my scarlet letter
I still wince every time I say divorce.
Since it’s not finalized yet, it’ll be a while till I say ex-husband. But I’m pretty sure I’m gonna feel queasy the first time I have to say it out loud.
There are words in my now-almost-daily vocabulary that I never imagined saying with any great frequency. I feel like I’m in a John Grisham novel when I say things like my attorney, litigation, and counterclaim. But then I remember it’s not a courtroom drama. It’s my life.
And I just have to shake my head.
The D-word is by far the hardest though.
I feel a shameful sting in the word divorce. I hear the unspoken judgments, like What’s wrong with her that made her husband leave? and She’s used goods and even simply Tsk tsk.
I hear them because my heart has been that condemning of others.
My good Christian upbringing left me judgmental. Pious. Spiritually stuck-up. Without realizing it, I’ve looked down on those who were divorced. I’ve unconsciously viewed it as the ultimate failure. Practically unpardonable—not in God’s eyes but in the Church’s.
And now here I am, walking around with a red D on my chest for the world to see. And I feel not only the weight of others’ judgment, but also the historical weight of my own.
How horribly arrogant I’ve been!
I hope to someday be able to say divorce without hanging my head in shame, or feeling the need to justify it with an explanation, or wincing as I hear it megaphone my insufficiencies. I hope someday my heart fully believes that my divorce doesn’t define me and that I am enough because He is enough.
In the meantime, the D-word will remind me of my own need for repentance.
listen up, guys
Men—
Can I talk to you for a minute? I’ll be quick, I promise.
The way you love your wife shows her the way Christ loves her.
Too much pressure for a fallen man?! I didn’t say it. God did. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church…”
Your wife will believe and experience Christ’s love for her to the degree that she believes and experiences your love for her. God can miraculously work in anyone’s heart and life, and women with very ungodly husbands can certainly still experience intimacy with Christ. But God puts the responsibility on you to show your wife how much He loves her.
Help your wife believe that Christ values, treasures, and adores her today.
[From a post on this day last year,
which may read a little differently now that you
know what was going on in my life at the time I wrote it.]
i wish i’d known
I wish I’d known it would be our last hug.
Kiss.
Snuggle.
Hand-hold.
I wish I’d known it would be our last stroll.
Vacation.
Sunset.
Laugh.
I wish I’d known it would be our last everything.
But then again, maybe it’s better that I didn’t.
my heart is tired
The past few weeks have been full of some really great things. But when I landed back in Atlanta last night, I knew I was more than just physically tired. My heart is weary, too. And that frustrates me. I’ve spent time doing things I love with people I love, and yet… my heart has settled back into this valley-like funk. Hmph.
The past two years have destroyed the holidays for me. I hope they get redeemed at some point, but right now they just feel… hard. And my eyes can’t help but fill as I let my thoughts wander to the days ahead (and the days past).
I wish I could fast-forward through the next six weeks. A time that used to be my favorite of the whole year now just amplifies my loneliness and heartache. I hate it.
I’m already tired of it and it hasn’t even really started yet.
I know all the things I’m supposed to do to pull myself up by the bootstraps and get through this. I know. I know. I KNOW!
I’m simply too tired (inside and out) to do it right now.
Thankfully “God helps those who helps themselves” isn’t in the Bible.
While I don’t have it in me to do anything right now, I’m hoping that God will show up and once again do what He does best:
Rescue the helpless.
now i get it
This week last year was hell on earth. I honestly don’t know how I managed to stay standing breathing.
I’d finally found irrefutable proof of my husband’s affair—evidence I knew he wouldn’t be able to deny or push back on me. But for a long list of complicated reasons, I had to wait until the end of the week to confront him with it. I had interns who deserved the best debriefing possible. And I had Thanskgiving to cook for 30-some-odd people.
So I said nothing to him about it.
I told only my Kitty, and her frequent phone calls and texts got me through the seemingly never-ending week. Somehow I led debriefing sessions, prayed over my beloved interns, drove 16 hours home, cooked for a small army, and hosted a holiday meal. All with evidence of my husband’s lengthy unfaithfulness tucked in my back-pocket.
And the morning after Thanksgiving, I pulled the cord.
The weight of that week—that I couldn’t express or let out last year—is weighing on me now. And it’s crushing me. If my sweet friend were here, I’d cry it out on the bathroom floor yet again.
But still I know, just like a year ago, I will keep standing. Keep breathing. Even when I don’t know how. And even when I don’t want to.
God, You are Redeemer. Redeem even this.
thank God!
It’s really hard for me to remain thankful in all things. In moments of disappointment, hurt, anger, frustration, impatience, whatever, it’s often impossible difficult to lift my eyes and say, “I will thank You anyway.”
And as if that weren’t a sufficient enough challenge, I’m not just instructed to be thankful in all things. I’m commanded to be thankful for all things.
“Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything…”
Sigh.
That means I need to live from a heart that readily says—
- Thank You for my husband’s infidelity.
- Thank You for his decision to leave me.
- Thank You for this loneliness.
- Thank You for yet another high-pain day.
- Thank You for the uncertainty and the unknowns.
I need to start thanking God for my “all things“. Even before they work together for good.
Thanking Him even for what hurts and confuses me, develops trust. It helps me acknowledge that He’s in control, and that He has even this—whatever this may be—in His hands. Thanking Him for what makes my heart ache, builds my faith.
And my faith sure needs building.
But, to be honest, I’m nowhere near there yet. I don’t know when I’ll be able to say with a sincere and genuine heart, “Thank You even for this.”
But this week I am going to start praying, “Lord, I want to want to thank You, even for this…”
…and it scares the crap out of me
If you’ve been around the Grit for any length of time, you know that trust has always been a struggle for me. A struggle I’ve continued to wrestle with, though, because I know it’s worth the fight.
Now throw my husband’s unfaithfulness into the mix and give it a good shake. Trust is really hard for me right now, at a very core and basic level.
I’m finding it harder than ever to trust others and even God. But the uncertainty runs deeper than that.
I no longer trust myself.
For a year and a half, I was told that my gut instinct was wrong. It was said over and over and over again that what I knew to be true, wasn’t.
Eventually truth was exposed. And even though I had been right all along, any final remnants of confidence had already been evicted from my heart and self-doubt had set up camp.
And now I’m left doubting my intuition. I distrust my ability to perceive what’s going on beneath the surface.
The line between discernment and paranoia is blurry. When I sense something is wrong or just “off”, I make myself sick wondering if what I’m feeling is valid or if I’m just being hypersensitive.
And I’m not quite sure what to do with that.
I need to learn to trust myself again.
But I don’t know how.
one year later
I flew into Columbus, Ohio from South Africa last December, just ten days after my husband admitted his affair.
And as I drove into Columbus last night, almost an exact year later, I was overwhelmed by all that’s happened in the last 365 days. Things turned out so unbelievably different than I ever would have imagined.
A year ago, I came to Columbus with my heart set on restoration. Instead, everything unraveled out from underneath me.
I’m back here now visiting my friend Kitty, but I’m also facing old ghosts.
And I realized my heart is still set on restoration.
It just looks different than I thought it would.
my deepest fear
I’m deeply afraid of being a burden. Yet sadly, I’ve lived most of my life feeling as though I am one. And I hate it.
The fear is so deep, so strong, that it’s shaped who I am.
Putting my own wants and needs before someone else’s, makes me feel like an imposition. And even though I know it isn’t true, part of me still clings to the thought that I can avoid being a burden to others if I put them first.
My fear is the reason for my indecisiveness. It explains my aversion to voice an opinion. It’s why I’m hesitant to assert myself. All of those things are (futile) attempts to keep from feeling like a burden.
It’s a tiring way to live.
The moment I feel burdensome, I start freaking out inside. I hate feeling as though I’ve become work. So I start scrambling. I apologize; I try to fix things; I’ll do just about anything to make things right.
All in an attempt to lighten the load of me.
Because ultimately, my deepest fear is abandonment.
When I start feeling that I’ve become work for someone, my brain (or is it my heart?) tells me they are going to walk away because I’m simply not worth the effort. After all, that’s what my husband did.
Sigh.
I’m tired of living in the chains of my fears. I want to live free. To stop believing lies. To change this lifelong habit of response. To carry myself as though I’m enough.
I am enough because I AM is enough.
And I want my life to reflect that truth instead of the lie I’ve been reflecting for so long.
more painful than adultery
My husband’s affair devastated me. But not as much as his deception did.
For a year and a half, he lied every single day. Not only to me, but also to our team of staff and interns. When I think of the sheer magnitude of dishonesty he used to cover up his unfaithfulness, I can barely breathe.
I wish I could say that the lies stopped when he was caught.
But I can’t.
I think the web of deception grew so thick that he could no longer tell truth from lies. He deceived others so much that he became deceived himself.
It wrecks my heart that he was never forthcoming with the truth. It had to be coerced out of him. Literally.
The day after Thanksgiving, when confronted with undeniable proof, my husband confessed to what he called “an emotional affair”. I knew that wasn’t all it was, so I continued to ask questions and challenge his justifications. Even after I left South Africa for counseling here in the States. And even though he told me my distrust was making it impossible to move forward.
Late one night, while I was here and he was there, I questioned him yet again as we chatted online. And he finally admitted that it was a full-blown affair.
That was a year ago today.
The blatant, ongoing deception hurts far more than the adultery. And it remains the most painful and difficult part of my own journey of healing.
It’s why trust is so shaky.
And why doubt comes so easily.
It’s also why I’ll never stop asking the Lord to help me live a life marked by unshakable integrity.
