Am I unforgiveable?

Am I unforgiveable?

This is a question that I wrestled with for a very long time.

I had shoved God aside.   I had my reasons.  They weren't good ones. But they were my reasons; my excuses. And when Kris and I reached our lowest point in February 2012, a breaking point really, I finally began to open my eyes. At first it was just one eye, barely open.  As days and months went by and I saw God's hand at work in my life, in Kris' life, and in our marriage, I decided it was safe to open both eyes.

And now, I make every effort to live my life with my eyes WIDE OPEN.

Throughout my entire life, I've struggled with forgiving myself.  I've carried the burden of shame and guilt alone; shame and guilt that has built up over the last 20+ years of my life. And after 20 years, it gets to be unbearable.

Navigating the "What Ifs"

I'm sitting here at Busch Stadium, surrounded by 40,000+ people.  And still, this anxiety plagues me.  This fear that I will run into "him."  It is ridiculous, the power this has over me. 

As much as I "preach" about avoiding the "what ifs" in life, I struggle.  I may have conquered fear, as a whole.  Or rather, God delivered me from the powerful grip it held on me.  But that doesn't mean I don't fall prey to fear and anxiety from time to time.

This used to happen a lot.  Actually, each time I left my house, I was filled with an irrational fear of running into that man.  And as God worked in my heart and freed me from bondage to fear, it happened less and less.

But lately, I find that fear creeping back in.  I go to the grocery store, any in the St. Louis area, and I worry. I find myself thinking "What if he's here?" 

A Husband Speaks Out

I have asked Kris before if he would share his perspective on "us" on my blog. He has never had the time to sit down and write. Unlike me, where I can sit and write 1,000 words in less than an hour, it takes Kris much longer. He thinks, and rethinks. Types, deletes, types again, etc...

The outcome is always amazing writing from him, but it isn't as easy for him to just sit down and bear his soul-as it is a very time consuming process. So what I want from him in that regard, to share part of our story from his point of view, is not as easy for him as it is for me. But as I wrote in my last post, I was really struggling with something that had happened on Thursday.

REALLY Loving When It Hurts

Tonight, as I reflect back on the title of this blog and how it came about, I can see how aptly named it is.

I write tonight from a place of pain.

My heart hurts.

I found out something tonight that made me feel as if the floor had dropped out from under me.  Fast and hard.  In one moment, I was fine.  And in the next, everything changed.  The moment I had been dreading for almost a year and a half became a reality for me.

Try or Give Up

Today I'm posting over at Intentionally Yours.

This idea of trying has been on my mind a lot.  Well, really since I decided to risk it all and fight for my marriage.  This last almost-year-and-a-half have been full of getting back up and trying.  All day at work we have the radio on and I am constantly hearing the song "Try" by Pink.  So, inspired by the lyrics, as shocking as that may sound, I set about writing this post:  Find it here:

...unless you TRY

I'm SO tired of asking!

I can't get that thought out of my head that I wrote about on Tuesday, how I tend to learn things the hard way.  I love the song "Need You Now (How Many Times)" by Plumb.  And let me begin with this:  that song never ceases to stop me dead in my tracks and evaluate my heart, my motives, and my desire to fully understand the depth and meaning of it.

As I was listening today (JoyFM listeners-it truly was the "right song at the right time," like so many others), for the first time I connected it to this concept of learning the hard way.

Back before I began building my walls to keep God out, which exposed my heart to the enemy's clutches, I prayed and prayed and prayed away the chains of addiction in Kris' life.  I begged God to hear me, and to free my husband from the pornography that held him hostage.

You Are More

We are all broken.

We all have things in our past that we would like to forget.

Things we don't want anyone to know about.

It is hard to be vulnerable, and to share with someone else the depth of your heart, especially when it comes to the choices you have made.  Or the decisions that perhaps led you down a path you wish you hadn't gone.  Sometimes, it isn't even your choices that placed you where you are.  Much of the time, life happens to everyone.

Your Love Is All I've Ever Needed

As some of you know, Big Daddy Weave's song "Redeemed" plays a part in my story.  Countless times I go back to it.

For perspective.

For reassurance.

For sheer musical enjoyment.

Last week, when I heard it announced on the radio that they had another song out, I immediately turned the volume up.

I knew immediately that the sound was great!  I listened and thought it was pretty good.  But then, when that chorus hit, any semblance of emotional stability I had been maintaining fled.

The Ultimate Showdown

I began writing a post earlier, to discuss my adoration for Jason Gray's music.  He is an amazing lyricist and almost every song he has speaks to what I've gone through.  What I wound up writing about was what I've shared before about his song, "I Am New."  I wasn't happy with posting it here again, even though it was completely different in thought (as it is several months later), so Kris (SMART GUY!) suggested I submit it for posting over at Intentionally Yours.  When he said that, it just made sense.

So now, I can share a DIFFERENT Jason Gray song with you.  One that has spoken to me recently and has such profound lyrics.

I find you when...

...I fall apart.

I think about the song "Fall Apart" by Josh Wilson often.  I go through periods of heavy attack.  Satan shoots arrows, filled with poisonous thoughts, at my mind, at random intervals throughout the day.  They have become easier to fight off, and it is almost second nature to take my thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ.

But sometimes a sadness creeps in, and the enemy uses these moments to attack.  He really does pounce like a lion, waiting to devour his prey.  Satan is fierce.  He does NOT want me to turn to Jesus.  I can remember a time, about a year ago, where I was feeling extreme sadness.  I headed to church for VBS, and I just felt like I was going to cry at any moment.  Kris wasn't there yet and I was overcome with a heavy weight of sadness.  But I had to pull it together.  I couldn't just walk around crying could I?

But I felt so alive...

The grass always looks greener on the other side.  Do we ever stop to think why?  Maybe it's because we neglect our own grass...sometimes we stop watering it and it dries out, sometimes we let the weeds grow instead of pulling them out and sometimes we fail to recognize that new seeds need to be planted where the grass has become bare.  In order for something to stay in bloom you have to nurture it, no matter what side of the fence you're on.

- Joy Maniscalco

I am just over a year into what I consider to be recovery.  From the moment I stopped carrying around all of my guilt and shame, and understood that those same weights are what Christ came to die for.  I was not in a good place when Kris found out about, and confronted, my affair.  I was broken beyond repair.  I could see no way to fix myself.  I could see no way to fix my marriage.  I could see no way to fix my children's spirits, who no doubt had been affected by the years I spent in duplicity.

Is the grass greener?

Feels like I'm born again
Feels like I'm living
For the very first time
For the very first time
In my life

- Third Day

I can remember a time in my life that I felt alive.  

It is amazing how you can go through life, hanging on. 

Barely hanging on.  

Unmasked

I love writing.  I really do.  I love the way that the tension or joy or passion that builds up inside of me just explodes onto the page.  And the way that I feel when I am done.  Like I have been emptied.  In a good way.  Like I have held in something to the point where I can take it no longer, and then I can sit and just let it all out.  Let it all go.  Writing is therapeutic for me.

For several days I have been feeling down.  Not depressed.  But not happy either.  I have seen posts on Facebook that make my heart ache.  Posts that swing from one topic to the next, from a large collection of people in my social circles.  And I am sitting here trying to process WHY I feel saddened.  And I still don't have an answer.  I suspect that a large part of it is simply the fact that I was ready to get back to work (which I did today).