Two year update

It’s been two years…in case you are wondering here are the updates:

On the marriage. I truly enjoy our life together. Laughter with our kids. Cooking dinner. Hanging out watching TV because we like all the same shows. Long talks. Hugs. Holding hands. Watching squirrels in the backyard. Household projects. Inside jokes. Dreams. Plans. The marriage part of our marriage is good. Not perfect. We still disagree and frustrations flare. But our day to day life is rich, comfortable and we need each other. We are fully present.

On Mark. He’s different. Softer. Kinder. More open. Willing to try.

On faith. I just had a long conversation at a trade show–as happens with vendors when traffic is abysmally slow. I have no details on his story except that he is divorced and went from a deeply risk-taking-God-directed-life to a very pragmatic faith. And the conversation bothered me. I grappled with it on the plane ride home. I risked everything believing that God asked me to stay. Believing little encouragements like the Stardust movie and the Disney Princess Toothbrush holder. I need those things to be true. It’s like the movie Secondhand Lions. You don’t always have proof that what you trust in is true. But in my case, the story is more beautiful if it is, and I’m living that story…

On me. I’m different. Less sure. More able to embrace that life is messy. That people are messy. I understand pain. I recognize it in others. And though I rarely have the opportunity to share my story, I have deep empathy when others are living it. The crashes still come. Though rare–they are difficult to walk through. And each time, we have to dissect until we get to the core. I wish it were easier. There are still some splinters there working themselves out.

Was it worth it? I’ve hated the pain. The confusion. The searching for answers. The crisis of faith. All of it impossible to measure. Love, forgiveness, hope, a life together, the beauty of Mark’s soul…how do you weight the two against each other? Honestly, if I’d known the full process going in I’m not sure I would have had the strength to stay. But standing here two years later, I’m deeply glad I did. I wish our story were different. I wish Mark had made different choices. (Mark wishes he’d made different choices.) But we took where we were and went from there. It was all we could do. The best part is that we are doing it together.

The Long Road Ahead…

I wish I could give you a “secret formula” to get through this. To speed up the process. Lord knows, I looked for one. Hard. In desperation…

What I can tell you with confidence is that you can come through this and find yourself in a better place than you were before this marriage-ending event.

This year (plus two months at this point) was about failure, betrayal, anger, doubt, fear….but it was also about honesty, discovery, beauty, need, belief and love. The real kind of love. The forever kind.

In the realest sense, “the other woman” is irrelevant. She played out her role in our story, then her chapter was over.

This story is about Mark and I. About putting things back together. About someday holding aged and lined hands…and even–gasp–future grandkids.

I can tell you it will take both of you. If either one of you opts to close up because it gets too hard…becomes bitter, vengeful, desolate…looks for comfort with other partners…then you are done. You start a new story on your own or with someone else. And no one would fault you for taking that path. Especially not me.

But if the two of you are committed to rebuild on what is now “Ground Zero” of your marriage, I want you to know that it is possible.

This story isn’t going to have a Disney movie ending. But it can end deep, real, and satisfyingly beautiful. You will find yourself stripped to your essence and connecting on that level. Something not everyone gets to do…

This road is one that few travel, but it can also get you to places that few get to go.

The Whole Trust thing

I wrote earlier that trust was one of the last things to be repaired.

Over the past several weeks I’m coming to a heart place of understanding that though it makes no logical sense to ever trust Mark again, that I can trust the One who asked me to stay.

And that’s been the craziest thing.

Other friends who have been through this have divorced and gone on to lead happy lives have talked about God being with them every step of the way providing comfort and hope. My experience has been different. I didn’t get to pack up my pride and move on. Staying requires a grace and humility I didn’t know the depths of until now.

I’ve never experienced emotional pain like I have this year. Never experienced that depth of betrayal. And the knowledge of it scared me to the core. It’s hard to live life fearless when you know what it feels like to be that hurt.

If I really believe there is a God who loves me passionately and that He asked me to stay, then things really will be okay. I can trust Him even on days when I’m afraid to trust Mark.

Advice from a friend

I asked a friend once who had been through a major betrayal (not an affair but equally devastating) how he “got over it.”

His answer surprised me. He said, “It came down to who I wanted to be.”

This week, a friend of mine who divorced this year was “toasting her husband with piss and vinegar” on her Facebook status, while another who exited with more grace than you could possibly imagine after her husband’s affair has made a beautiful new life.

I think the same contrast is possible if you choose to stay. You can stay and be angry/bitter/hurt as a daily reminder of your spouse’s failure, or you can stay and love them again as the vibrant, courageous, beautiful person you are. (Yes, if you stay you are definitely courageous.)

I want to clarify that I would never advocate staying with someone who:

1) Had any contact whatsoever with their former affair partner.
2) Continued to tell lies or hide any part of their life.
3) Wasn’t completely, demonstrably committed to me and the marriage. (Had Mark been wishy-washy even a little, it would have been impossible.)

Interesting that in the staying or the leaving, my friend’s advice applies.

Seeing your life

One of the biggest battles this year wasn’t what I believed about the affair, but about how the affair made me view the rest of my life.

It made me feel like a failure.

I’d worked so hard to love my family. To create a place where they would feel love. A home. Why would Mark leave that to find validation somewhere else?

In looking at some old photos yesterday, the poisoning thoughts came in. Was Mark really happy then? Was I?

It’s almost impossible to get through your day if you feel your life is invalid. So how do you not own it?

Mark continually says that this wasn’t about me. That it was about failures and flaws in him. The hard part is in truly believing that. In letting go of my fear and feeling the sunshine that this one tragic event doesn’t color all of the rest of our years.

It occurs to me that most of the battles are with fear and doubt. And maybe, just maybe, now that I think about it…doubt and fear are the enemies of all marriages no matter what the status. Fear and doubt make us put up walls to protect ourselves. Make us define boundaries. Make us make decisions that protect us over our spouse.

If the opposite of fear is love and the opposite of doubt is faith, then love and faith need to be my focus. Love and faith have power. And deep inside I believe they are stronger than doubt and fear.

It’s time I started walking in that.

Where is God in all of this…

Last night, Mark and I went to a class that covered spiritual formation.

As the instructor was talking, he captured it. He described that sense of being connected to God. I know not everybody walks around with that feeling, but I have. Since I was a little girl.

One of the hardest things to deal with this year is that sense of God went missing. Completely.

In fact, most of my struggle over the past few months hasn’t been with Mark. It has been spiritual.

It occurs to me that the Christian tradition I grew up in was transactional in nature. They sold a “perfect life.” Find Jesus and everything will be perfect. And, if it isn’t, you are screwing up.

While sometimes that is true–clearly Mark screwed up causing us both a great deal of pain–but it isn’t always.

So, where has God been in all this and why a little over a year later, can’t I feel that joy and peace that is so Him?

As the instructor talked last night, a small thought planted itself in my head. Here the next morning, it has developed into this: what if I can’t feel God because I was looking for perfect? I wanted Him to cheer me up. To fix it. And, don’t I have the right to expect that? After all, that is what Christianity sold me. “Beauty for ashes, gladness for mourning, peace for despair…” Paraphrase of Isaiah 61:3.

I got quiet today and started looking for God. It occurred to me, I always looked for Him in the joy I experienced before. That sense of purpose, presence and…I can’t find another word, except joy.

What if I missed God because while I was looking for Him to bring joy, He was sad with me. He didn’t come to cheer me up; He came to mourn alongside me. What happened was terrible. It broke so many things on so many levels.

Maybe the goal isn’t to get back to my past concepts of the way things are supposed to be. Maybe the goal is to walk with God to the new place we are going. And maybe I’m going to feel Him being sad with me a little while as we walk.

I’m not talking about depression or despair. I’m talking about mourning.

In any case, after last night’s class, I am focused on just being. Being not as I want to be, but as things really are. Right now. Engaging God in the sadness.

Cardboard Testimonies

A friend sent me a You Tube video this week called, “Cardboard Testimonies.” The premise is that people walked across the stage of their church one Sunday morning with pieces of cardboard. In black marker it had a statement of their life, then when they flipped it over, another statement of what God had done with that.

One woman walked across the stage with her husband. Her sign said, “Diagnosed with MS.” His said something like, “Specialist was an atheist.”

The husband flipped his sign over. “Specialist found God.”

Then she flipped hers. “Worth it.”

In looking at the dramatic changes in Mark this year, I wonder if I could walk across the stage and say truly with my whole heart, “Worth it.”

The pain? The doubt? The uncertainty in myself?

I always thought I would die for my family. But in my head, I thought of that as throwing myself in front of a bullet…which if you think about it doesn’t have a lot of long-term consequences. One heroic event and it’s over.

But staying, and living life, takes daily figuring out.

It appears that there are no road maps for this whole staying thing. I’m having to figure it out as I go.

Finding Faith

Probably the biggest splinter of this year was the damage to my spiritual life. I went from having a very clear sense of God’s presence and His love for me to absolutely nothing at all.

Even as Mark and I went through the healing process, in my quiet moments, there was a deep sense of not being okay. Sometimes on high volume and sometimes on low, but it was always there.

For the past two days, the “not okay” feeling was on high, and I cried bitterly off and on. Then, at some point this morning, I had a realization.

When I learned of the affair…when I read Mark’s e-mails…I felt tricked. The man I believed loved me…didn’t. In fact, one of his e-mails said she was the one true love of his life. He had just married me because she had married someone else.

I can’t explain to you how that invalidates your life and everything in it.

And though Mark has explained over and over that he was just caught up in some ego-driven fantasy of feeling 20 again and none of what he wrote was real, my heart has been slow to believe it.

What I didn’t realize until this morning was how when my marriage was invalidated, my faith was too. After all, if Mark didn’t really love me when it felt like he did, then maybe God didn’t either, and none of that sense of Him was even real.

And that doubt, has ricocheted around like a bullet in my heart tearing it up for over a year.

It occurs to me that faith is the “secret ingredient” to sensing God’s presense and that doubt is its enemy.

These are new thoughts for me. I don’t know what happens from here. The story keeps unfolding…

Another snapshot of the road not taken…

Last night was my niece’s graduation. It was one of those big family events. Everyone was there. Family friends, in-laws, distant cousins…

Chad and DeAnn’s daughters were there too. Their oldest—a close friend of my niece—graduates next week. I got to sit next to their youngest. (We shared my MP3 player during the boring parts.)

It’s an odd thing to get little glimpses into the path you didn’t take.

It occurred to me that their oldest’s graduation won’t have the warm comfort of belonging that my niece’s did. Will they bring their new significant others? Even if they don’t, it isn’t likely that they will be sitting there holding hands and sharing the moment like my brother and sister-in-law did.

Even so, it is possible to navigate family events post-divorce. My biggest concern is for their youngest. She didn’t smile all night except for photos. And even then, it didn’t reach her eyes.

Though I’m not sure I believe in the advice of “staying together for the children,” it occurs to me that they are well worth the emotional investment of at least trying the path of making things right.

Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation

I learned something unexpectedly freeing today.

There is a passage in Matthew I’ve always wrestled with… It is in Chapter 18…

Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.

Have you ever met anyone who was a total doormat? They aren’t usually inspiring people. I guess in the back of my head I sort of thought of this as “the doormat verse.” What I hadn’t considered until today was that my defnition of forgiveness might be wrong.

If you keep reading in the chapter, Jesus tells this story…

“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a day’s wages. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

Though I’d read the story, I never looked at forgiveness before as a releasing of debt.

Today in training, there was a slide that gave the following definition:

Forgiveness has to do with releasing the debt whereas
Reconciliation has to do with restoring the relationship.

Forgivenss lies within the power of the one offended whereas
Reconciliation must be initiated by the offender.

Forgiveness requires no participation from the offender whereas
Reconciliation requires the offender to take full responsibility tfor their acts and then initiate reconciliation with a repentant and contrite heart.

It hit me for the first time that while forgiveness was my responsibility. The work of the reconcilation was Mark’s.

Somehow that lifted a burden off my shoulders. If Mark hadn’t owned the affair and done the work to restore us, I wouldn’t have had to stay. God wouldn’t have asked me to. It was never my “job” to fix what was broken. Mark had to do that. My only job was to “release the debt.” In other words, not to live as if he “owed” me.

It is a continual surprise to me, how we keep getting healed in unexpected pieces. Mark and I talked at lunch today how much this year has been significant for us. How much we’ve grown. How different our lives are.

It’s a beautiful thing.