Wrapping Up 2017

Man, I can hardly believe 2017 is coming to an end. I can hardly believe the turmoil of 2016 and early 2017 feels like a settled storm, long past. The ship may have been lost to the storm, but not a single life was lost.

God redeems our pain in the strangest ways. I am always humbled by how he works. I’ve had the opportunity to speak into the lives of other marriages, which terrifies and excites me simultaneously.

I’ve also had the unusual opportunity to make friends with one of the women my husband was having an emotional affair with. I’ve been able to encourage her in her journey, and be a sounding board as she faces trials of her own. Sometimes I’m taken back by the striking similarities between her and I.

I am looking forward to 2018, and I have high hopes and great expectations for what the New Year will mean for our family. Ah, but I shall not get ahead of myself. Christmas is still a few days away and I am looking forward to the joyous expressions on the faces of my sweet children. I cannot wait to surprise my husband with a gift, or to make a delicious dinner.

More than all of that, I am thankful for a time of year that reminds me just how much God gave, how much He loves, and to focus on Christ. I am humbled by what this season means, and for all it reminds us of.

Until next time!

Numb

I’ve been meaning to come here for days now. Weeks, really. We had an upswing that lasted a while, and I wanted to share with you that despite the pain and hurt of a year ago, our marriage was progressing.

But I can’t write that story tonight, because while we rode the wave up, we failed to see the rocks we were being carried in to – how could we have seen them? We didn’t know the stir that was coming.

This month marks 1 year since my husband created an alternate profile on social media and reached out to multiple women for … a place to vent … support … comfort … because at 7 months pregnant with our 7th child (3rd “together”, we’re blended”) I wasn’t attentive enough for his tastes and he needed someone to talk to.

This year, someone created an alternate profile and tried to reach out to him. This stirred the pot and the ensuing storm is brutal. We’re under enough stress with our business that added stress is just almost too much.

I’m hurting and I’m lonely and I feel like I need to cry but the tears just aren’t coming. There is no fuel left for the fire. I am down and out and instead of the clawing, desperate feeling that my world wouldn’t be right if we didn’t work this out, I feel numb. Indifferent, even. Even my dreams are of me alone.

It almost seems more natural to be alone and facing a sense of loneliness than to share a bed with someone and feel a million miles apart. I don’t know how to bridge the gap. I don’t know how to bring calm.

I can tell his anxiety is on overdrive, and he has vehemently defended and denied the things this fake profile said happened. But I can’t help be feel betrayed all over again, or more deeply betrayed. I can’t shake the idea that there is a sliver of truth to the messages sent.

I don’t know why I let any one make me feel small or insignificant. This isn’t the first time I’ve done so. But I am tired of it. I kind of realized I don’t want to do all of the chasing. I’m right here. If you want to share life with me, then share. Open up. Communicate. Ask questions. Invest.

And if you want to be roommates, then I’ll pass you in the hallway on my way to chase my kids, or my writing, or photography.

Maybe that’s why the tears won’t come and I just feel sort of numb. Maybe the desperate, raw emotionality that made me feel weak at the thought of being alone has grown up and matured. Maybe I know that alone isn’t the worst thing to be.

Until next time,

Me.

Kind Words

Dear Husband,

Your kind words breathe life into my heart. When you take the time to speak sweetly to me, your words light up the dark places. I’ve been down lately, and I don’t know why. But in an instant, one sweet message from you lifted me up and gave me hope.

I feel renewed today and I can see the good stuff around me with a little more clarity. I don’t have such a dreadful sense that you’re wandering once again. Thank you for taking the time to send such a meaningful message. I know words of affirmation is not your love language. I appreciate you stepping outside of your box to speak my love language.

We’re doing alright, my dearest. We’re doing alright.

Love,

Your Wife

A Breath of Fresh Air

Dear Husband,

I am thankful we got to go to dinner last night. It was nice to look across the table and watch you. I must admit, I’m slightly jealous of your phone, which seemed to occupy a majority of your attention. Welcome to 2017, right? I understand the work phone took some of your attention, and we have to work. 

I’d like to find time to do something in the near future. I miss when we pursued shared activities and when we talked more freely. I never knew it could really take this much effort to maintain a connection with another person. I often wonder if they day in day out being involved in many similar things and sharing a home causes us to think things are okay when really we are growing apart?

I miss the days when you asked questions and checked in to see how the day was going. I miss the days when you would send sweet messages that made my heart flutter. We seemed to regain some of that in the fall last year but it has faded once more.

Help me keep our love alive. Let’s grow our marriage garden and deepen our relationship.

Love,

Your Wife

Connecting

I feel like I might drown in my worry when we don’t connect, don’t talk, and don’t spend time together. The worry rises and I can’t keep myself from wondering if there is someone else…again.

When we connect, talk, spend meaningful time together, however, it has the opposite effect. I can see the shining sun, I can hear the birds, and I can delight in you, in us. I have a renewed sense of security in our relationship and I can think forward to the future – even dream about the beautiful years ahead of us.

The hard part is figuring out how to connect deeply, regularly. Especially since you aren’t the deeply connecting type, and I wither without it. I don’t want to cause you to live miserably because I drain you emotionally. I don’t want to live drained, either.

I try to remember times we connected well-  like over the summer when we picked up the tow trucks, or in the fall when we picked up the geldings. Selling them was more than just the squashing of my dreams and part of what drives me to work so hard. Selling them was saying goodbye to a piece of what we did together and relegating those days that made me feel valuable and important to just a speck in my memory.

I long to know you deeply but my fractured heart seems to guard against retaining too much, remembering too much, feeling too deeply. I don’t want to mourn any more loss between us. I cannot stand the thought of missing you any more deeply. So I pull back. Even knowing that pulling back won’t do us any favors and I’ll ache deeply nonetheless, it seems the only self protective thing I can do.

But you’re not the enemy and you’re not foe. Your mistakes are forgivable, even if it’s taking me some time to get there. 

I need you to push when I can’t and I need you to draw me in when I pull back. I want to feel pursued. I want to feel like you would miss me, too. I need some initiative on your part. Can you think of ways to make us a priority, ways to connect, ways to have fun together? Sometimes I feel like the only one with ideas for us, and often I feel like you don’t like the ideas I find.

I’m still here. I’m still trying.

Things that Change Things

Some life events are so monumental that they change things in a never-go-back kind of way. Often what they change is how we see someone, or the world around us. Often times it is the change of our perception that is the hardest to learn to work around and live with. For instance, if a major event causes a shift that no longer allows us to blindly believe the best about someone, and we are faced with the reality of major betrayal on their part, often times that is the biggest hurdle to reaching a healing place in a relationship.

Our lenses often provide the hue a relationship needs to flourish, or the very hue that strangles the very life from the relationship. That is my lot in life.

I used to believe the very best about my husband. I used to believe he was selfless, caring, and had my best interests in mind. Through a string of suffocating events, I’ve come to see things much, much differently.

Secrets, hiding, lying to me broke the little bit of trust I’d learned to offer. Having an online affair with at least 3 women caused me to see him as a womanizer, which I’d never considered him to be before. Pushing me around in a heated moment made me see him as an aggressor and antagonist. His unwillingness to give up any of his activities for the budget, while simultaneously villain-izing my hobby and watching me sell my horses and trailer made me realize that he is not all that selfless. This altered hue, these broken glasses, make it hard to face the days together. Sometimes I want to scream and run away. Sometimes I stomp my feet and declare that this is my family I’m fighting for.

I want to go back to the way I saw it all before. I want to go back to enjoying your sense of humor instead of feeling like everything is a put down. I want to watch you walk into the room with hopeful anticipation that you’re going to come kiss me. I want to be sad when we part ways, longing for you to come back, or eagerly racing to return myself. But that’s the trouble with time and events, there is no going back. There is no returning to what once was. I have to learn to live with what is. Sometimes it’s about learning to love where I am, and watering the grass, and making it beautiful. Sometimes it’s about learning to let go because no amount of water is going to make anything grow where the grass has been burned.

The Battle for My Mind

Dear Husband,

I see your discouragement when I get down, again. I see your frustration when something triggers my doubt and questions. I’ve tried to tell you how hard I’m fighting for us, but this is a battle for my mind that I can’t seem to convey. I have to fight to stay ahead of the wave of thoughts and doubts and fears. I have to fight to focus on the good you are doing. If I give in to what is easy, bitterness will overtake us. 

I don’t like what you chose to do. I don’t think it’s fair, and it really gets me when I think about how hard it is for me vs. how easy it seems for you. I feel slighted when you make a comment about having to deal with me dealing with your affair.

It’s not so bad as it was 6 months ago. I don’t have to be as cautious with my thoughts. Seeing the picture you used on thsr fske profile really rocked the boat, that’s probably why I am here writing. I keep praying for anything done in secret to be made known. I keep asking God for the grace for this path. His grace has gotten us this far. 

I am trying to leave last year, and the trauma of it, behind us, but I need you to be proactive in making our lives clean, fresh, renewed. I look forward to the day when trust is regained, but until then, you must be patient with me. You broke this part of us, and I’m doing all the work I can for this battle for my mind. You have to do your part.

Please don’t leave me alone to win this war. I didn’t start it on my own and if I have to battle alone, then I may as well live alone. 

Earnestly Trying,

Me

It’s Not the Blanket

In fact, it’s never been the blanket. My logical brain knows the blanket never wronged anyone – me or you, or otherwise. Plus, it was a gift from before we were together. Surely you have the right to that. And the notion that I should throw it away? No, thanks. I won’t ever bear the blame for tossing your prized possessions. That’s not who I am.

But it’s what the blanket stands for, what it reminds me of, that caused me such grief. If I may explain…

That blanket represents the fact that I wanted you first and most, and you kept me on the back burner. Sure, we laugh that you said you just wanted your divorce to be final but the truth is, you were more interested in a couple of other people. I was just an option.

This is my bad. I should have guarded my heart a little more carefully, and I probably should have listened to the people around me that were seeing the situation more clearly. I saw something great in you, a light, a drive, ambition. I knew you were more than your circumstances. I still should have never allowed myself to be just an option.

That blanket represents the lies you tell to protect yourself. I wonder though, are those lies to protect you these days, or are they such a habit you don’t even know how to tell the truth? The stories that change, the small details you twist. You haven’t been trustworthy, but you’ve blamed me for not being trusting. It’s hard to trust someone who doesn’t speak truthfully.

That blanket represents priorities – and how I am not one of them. It reminds me that you have picked to mislead and deceive me, to hide women behind my back, and string me along, and for what reason? That’s what I keep asking myself. If I’m not important enough to prioritize, and if those friendships are worth so much, then why do you stick around? Why do you continue to drag me through the muck and mud? You don’t have to stay.

I patted that blanket like a pet yesterday. I gave it permission to just be a blanket and to stop holding all of the things that I get hung up on. I will continue to pray that what is done in secret will be made known. I will continue to pray for conviction. I will pray for my Daddy to protect my fragile heart, and to show me how to love you without continuing to be hurt by you. I will practice being steadfast in the wake of trouble and turmoil. Part of me thinks you just need someone to stick by through the nasty parts so you can grow into who God purposed for you to be. Part of me thinks I’m still trying to believe the best about someone who keeps giving me their worst.

I Wanted a Best Friend, Not a Bandaid

I had high hopes for marriage. I thought getting married meant having a best friend for life. I thought it meant talking in the dark for hours on the weekends. I thought it meant sharing hopes, dreams, successes, failures, and all the life sends with someone. I thought it meant having someone to hold and be held by every night.

I see marriage as a holy union, a gift from God, and something that should be set apart and valued above all other earthly pursuits. I envisioned my husband holding my hand and praying boldly over us, over me, over our endeavors. I envisioned him leading us boldly into the opportunities God presented. I pictured us serving our church and community together.

I saw us sitting face to face in the middle of our bed, talking, discussing, sharing, praying, growing together – closer with each passing day. I wanted to be a wife more than just about anything else in this world. I didn’t have a clear career path in mind – there are a million jobs I can see myself doing to make a living. I did want to be a mom, but I always wanted to be a wife more.

Well, here I am married and it is so little like I dreamed. I wanted a best friend but I have a roommate. We pass by each other a few times a day and share our living space. Occasionally we share a meal. But there is no pursuit these days. Nothing resembles romance between us. No woo-ing of my hopelessly girlish heart. I may act tough and I may roll with the guys pretty well, but I want rose petals and candlelight and a bath big enough for two sometimes.

I wanted a best friend to share this lonely life with, but you’re more like a bandaid these days. This life is lonely so often, and I thought marriage was meant to take the edge off that loneliness. Maybe I was mistaken, because I’m still lonely. You’re like a bandaid. We pass by each other just often enough, we text just often enough, we share just enough to kind of cover the loneliness, but it’s still there. I feel it when the TV is on and we say nothing. I feel it when we stare at our phones and say nothing. I feel it when an exchange of words is just muttering something about the clutter or what’s next on the calendar.

I asked God what I’m supposed to learn in this season, but I haven’t found the answer. A friend said to me that we have to learn that God is enough, and I wonder if I was unrealistic in my hopes and dreams for marriage. I have poured into our relationship in hopes to see us grow closer and stronger together, but the more I pour, the emptier things seem. You just seem so far away and I don’t know how to turn things around.

Bandaids don’t last forever, eventually they peel away and fall off. I can’t help but wonder if we’ll eventually part ways, or if we’ll just be roommates forever because it makes sense financially and for the kids and it’s not like we have a bad or ugly life together. It’s not like we fight all the time, or even disagree much. Maybe hoping for a blissful union of deep intimacy and unmatched connection just isn’t how it happens for everyone.

Maybe I have to learn to let Jesus be enough and to let Him ease my loneliness. Maybe this aching loneliness will ease as time passes, and maybe we can comfortably be roommates. Maybe I think too much. Maybe some of these feelings stem from you investing more in another woman than in me. Maybe it won’t feel like this forever.

Reduced

I hate what I’ve been reduced to mentally. This constant wondering about your secrets. How many secrets are there? How deep do they go? To what length have you gone, and will you go, to keep things from me? Are there things, other than women, that you’ve kept (or will keep) from me?

I learned about a fun little app last night, and enjoyed goofing off with my sister on it. But it hit me like a mac truck that this is such a great cheating app. Everything deletes – on its own – after you open it. Can’t be accused of intentionally hiding stuff if the app does it for you automatically. How scandalous that someone created an app like this. I wonder if the creator is an habitual cheater, too.

I look back and wonder how many times did I not catch you. I look forward and wonder how many more times will it happen. It suffocates the now. I haven’t been snooping or looking for things to catch you in the middle of, but that doesn’t help me at all. I just wonder what awful things you do with that freedom.

For a brief moment it felt freeing to not snoop, to acknowledge that I cannot control you. That you either want to be here, or you don’t. But the fact that you’re willing to seek satisfaction outside of our marriage instead of fixing it or ending it, just made me angry. You’re always saying at tv characters and movie plots that there is no excuse for cheating, or “she gave him a reason” and that people should end their broken relationship instead of adding cheating to the list. But you added it to the list. And what reason did I give you? The best you’ve been able to say is that I was grouchy. 7 months pregnant with our 3rd child together, my 5th pregnancy, and the 7th kiddo to become part of this family. And you take offense that I’m grouchy and seek solace with another woman.

I am reeling from the way you handled yourself. I want to scream and kick and go back to the moment before you decided to do this and slap some sense into you. When I’m not angry, I am deeply sorry that I was grouchy. But then I get angry all over again and I still don’t understand how we got there. But here we are.

I’m trying to put one foot in front of the other with grace. God keeps reminding me to serve, even when it’s hard. Some days, serving isn’t so hard. I’m your wife, I committed to love and serve you. But there are other days that just calling and asking if you want a coffee feels like torture.

I hate that I’ve been reduced to this. I want to be confident and to know that I’m worth sticking it out for – even when I’m grouchy. And maybe that’s why our counselor said I need to work on me and what I love and finding that place that says no matter what happens to us, I’ll be okay. I’m trying.

I’m trying to get up and get my shower and to talk a little kinder to myself. I’m trying to stop the wondering when it starts and remind myself that the front door is right there, if that’s what you feel you need. I want our relationship. I want us. I want you. So I’m trying my hardest to continue to pour into this marriage. I see your effort some days. Some days you rub your warm hand across my shoulder and lean a little closer and there are moments that pass between us that are flirtatious. Those make me smile. I need those moments and I cling to them because they give me hope for our future. Maybe I won’t hurt all the days between now and the end of our lives.

But I woke up consumed this morning. Consumed by the grief and the anger and the longing for what should have been. Consumed by insecurities and the hating myself and the wishing I’d told you to take your **** and go as soon as I found your secrets.

I didn’t focus on Jesus first this morning. I didn’t pray first this morning. I didn’t ask God to be enough this morning. I wish there was a tool that didn’t hurt as much as brokenness, but that was as effective as brokenness at making me lean on Him. Because quite frankly, brokenness sucks. It isn’t fun and it isn’t pretty. But He is making me and molding me and calling me.

So here I am Lord. I am hurting and I am raw today. I am angry and I don’t get why all of this had to happen. Help me. Still my heart and my mind. Turn my focus back to you. Comfort me and show me that You are enough for me. Always enough for me. No matter what this world throws my way. Thank you for bridging the gap between us. Thank you for Jesus. Keep me soft, Lord. Keep me soft.