In my last post, The Ugly Truth - Part 1, I left you with these words:
"But I was wounded. And I never really healed and experienced God's grace and forgiveness. I knew about it, cognitively. But my mind and my heart were so disconnected from each other. And it became something that I would wrestle with for the next seven years."
I have wrestled with whether or not to share this next part of my story on here. Prior to now, I didn't feel like it was time. Sometimes I wonder if God wasn't just grooming me to start this blog, and share that part of the story here. I do not feel the same resistance and hesitance I felt before about sharing this next part of my story. Perhaps it is partly due to the fact that Kris and I have twice now shared our story "officially" in front of a group of people.
So, it is with my breath held that I am about to plunge forward into this second part of my story.
There is a reason that this part of my story has been called "The Ugly Truth."
Because I was a Christian, for some it is unfathomable that I did what I did. That I made the choices that I did. But while I would be labeled a Christian, I did not consider myself one in my heart those seven years I spent wandering. And unfortunately, all too often it is the CHRISTIANS who have it all wrong. Who look at things backwards. Who are we to think that we are ANY better than our non-Christian brothers and sisters? We all sin just the same. Maybe not the same sins. But we do sin. And I think that we are worse sometimes.
Because we hide.
We stay in the dark.
We keep it to ourselves and go about our lives with this attitude of superiority, because we're Christians after all...
Makes me sick...
We (CHRISTIANS) are NOT better than anyone else. Some may THINK that they are. But I'm here to tell you, as a Christian, we are SINNERS. Just like everyone else. I'm taking it upon myself to declare all people inside and outside of the "church" sinners. Going to church on Sundays and Wednesdays does not make us sinless. And I think we have to stop acting as if it does. And when I say we, I mean Christians in general.
We need to be more real.
More vulnerable.
More honest.
And so to "put my money where my mouth is" I am about to get very real.
Very vulnerable.
Very honest.
Because my story did not end with a three month affair that ended when my husband found out about it.
In truth, my story is still being written.
But the truth-the dirty, ugly truth-is that as Kris and I eased back into a sort of normalcy after the affair, we also slipped back into old patterns. Old habits. Kris returned to pornography.
And I returned to feeling lonely and worthless. But this time, when Kris chose his addiction over me, I believed that I had absolutely no right to be upset about it. After all, what I had done was worse-in my mind anyway. What I had done was far greater, in that it played itself out with an actual person. I had no right to feel hurt or angry or upset with him. That's what I believed and how I lived.
Guilt and shame weighed heavily upon me. Well, that is putting it lightly. Guilt and shame swallowed me. I was lost in bondage to guilt and shame. And I couldn't break free. I felt useless and unworthy of Kris' love. I felt undeserving of God's love. I truly believed myself to be the one person that God would not love. Not that He couldn't love me. But that He wouldn't. Not after what I had done.
Left broken and unwanted, there was a hole. Something that needed to be filled. I filled it the only way I knew how.
I ran back to the arms of another man.
No.
Not another man.
The same man.
Over and over again.
For seven and a half years.
Until February 11th, 2012.
That day changed the course of my life. It is the day that my on-again-off-again relationship (which at that point had extended beyond emotional intimacy to sexual) was brought into the light. It is only by God's design that the truth was revealed.
I had become very good at hiding. At staying in the darkness. I loved the darkness. I felt safe in the darkness. There was this sense of comfort in the dark. It is odd that someone who is afraid of the dark would feel safe in the dark, but it is the nature of sin. It is how the enemy keeps us enslaved. If we keep our sins in the dark, Satan has power over us. We are then his muse. We bring great pleasure to the enemy when we live in the dark. And he will fight tooth and nail to keep us there.
Thus, God had to intervene. He brought my affair into the light through a means I never thought Kris would find. In retrospect, I should have known that if he was going to find out at all, it would be through the means it was. But that is not a topic for this blog.
I will never forget that night.
It was one of the worst nights of my entire life.
It was the night that I believed that my marriage (and my relationship with God) came to an end.
Instead of responding to Kris' confrontation with sorrow and begging for his forgiveness, I crushed him with my callous, nonchalant words.
"Well, there it is..."
I did not say "I'm sorry."
I did not say "I'll never go back to him again."
I did not say "I love YOU."
I did not say "I CHOOSE you."
Instead, I said "Well, there it is..."
Can you imagine how my husband felt in this moment? As if his heart wasn't already broken enough, I had to take a long shard of glass and plunge it deep into his heart. And then twist it. Over and over again. What's worse is that I had flaunted this affair in front of him, and he didn't even know it. I had taken advantage of the fact that he was a "nice guy". Not intentionally. It wasn't a conscious thing, but I threw my affair in his face on numerous occasions. All the while, he had NO idea...
My heart aches now, thinking back to how I treated him.
I feel ashamed.
I feel sorrow.
I feel regret.
But here was the truth I was faced with that night in February.
I did not love my husband.
I wanted nothing to do with God.
I was unsure if I even wanted to TRY to make my marriage work.
All the while, my heart is aching at the thought of letting go of a man who I had come to love and depend on. This other man became the emotional support that was lacking in my marriage. The thought of losing that terrified me.
And yet, I knew that I would have to sever that relationship.
Not because I wanted to fight for my marriage.
I didn't.
It would have to be severed because I just knew instinctively that our relationship would change forever, now that the affair was in the light.
If I left Kris and the kids, I left alone. I knew that the dynamic of the adulterous relationship would be drastically altered, in a way that I didn't want. As messed up as it sounds, I didn't want to just be the "other woman." I knew that my heart couldn't bear that.
So, I was confronted with what felt at the time would be a great loss.
And I wasn't ready for it.
As sad as it is, that is where I found myself on February 11, 2012. Not grieving over the pain I had caused my husband. Not caring that my marriage was in shambles. But worried about how I would say goodbye to this other man.
That's the brutal truth.
That is where my heart was.
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