in the present. Things like this should not be held over another's head. Either he gets over it or he doesn't - it's his problem to deal with, and if he wants to make you a part of the solution, he can ask, but you can not solve this problem for him. In time he will have to accept his part in the mess and forgive you for yours.
*There is enormous love in forgiveness - and forgiving is something that needs to happen on a regular basis.
*I began to see how I loved the self-pity, holding the moral high ground and the self-righteousness I had in our marriage crisis. It really struck me and I confessed it to God.
*God answers prayer. It seems he delights in answering the prayers of people who are seeking to humble themselves and become more Christlike.
*The situation won't change until someone in the situation changes.
This book was recommended by my counselor, and I'm no stranger to the written word on emotional baggage, surviving past pain, etc ad nauseum. But this book communicates differently to me, insofar as it's not dry or un-relatable-to (ah, new vocabulary words abound).
I have been nibbling on this book since last summer in fits & starts. Life has been so exhausting that I haven't read straight through a book all at once in over a year (with one exception, & I'll share that with ya'll in another post).
There have been many many insightful, valuable, and relatable points made, but here's one I read a few days ago that I scrambled that very second to find a highlighter:
And the more intense the abuse we survived, the more intense our fear of abandonment.
I am all over that statistic.
My mother was married three times. 1st husband (my real father) I never really knew. Last time I saw him I was four years old. My mother didn't make an effort to foster our relationship, or one with anyone on that side of the family. We moved far away, and I suppose it was too "inconvenient" for her to maintain ties, so to them we just disappeared. After I was an adult and was able to find him, we communicated briefly . He died suddenly when I was 8 months pregnant, and I found out he secretly "took" my high-dollar inheritance from my grandmother, his late mother. I also found out that my grandmother hoped to find me again right up until she died, and kept two 8x10 photographs of me as a toddler in her home (that I now have). I did find cousins I had never known, and that was a blessing. But also very sad to me: as an only (read: lonely) child, I missed out on these relationships as a young person, and the feeling of 'belonging' to a large family.
2nd husband was wildy abusive and emotionally unstable. He hit walls, he hit me. I don't think he hit my mother, but she did miscarry a pregnancy during that marriage. I recall being whipped with a vacuum cleaner hose for missing a mutliplication flash card in 3rd grade. Fun times. Again, my mother was too wrapped up in her own internal survival to worry with my well being much. She said the final straw was him having come to bed after tucking me in, and he was visibly aroused. I don't remember any sexual weirdness from him, just violence, but it's bloody ironic it was my mother's final straw for that marriage, when she wouldn't leave the next one and he was raping me every weekend.
3rd husband was actually a non-husband. They lived together for about 15-20 years until the year I got married, and then they got married, too. Bring in the psychologists, b/c I don't even pretend to understand that move. First time I realized they were an 'item' I arrived home from school to discover them having sex in my bed. MY bed. WTF? And of course within a few years, I'm being sexually molested. Regularly. Bring on all the baggage, confusion, and shame that comes from that crap.
And these are just small pieces of my childhood. My early life was a recipe for chaos and mass confusion. When I look back, I'm actually pretty impressed with myself that I am not as fcuked up as I should be. Thank God.
Speaking of God, you can make the connection that anything resembling a Father Figure in my life was unsafe, unstable, and plain Bad News. God had some bad PR with me for a looooooong time. He also, in my limited knowledge, had abandoned me.
My mother's lack of protection and safety are a whole other series' of posts. I held on to defending her, in my mind, for a long time - as she was the only constant I had in my life. As I grew up, and especially once I had children of my own, I got crystal clear in how horrible of a mother she was on a very basic level.
Help yourself to my FOO abandonment issues. This fundamental issue bled into all other relationships in my life. To this day I have broken-heart-type emotions over being "left out" of anything. Compounded by being the 'picked on' kid in elementary and middle school. Just what I needed, on top of the horrors happening in my house.
As a single adult, I partied like it was 1999. After college I made friends who went out all the time, spent summers on their boats on the lake, traveled to the beach, golf tournaments, formal fundraisers, football games, thoroughbred cups, community events, many-splendored happy hours, you name it, as one big group. And, by God, I went to everything possible, no matter whether it was financially difficult or inconvenient, because finally I had some control over not being "left out" of things. I craved being connected, being included. I still do.
You see why adultery hit me so below the belt, don't you? It's the ultimate abandonment, disconnect, being left out. And my husband was the one person I unconditionally trusted, which was a first for me. Regardless of what was going on in our dysfunctional marriage, I never worried about infidelity. Never. He was my rock. I would have laughed in your face had you suggested it to me. I actually did laugh when it was first mentioned to me as a reason he may have said we needed to separate. Ha ha
My early life set me up for this devastation to be the very thing that sent me over the edge. And it damn near did.
But.
There was enough providence in place to pull me back. Not without grave errors on my part, acting out of emotions, and flailing madly for a bit. I have to tell you though, it's so much better to be wide awake than sleepwalking through your life.
I am oddly thankful for the chance to figure this out, wrestle with my God, my beliefs, my past. I'm learning so much.
After all I've been through already? This is going to take me down? Please. He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world. Bring it on.
Should He Stay or Should He Go Now? If He Stays There Will Be Trouble, If He Leaves...
The obstacle is the path -Zen proverb Okay. So let's say your whole life as you know it is over.
Ended abruptly.
Bam.
And friends abandon you. Avoid you as if your situation might be contagious. Or perhaps being associated with you would be frowned upon. People you've spent most of your time with, worked closely with for years.
And also your wife. You find out she's betrayed you by turning you in to your higher-ups without confronting you first (very non-Matthew 18, and shame on her). Would it have changed the outcome? You don't acknowledge that it would have, but it still was wrong. Plus, she sent copies of your adulterous emails to friends, during the dark times. Very wrong. Betrayed and exposed. Wife = not safe.
And then, in the darkest days of your life, your phone does not ring.
Christians, who teach and preach to love each other, hate the sin not the sinner, forgive and walk with others, ignore you. You scare them somehow. They cannot overcome their own discomfort and reach out to you.
Going to church on Sunday becomes "Running the Gauntlet"
This goes on for over a year. It is painful. It is ongoing. People assume you are over it by now. Everyone else has moved on. Any positive change is slow, and fraught with setbacks each time you think you may be getting your head above water.
You pass the entrance to your former workplace each day. You dread going to the grocery store, the pizza place, McDonald's. Because every fcuking day you see someone who knows you. Someone you worked for, or someone who worked for you. Someone who knows your secret shame now public. Even people you didn't work with, you wonder Do they know? Do they judge?
But you rely on God loving you, as best you can, when other 'tangible' people do not. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Life is hard.
Then another blow rocks you, from a former co-worker that inadvertently sets you back again.
Can you keep living here? In this small town where you inwardly cringe each day, anticipating another blow to your heart? Is God trying to teach you something? Do you think perhaps by now you get it, thank You God, You can stop with the pain now? Or there is more bending of the knee to be done? It's very confusing. And exhausting.
Is it okay to think about moving away from here? Finding a job elsewhere? When previously, you loved this town, this home, this school system, this life? Your children are content beyond belief, protected in a God-provided bubble of loving family and friends. Is it selfish? Or is it a necessary step for rebuilding yourself?
You are tired. You need affirmation. You love your children. You are a good and decent person, whose one bad decision detonated the blast that destroyed everything.
Do you stay? Do you go? Do you trust any decision you make ever again?
It is when things all around you seem to be going to hell in a handbasket, the wind is blowing, the rain is falling and the debris is crashing into you...and yet you stand there - looking - looking THROUGH the wind trying to see to the other side of the storm...because that is what you know is coming...the manifestation of your faith.
Restoration
You feel like a candle in a hurricane Just like a picture with a broken frame Alone and helpless Like you've lost your fight
But you'll be alright
Cause when push comes to shove You taste what you're made of You might bend, till you break Cause its all you can take On your knees you look up Decide you've had enough You get mad you get strong Wipe your hands shake it off
Then you Stand, Then you stand
Life's like a novel With the end ripped out The edge of a canyon With only one way down Take what you're given before its gone Start holding on, keep holding on
Everytime you get up And get back in the race One more small piece of you Starts to fall into place
When I started this blog last year, I had the intent of telling 1) The Story of Me and 2) why I started this introspection: the bomb blast of the adultery. My husband was amazing, I think: in the middle of his own pain and mistrust, he agreed to start sharing his part of our story here - since our perspectives are so different on separate sides of the blast.
We both had gaping wounds, each inflicted by the other. Both. Of. Us. I cannot emphasize this enough. Gaping, bloody ones with jagged edges. The kind of wounds that have to heal from the inside out, and will not knit together in a pretty thin line.
We were trying to process our new-to-us lives the best we knew how, while walking around like those zombies from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. We were in counseling together. We talked more, instead of just the necessary running-the-household-and-raising-kids conversations. There was guarded effort toward a better marriage on both our parts. We were not moving very fast, but there was wee snail movement toward a different and better relationship.
We each bemoaned the fact that I'm doing the best I can ... I'm doing all I can do ... Our counselor called bullsh!t on that right quick-like. We were each doing what we were willing to do at that point in time, but we were not doing everything we could have done for each other. Doing so would have involved a leap of faith that would cause extreme discomfort for each of us, considering our FOO and individual baggage.
Relational intimacy was hard for us in the best of times, much less in an aftermath of emotional gore like we were experiencing. Therefore, we wanted better, but could not/would not make the leap to getting it.
It's akin to an analogy I heard about faith in God; I think this was a Frank Peretti anecdote. He spoke about believing in God in the same way you believe in that chair across the room. Yes, that's a chair, it has four legs and a seat. Looks sturdy.
Yes, but will you go SIT in it?
You can lip-service all day, and intellectually drone on about the engineering of the chair and how it is structured to hold you up. But when the rubber hits the road, will you go over there and trust it to hold your weight?
There's the test, I think. And while I failed it for most of my life, I'm seeing how not sitting in the chair, from a place of relative "safety" across the room, is ultimately not in my best interest. Comfortable is not working.
I need to leap. I need to sit in the chair and trust it to hold me up. God is big enough to hold me and my baggage. He won't drop me. I know that intellectually. I do believe it. But I haven't walked over to sit in the chair. I haven't leapt in my faith. Shame on me.
I didn't leap in my marriage relationship, pre- or post-bomb. I waited to see if it was safe. I'll step here, if you'll go first. If you will, I will. Oddly enough, our relationship together started as a testimony to leaps of faith, of love. Probably the first and only time either of us stretched like that, before or since. And doing so rewarded both of us. It's astounding, in retrospect, how love moved us big time. Mightily.
Then it got less and less comfortable to make big steps. Always glancing out of our peripheral vision at each other: what's he/she doing? because if he/she's not making an effort to [whatever], i'm not stepping out by myself. Ugh. It's exhausting to look to someone else to guide your steps (or your non-steps).
Eventually we quit sharing our hearts at all. Married to a relative stranger. Familiar only in the routine of life, but not where it counts. Ya'll know.
Do I need to be looking to another person to guide my steps? No. I need to look away from the other side of the bed and look up. That's where my hope is. I'm just now figuring that out in a real way, not just a yeah, i know that kind of way.
When my husband was actively posting here, and we were routinely discussing our relationship together IRL, it was okay to blog the adultery and stories about him - or at least fairer. And while I hope it isn't always the case, he no longer posts his story/firsthand wisdom here, and we don't discuss Big Picture Issues daily. Because of that, it seems less 'okay' to blog about those things currently. I could be wrong, but we'll go with it for now.
I do want to tell you more about my husband as a person, what made me love him from the get-go. What contributes to why I still can. Just so you don't know him only as 'the adulterer'. Because that's not fair, and not who he is. I've posted a lot about my pain, because, hello, it is very real (see above reference to jagged wounds). But so is his.
I don't intend to go down the rabbit holes of my marriage and adultery specifically as the Main Plot Point to my blog. That's not to say I won't talk about either, or both, in relation to my story, or throw some lyrics into the mix that mean something to me personally. But I have a plethora of my own issues to work through, back stories of crazy-making and poor judgments that contributed to my unique chaos, and eventually helped lead to problems in my marriage. That's what I intended to do initially, and I hope to get back on track. Stay tuned.
Okay, let's pause from the bad drama and let me share some of the best kind of drama.
This is probably the most awesome how-I-met-my-husband stories ever, and it actually parallels The Husband and myself in a few places: mainly the explosive lightening bolt between us, what do we do with all this sudden emotion, and the secret wedding (drugs and immediate sex, not so much, but wow a great story).
OMGosh, I read this in the wee hours of the morning and just wanted to laugh, cry, and throw up all at once. I went to bed with some tears, happy memories, and hope.
Then I wake up to comments and emails flying all over Stepford. Never a dull moment.
I'm guilty as charged.
I have no excuses for the dig (a new step for me; no deflecting, it's my fault). My emotions hit "publish" ahead of my best judgment.
I apologize publicly to The Husband, who is also a great catch.
Look at your marriage problem as a Goliath in your life. Be like a David, you will defeat the enemy. Don't fear. Our Mighty Awesome God WILL, WILL, WILL, come through for you. No matter what the situation is, God will come through for you.
If it looks BAD, IMPOSSIBLE, UNFIXABLE, DISTASTEROUS, DEAD, these are things our God specializes in. Let it be bad, God can fix it. Let it seem like it is impossible, yes, He can fix it. Let it seem unfixable or disastrous, these too, He can fix. Friends, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, is hard for God. Believe this - NOTHING, NOTHING IS HARD FOR GOD. He will do it for you. Don't worry about it. Give it to Him.
Believe God can change it. All things work together for good. God can use bad things and turn it into good. Believe this.
Way back before I had children, I was introduced to a kids' book by Max Lucado about creatures called Wemmicks. I only read the entire book one time, about mmmm...8 or 9 years ago?.... but completely remember the concept.
These little Wemmick creatures walked around and put 'stickers' on each other: a red dot for negative, a gold star for positive. So these guys would be walking around with lots of negatives and/or positives, and would be judged by how others saw them.
One Wemmick walked around with no stickers on him. The others were mystified. They would try to put red dots or gold stars on him, but they slid off of him. Wouldn't stick. This one guy did not care about how others saw him, because he knew Who Made Him, and how special he was to his Maker, so nothing 'stuck' to him. That's the nutshell version. I never forgot it.
The same concept works in our lives, with a twist.
The adultery plastered red dots all over me, and I looked down at them and felt completely unworthy as a woman, person, wife, YouNameIt. I felt like one big heartbroken Loser.
But in the midst of it all there were God McNuggets - i.e. gold stars - scattered around. Gifts of hope in the middle of the deepest despair. But they didn't stick, and I needed them to. I focused on the red dots, not the gold stars. And I lashed out of from a place of hurt and loss of control.
Why do we believe the worst about ourselves? Why, when I am thinking about a particular car, that is mainly what I see. For example, the new Toyota FJ Cruiser. I dig this car, and now I see it everywhere because it's what my internal radar tracks. Same with negative self-images. I heard second-hand a few weeks ago "If she does find herself single, she would be an amazing catch" and I immediately pfffft'd that comment. Because, hell, if I was such an amazing catch wouldn't The Husband know it? He's a smart guy. Maybe I am a great catch in the wrong net?
