This emotional ride is not as severe in some respects as it was 10 or 11 years ago when my husband first pulled his teenager tricks, but in other ways it's as bad. I am starting to recognize my own need to explain his behaviour to others who know him as not overly healthy for me. Although it enrages me that he is trying to pull the wool over his family's eyes (woe is me, I'm soooo unhappy), and not tell them the truth about his mistress (he wants a life of integrity, so how about start by telling the truth!), I also see that I'm playing a little of the victim game myself. Which doesn't help me move forward.
This first day of January is not only the beginning of a new year for me, but a new decade as well. There has been a huge amount of pain over the past decade, some of which I swept under the carpet partly because I'd absorbed as much as I could.
My husband's mistress wailed: mistresses are real people, mistresses have real feelings. The same goes for wives, sisters -- we are real people, we have real feelings, and why would I be content with a relationship that so degraded and devalued me? The only reason I closed my eyes to what was going on, was to preserve a home for my children. But my husband's leaving has ripped that wide open, and I am left with two choices: stay stuck with wishful thinking, or move ahead and live fully.
To alter the paralysis, I must move forward, even if it causes more upheaval and conflict within. That means leaving the past behind, because dwelling there is not where God wishes us to be, because God wishes us to have whole lives, not shadow lives. It means looking ahead, but only so far, because what the Lord wants more than anything is incarnational life, being fully present.
Moving forward means leaving the safety of the past, even though it is fraught with pain, betrayal, abandonment -- it's the devil I know.
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