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.

Grappling with Trust

Back when I was dating in high school and in college, if I got my heart broken I would let myself drown in ice cream for a single day, then pick myself up, put on some lipstick and move on to the next adventure. It wasn’t easy, but it was doable. I was pretty adamant that I wasn’t going to let my joy for life get dimmed by someone else’s lame decision.

I think in the back of my mind, I thought this would be the same. After all, an affair isn’t something you forgive. It is much easier not to. I always thought that if this happened to me, I would pack up, move on, and live a wonderful happy life. Possibly—but not necessarily—with Husband 2.0 who was thoughtful, loving, handsome and independently wealthy.

Staying was something I never considered.

Here, a year later, I’ve wondered why this hasn’t been as easy as it was in high school. At first I thought it was because the wound was deeper. And though that is probably some of it, I wonder if part of the challenge is in the actual staying itself. When you leave, you can take time and heal without ever dealing with the trust issue. After all, you can limit the betrayer’s access to you. You can shake the dust off your feet and go on.

Staying is a different story. Not only do you have to forgive. You also have to learn to trust them again. And trust as an action is a terrible risk.

Of all of the things that have been resolved and healed over the course of the year, this one issue remains. Trust.

Intellectually, I’m fine. We share a bank account. I trust him to take care of the kids. But on a more personal level, it isn’t there. It isn’t the same as that open-hearted-no-reservations-freedom that used to exist.

To Mark’s credit, he’s been consistent. More of an open book than he ever was before. Without that, I wouldn’t even be having this internal discussion…I’d be gone. The girl with the lipstick and chutspa.

So, my question is… Could I learn to trust again the same way I got over breakups in high school, by setting my heart on the wonderful chapter two waiting to be lived? Is that really even possible?

Wish I had a solid answer for this one, but the story is still unfolding…

Unexpected bite

Odd how you can go along finally feeling okay then something unexpected can take you down.

Today while on a social networking site I clicked on one of our family friend’s profile pages and there she was. First the shock of seeing her face hit me. Then, it hit me that she could see mine. Photos of my husband. My kids. All the ways we were connected to this friend. A little window into our lives.

I tried to close the window by asking our friend to remove her. He didn’t. So I closed the window by removing him from our lists.

Somehow it felt good just to be able to do something. To be able to say, ‘no.’ To deny access to our lives. Still, I wish I hadn’t had to “slay” that particular dragon. I told Mark that. That this friend has always been a potential landmine to hurt me since Mark had never told him the truth.

It wasn’t fair that this friend thought I had asked him to do something unreasonable. It wasn’t fair that he might think I was crazy for feeling the way I felt about it.

Mark called this friend and told him the truth. I recognize that was a very brave thing to do.

Then I realized that was a splinter that had been there for a very long time. I had not been able to relax around this friend for over a year. I had feared every interaction. Not consciously, of course. But it was always there.

It isn’t there any more. He knows the truth.

They say it takes about a year…

In going through the affair recovery process, we met of four couples who had been through it and survived. My question to each of them was, “how long?” How long until things are back to normal?

Each of the couples had the same response. They said it took about a year. At the two month mark, my soul screamed at the thought of it taking that long.

I’ve often wondered if it would have been an easier path to walk if we had separated. Instead, Mark and I chose to stay together. Typing this post a year later, I find we are somewhere different than when we started.

The growth and healing that has happened is hard to explain. And because this is the path we chose, I almost can’t imagine any other way. I know not all couples will make it. Nor maybe should they.

An affair is a marriage-ending event. If you stay together, you are working for a miracle. We’re not talking making lemonade from lemons. We’re talking about bringing to life something that’s dead and leaving the shell behind.

All I have to offer you is our story. I sincerely hope that somehow it helps.

Gettting yourself back

The day I learned about the affair, I lost me.

All of my memories of Mark and I became poisoned. I lost the joy that is core to who I am. I lost my creativity. I lost the feeling I had of being safe. I lost my ability to casually interact with other people.

My guess is this happens to others. My best advice in looking over it almost a year later is to say, relax.

It can be disconcerting to lose yourself. I know. But you are still there.

You will get you back. Slowly, and maybe in pieces. Which really sucks since you aren’t the one who did the stuff that broke you in the first place.

Don’t worry about getting back to what was. Just be who you are right now. You will heal. Even if the marriage doesn’t.

It’s a process. And not a fast one.

And that is okay.

On the Loss of Faith

We watched the movie Signs last night with Mel Gibson. Though it came out awhile ago, I had never seen it before.

In the movie, Mel Gibson loses faith and leaves the church after the tragic death of his wife. At the end of it, I wept. I didn’t realize how much of my faith I had lost this year. I really did once believe that God was in control of everything and that I was safe. After the discovery of Mark’s affair I couldn’t believe that anymore. I couldn’t believe a God who loved me would allow me to hurt that much.

In the theophostic training, the trainer said something that had never occurred to me. “Every act of evil has human fingerprints on it.”

Mark chose to do this. And though God didn’t shield me from the pain and suffering Mark’s actions caused, I can see now bits and pieces of God using bad things for good. I can see provision in the man giving me the marriage boot camp card the week before. Provision in my waking up and walking in before the weekend I left to go out of town. (Please understand that I “see” these things. My heart doesn’t quite yet feel them.)

God has used this to expose things in me I didn’t even know were there. Good things, like courage. And bad things like deep childhood pain healed through the theophostic prayer experience (which I would have never sought out if I hadn’t been in pain.)

And then there is the difference in Mark. Over the course of this year God went from being an abstract idea in Mark’s head to being Someone he knows. Mark is a different man now. A better man.

This post doesn’t capture all of it. In fact, I’m probably not even aware of all of it.

More Healing

Sunday was a horrible crash. Though we found the trigger…a misunderstanding and some clippy remarks Mark made in traffic, we didn’t get to the source.

I started questioning if we should even be together.

I lost faith.

The sucky part was that we had already signed up for theophostic training. That Saturday, we went.

The training was amazing. I didn’t know that kind of healing was possible. As the trainer taught us via DVD, memories from the year started flooding me. I set them aside, but they haunted me on the drive home. When we got back, I told Mark and we started praying.

We began with the memory of the night I discovered the affair. I still couldn’t think about that evening without shaking inside. We prayed through it using the techniques we’d just learned…and something amazing happened. God showed up. The lie I still carried from that night was that somehow it had invalidated our marriage. God let me know that I was Mark’s true bride. His only love. God told me He didn’t leave me alone. That the affair hurt Him too. That He had also been betrayed and that he loved both Mark and I deeply.

We prayed through other memories that dealt with beauty. Feeling beautiful is something I’ve struggled with since being a little girl. God told me I was beautiful in a way I could truly own and believe.

We prayed through memories that dealt with fear.

Here’s the thing. With each prayer, the Holy Spirit healed. Real healing. Deep. Miracle kind of stuff.

We have two more training sessions over the next two months which will officially bring us to the one-year mark of Marriage Boot camp.

As this continues I become more comfortable with the fact that healing is a process. As much as I begged God in the early days to come zap me and make me better, He didn’t.

I have to believe He is doing this with purpose. More than that, I have to trust Him.

The Path not Taken

In what I now view as an odd twist, DeAnn and Chad—two of our core couple friends—split this year. The odd part is that their timeline mirrored ours almost exactly. We’ve been married almost exactly as long, and they hit the wall in the same month I discovered Mark’s affair. The key difference is that DeAnn moved out and filed for divorce and Mark told his affair partner he loved his wife.

DeAnn has never been honest about the role her affair partner played in the divorce–not even to herself. And though I believe her that she didn’t cross any physical lines, her split with Chad was due to her emotional affair. Sadly, everyone can see that but her.

Chad and Mark played softball together tonight and Chad shared a story about going to his daughter’s sporting event and DeAnn bringing her affair partner—who she is now openly dating. He talked about how awkward and uncomfortable that was.

In the early days, that was a key crash trigger for me. I couldn’t believe Mark would bring someone else into our family. The natural end to leaving your spouse for the affair partner is family events split in two.

Tonight, Mark held me tight and said he was so grateful we weren’t walking DeAnn and Chad’s path. That he didn’t want to share any of our big family moments with anyone but me.

I was grateful too.

Doing it right

Last night, as Mark and I were running errands I repeated a story Lisa had shared with me that morning about her 20th high school reunion. Her high school sweetheart had asked her to dinner to catch up. She didn’t think it would be right to go alone, so she took a friend with her. (Lisa is married.)

She told how when the friend got up to go to the bathroom, Bob said something that healed a 20 year old hurt for her. By the time her friend came back there was no more discussion. Two minutes and the comment was made, the healing happened and it was done. She said she cried all the way on the plane home amazed at how one sentence from an old love could heal something she didn’t even know hurt. She told her husband about it and he was amazed too.

Mark got very quiet and I suddenly realized the parallel. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t drawing comparisons.”

“No,” Mark replied. “But God did.”

“Lisa is a good woman,” he added. “She did it right.”