I have so enjoyed sharing my life with all of you through this blog, through conversations and messages that have been sparked through this platform. I’ve enjoyed, and ached for you, when hearing about how many of you have been through the same things. I’ve appreciated all of your support, encouragement, and well wishes as I continue to write and share Jesus with you. I want to tell you: none of what you are seeing is me; everything you are seeing is Jesus. He calls you in to the fullness of life with Him just like he called me. Our stories don’t stop at the end of us, and we don’t figure them out on our own. Our steps have been planned from the beginning, we choose to accept that, or we don’t.
In my last blog, I shared the story of my broken marriage- my divorce at the young age of 24. A marriage that began as quickly as it ended, and left two young people searching for how to pick up and move on. Our baby daughter, that we believed would be saved from the trauma of having “divorced parents” since she was "too young to remember" continues to pay for the ways that we were both so selfish. She's accepted Jesus as her Savior, too, and I know there are times that she cries feeling like no one loves her, but Him. Spending every other weekend at between parents feels like she's only a visitor at both places. I remind her that no love matters more than the love of Jesus. My love and her dad's love will always fall short, and she has lives that out as her normal. That hard truth falling heavy on my tender hearted nine year old.
That baby daughter and I, shortly after separating from her father, found solace in the life my husband now, Mark. We worked together and didn’t really know each other well when he asked me for my phone number. I can remember is being right around Easter in 2009- others that he worked with got a "Happy Easter" message from me, and he didn't. He started the conversation with "well, if I had your number..." It’s actually a hilarious story, and while he won’t admit it, he was totally hitting on me (and so cheesy, too!).I was still married when we started dating, trying to hide out in neighboring towns so not to be seen together. Dishonoring marriage seemed to be something that I did well, even when I wanted to blame others for my hurt. I knew full well that dating someone while I was married looked bad, but I didn’t care- because I deserved to be happy.
Honestly, our relationship created more destruction at the beginning than I can bear to admit out loud. There were people who were hurt by our decision to begin dating each other, and we weren’t thinking about anyone but ourselves. Common theme for 2 people who were just pieces of themselves when they met. Mark had been married before, too. I won’t share the details of that here, but know this: neither one of us was relationally, emotionally, or sexually healthy. Neither one of us knew how to be in a mature, committed relationship. We carried baggage in to our relationship, and truly believed that’s what everyone else did. We might as well have handed ourselves over as a handful of jumbled puzzle pieces. After all, we both expected the other to “put back together” what others had broken. Mark and I were married 1 year after my divorce was final. That doesn’t seem like much time to fully examine yourself, to heal, to take a time out and really evaluate what you need you're doing- and it wasn't.
Our first 2 years of marriage were hard! We knew that as soon as we were married we wanted to have a baby. He's almost a decade older (I love sayin' that!) and let’s face it- he wasn’t getting any younger! Abel was born the following year, and we steadily had a 4 year old that was going back and forth between our house and her dad’s every other weekend. We were managing a blended family and new marriage the best way we knew how. So many bad habits started mixing with what we thought we were doing right. Jealousy, resentment, guilt, and shame became common themes in any interaction we had. I steadily expected him to leave me with 2 kids, and probably pushed him to do so. With every accusation, distance grew between us. Patterns from our first marriages began to pollute what we had only just begun. At about 2 years in, we both admit, we were ready to call it quits. We had no concept how marriage was supposed to look. I didn’t respect him, and he didn’t love me. As I read this out loud for his approval, he says "I did too love you!", so I'll explain here the same way I did to him. We loved each with superficial expectations that every need we had would be met by the other. We were never designed to be the soul provider of another human's needs. God desires that our reliance is on Him, and that our marriage be secondary to that, with other relationships falling behind that; kind of like a hierarchy. We didn't understand that then, and are still working on it.
Mark started attending church with his parents and our children in early 2012. I was working day shift with Mondays and Tuesdays off, so it was an easy excuse for me to miss church. I remember him asking me to take a day off to go to church with him- why in the world would I do that? I didn’t need church, and I certainly didn’t need people to tell me how to live (because apparently I was doing a fine job on my own..) He continued to go without me, with the kids and his parents. There was a cook out in June of that year for the church, and I finally agreed to go. I didn’t want him to expect me to enjoy it, or to want to go back, but I would go just so he would stop asking.
The pastor and his wife held a small group in their home in the evenings that I could attend with my work schedule. That felt more comfortable to me than being in a church, so we accepted the invitation to go. That small group and the study we were in completely changed our lives. We were driving home from that small group, and on a regular basis I would melt down, sobbing. A combination of shame of where my life had been up to that point, guilt because I had done so much wrong and couldn't repair it, and a strange feeling of hope that there was more for me than what I was living. Almost in tandem, Mark and I admitted to each other that we might as well try Jesus because nothing else worked. New marriages, gifts, more children, home renovations, new cars, compliments, vacations, higher paying jobs- none of it could fill us up. We were searching for this ideal life, and we had no idea how to achieve it. So, we decided to try the only thing we hadn’t- a relationship with Jesus.
We were baptized together the weekend before Christmas in 2012. I’d like to tell you that after that, everything was sunshine and rainbows. That our hearts were completely restored, and we never had another argument, but I’d be lying to you if I said those things. You know that baggage and those puzzles pieces I mentioned before? Those things still exist, and we are still working to try and sort through things. In the most intimate moments in our marriage, those that I should feel completely connected to him, my soul aches. I wonder if he will be gone in the morning. If he is comparing me to someone from his life before, or if I mean as much to him as he says. He's a wonderful husband, and he loves me dearly, I know that. These thoughts are like aftershocks of an earth quake; tremors still felt below the surface even after the trauma is over. He still finds the urge to check my phone, to wonder where I am when I'm 5 minutes late getting home, and the need to keep everything under his tight control. His pains left over from a life that was so out of control. Through these things, we continue to work and depend on Jesus to fill in every single space in our lives.
I'll be honest, I get jealous of those story book relationships that begin and end with each other. Those couples that have always known each other, dated forever, got married, and lived happily ever after (well, maybe not happily ever after, but you get it!). Our story of finding Jesus in these places doesn't stop with us, it's common in couples that lived lives without Jesus, found Him, and then realized how desperately they needed him to repair not only them personally, but their views, ideas, and beliefs on relationships, sex, marriage, and everything in between. If you need some good resources, I can set you up with people that will share similar stories and a common thread- that Jesus is the answer. All good things that we are, are not because of our doing, but because of His being.
To wrap up, I want to end with this open apology: If there is anyone reading this that has been hurt by my choices or the choices of my husband, we are asking for your forgiveness. If you were at the other end of my manipulation and man-eating, please forgive me. If you were on the receiving end of Mark's womanizing and uncontrollable anger, please forgive him. We have been forgiven by the One who knows our deepest secrets, and have confessed them to our closest friends, but we need your forgiveness also. A blog forum asking for that may seem childish or the wrong place. Or sometimes, there is a time and place for those conversations. You know who you are, and we are so, so very sorry. You'll never know how much we continue to pay for those choices and the hands we have had in your pain.
No matter where you find yourself in life, it's not over. Your life doesn't have to look just like mine to relate. We all have areas of our lives where we are strugglin', and need revival! Nothing is too far gone, beyond repair, or too messed up. I spend the rest of our life re-learning how to live, and I am prepared for that. There are areas that I still struggle DAILY. DAILY! And if God never takes it away completely, then it'll be the thorn that reminds me of the weakness in my humanness and my desperate need to rely on Jesus alone. That in my weaknesses I will boast so the power of Christ is more evident (2 Cor.12:7-10).
Be vulnerable, be willing to dig in to the dark places because that's where the Gospel shines so bright. Share your story with someone you trust, and begin to heal. All that you have been through works to refine you, not to define you. Your past is not your label, where you have been is not who you are. You are fiercely loved, and your life is waiting.
"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away"- Revelation 21:4
"You restored me to health and let me live. Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back"- Isaiah 38:16-17
