I have heard some say that LOA can be used to control others. Not so. But you can influence others.
I am able to influence my son by keeping a level head and staying in a good mood. I mentioned before that we had a running joke about his smartass talking. I thought that by joking about it, it would end it. But it seemed to get worse. So now it doesn't matter if he's in a bad mood. I refuse to let it get to me. I refuse to argue, I refuse to play the "one up" game with him. I just stay calm. After all, I can only "control" me. Soon, though, after a little while to cool off, he will be okay. But I did stop calling attention to his smartass
remarks. That was giving them too much energy and it wasn't helping our relationship.
I did do this with my sweetie as well on something. I'll call it action X. It bothered me a lot and he could tell something was upsetting me, but I couldn't tell him what it was. So I asked God to intervene. Suddenly stuff started popping up all over relating to action X. When that happened, I knew I could let it go. Something was
happening. God was calling sweetie's attention to action X and I didn't have to. Within a week my sweetie had changed action X to something else and all was right again. But it was exciting to see LOA in action so quickly.
So now there is something else I am asking God for, asking him to use LOA to bring this to my sweetie's mind.
We have been planning to remarry in April of next year. But I would really like to do it now. I feel very good about this decision. We're taking two vacation days together in two weeks. I found out we can get married at the courthouse for $60 with no waiting period. So I am putting a request out there.
Thank you, God, for bringing us together again. You brought us through six months apart and you have kept your promises. Thank you for that. You know our hearts, you know how we feel about each other, and I am
ready. I want to get remarried now. I intend that sweetie will ask me to go to the courthouse and we will be remarried by October 24.
Friday, October 7, 2011
April 2011 - LOA in action
Back in February, when everything exploded, I was only working part time and I was self employed completing transcription at home. I knew I could not make a living on what I was making. I had been looking for full time work since November 2010 and hadn't even had an interview. But I had to do something and soon.
My mother actually found the link to the organization. This was in February. I applied for a position and waited, all while applying for other positions. During this time I was experiencing what LOA teachers
call contrast. I knew what I didn't want and that was helping me know what I did want. So I prayed. I prayed for a full time job making X dollars an hour, 40 hours a week, benefits, etc. Based on contrast from my past, I knew I did not want retail. I did finally get an interview at Home Depot, but it was for a part-time cashier position. In order to take it, I would have had to keep my other part-time job as well, and it paid minimum wage. I didn't know how, but I had to hold out for that office job.
I continued to apply at every business and organization in my area. I applied for city jobs, county jobs, jobs at the local hospital. I had actually completely forgotten about this organization when they called to set up an interview - in April. I had to look up the website again to see what I had applied for. And I was very surprised when I went in for the interview and found out that what I had applied for was not what they wanted me for.I was interviewing for an administrative assistant job, not the job I had applied for.
Apparently my background in office work - even though I'd been self employed or worked for family for the past 10 years - impressed them. The current assistant was being promoted and they needed someone to replace her. I went to the office, I met the supervisor, I met the current assistant. I have no idea what they told
me during that meeting. I knew it was things I had never done as well as things I hadn't done in 10 years. I was full of doubt. Could I do this job? Based on all the LOA teachings that I've read in the past eight months I should not have been accepted. I constantly doubted my ability to do this job. But I persevered, pushed
through the doubt and took the job.
It was everything I'd asked for plus some. It was 40 hours, it was Monday - Friday, they offered benefits, the salary was .50 more than I'd wanted and they had a very generous vacation and sick leave package that started accruing immediately. I didn't have to wait a year to take vacation time or worry about getting sick or my son getting sick and having to be out. Another hindsight view from LOA as well - I'd actually called the place by mistake when applying for food stamps as the number is listed incorrectly online and with directory assistance. So a month before I'd actually talked to my future supervisor, in the office where we would work, and didn't even know it.
The day I got the call that I got the job I was with my ex husband. We were having lunch. I was glad he was with me. He'd wanted me to get a full time job for some time and part of my selfishness was in wanting to be self employed or working part time, allowing him to work the most hours and make the majority of the money. I was glad that he could see that I was not going to back away from my responsibilities.
All the way to work that afternoon, though, I cried. I cried for a future that was gone. The dream we'd had of building a house, buying some land in the country, being self supporting. The dream of the life we were going to build in a new place. All the hopes we'd had of starting over when we'd moved to Alabama the previous year. All of those were gone. And even though I was happy I'd gotten the job I was grieving because he wasn't there - not really - to celebrate the accomplishment with me.
My mother actually found the link to the organization. This was in February. I applied for a position and waited, all while applying for other positions. During this time I was experiencing what LOA teachers
call contrast. I knew what I didn't want and that was helping me know what I did want. So I prayed. I prayed for a full time job making X dollars an hour, 40 hours a week, benefits, etc. Based on contrast from my past, I knew I did not want retail. I did finally get an interview at Home Depot, but it was for a part-time cashier position. In order to take it, I would have had to keep my other part-time job as well, and it paid minimum wage. I didn't know how, but I had to hold out for that office job.
I continued to apply at every business and organization in my area. I applied for city jobs, county jobs, jobs at the local hospital. I had actually completely forgotten about this organization when they called to set up an interview - in April. I had to look up the website again to see what I had applied for. And I was very surprised when I went in for the interview and found out that what I had applied for was not what they wanted me for.I was interviewing for an administrative assistant job, not the job I had applied for.
Apparently my background in office work - even though I'd been self employed or worked for family for the past 10 years - impressed them. The current assistant was being promoted and they needed someone to replace her. I went to the office, I met the supervisor, I met the current assistant. I have no idea what they told
me during that meeting. I knew it was things I had never done as well as things I hadn't done in 10 years. I was full of doubt. Could I do this job? Based on all the LOA teachings that I've read in the past eight months I should not have been accepted. I constantly doubted my ability to do this job. But I persevered, pushed
through the doubt and took the job.
It was everything I'd asked for plus some. It was 40 hours, it was Monday - Friday, they offered benefits, the salary was .50 more than I'd wanted and they had a very generous vacation and sick leave package that started accruing immediately. I didn't have to wait a year to take vacation time or worry about getting sick or my son getting sick and having to be out. Another hindsight view from LOA as well - I'd actually called the place by mistake when applying for food stamps as the number is listed incorrectly online and with directory assistance. So a month before I'd actually talked to my future supervisor, in the office where we would work, and didn't even know it.
The day I got the call that I got the job I was with my ex husband. We were having lunch. I was glad he was with me. He'd wanted me to get a full time job for some time and part of my selfishness was in wanting to be self employed or working part time, allowing him to work the most hours and make the majority of the money. I was glad that he could see that I was not going to back away from my responsibilities.
All the way to work that afternoon, though, I cried. I cried for a future that was gone. The dream we'd had of building a house, buying some land in the country, being self supporting. The dream of the life we were going to build in a new place. All the hopes we'd had of starting over when we'd moved to Alabama the previous year. All of those were gone. And even though I was happy I'd gotten the job I was grieving because he wasn't there - not really - to celebrate the accomplishment with me.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Backstory - Journey Begins
I've shared how I started out with discovering self forgiveness through the book The Love Dare. I also was reading my Bible. Psalms is where everyone needs to go when their world turns upside down. I was
praying constantly, journaling, looking for full time work. But little by little that despair began to dissipate.
It didn't go away overnight. No, there were still crying jags, there were still 3am phone calls to my mom. But as I started to think about how to rebuild my life there were times I knew something was happening. It all started with forgiving myself. Then I reached out to those I had hurt. I apologized where appropriate. I prayed for a lot of things. Some things I probably shouldn't have prayed for, but when you are moving up and down the emotional scale from despair to anger you pray for some things out of anger. But I know that God knew my heart. And he continued to speak to me during this time.
This was also a time of turmoil for our teenage son. Every time I would see my ex husband or speak to him on the phone I would start crying. I was also dumping frustration, fear and anger on my son. So he told me in April that he was going to spend the summer with my family instead of staying with me. I can't say I blamed him. He needed the break from me and his dad. He left in April to stay with my family an hour and a half away.
During this time my ex and I were talking. The talks were sometimes good, sometimes bad. Even if not a fight, just spending time together was difficult. We had made plans to see certain movies together and it felt just wrong to see them apart. We had always done things as a family. And, yes, there was still a physical aspect to our relationship. But it hurt too much each time we saw each other. I know it hurt me a lot. It felt as though my heart were breaking every time we saw each other, every time I visited his apartment, every time we would do something and then go our separate ways. But every time I did that I believe I did get a little stronger. I was experiencing what LOA teachers call contrast. I was learning what I didn't want and it helped me clarify what I did want.
I did have to stop reading The Love Dare. It got to the point where it hurt too much to continue and I wasn't able to do all the exercises. But I did continue making amends where appropriate and I wanted to think more positively. I wanted to put my energy into something for me, something to help me continue to grow and change. I wanted to be a better person, not because I thought it would help me win back my husband, but because I knew I didn't want to be the woman I'd been for so many years.
I was feeling differently than I'd felt in the past. I had always said that if my husband left me, if we divorced, that I didn't believe I could make it. It would hurt too much. Well, it did hurt. But I was surviving. Not only surviving, but making it through. And if I could survive the loss of a 20 year marriage, what was there to be afraid of? So I continued my learning and growing, reading After the Locusts and Why You Do the Things You Do, sent to me by a friend who'd also gone through a divorce some years back.
Then I decided to finally read Think and Grow Rich. I'd had a copy of the ebook for a while as well as a hard copy of various essays written by Napoleon Hill and his partner, W. Clement Stone. It was also during this time that LOA entered my life, although I had no idea there was a name for it. Some call it the Universe or a Higher Power. But I knew it was God answering my prayers. I believe that this is how God works in my life, in all our lives. He works through the Law of Attraction.
praying constantly, journaling, looking for full time work. But little by little that despair began to dissipate.
It didn't go away overnight. No, there were still crying jags, there were still 3am phone calls to my mom. But as I started to think about how to rebuild my life there were times I knew something was happening. It all started with forgiving myself. Then I reached out to those I had hurt. I apologized where appropriate. I prayed for a lot of things. Some things I probably shouldn't have prayed for, but when you are moving up and down the emotional scale from despair to anger you pray for some things out of anger. But I know that God knew my heart. And he continued to speak to me during this time.
This was also a time of turmoil for our teenage son. Every time I would see my ex husband or speak to him on the phone I would start crying. I was also dumping frustration, fear and anger on my son. So he told me in April that he was going to spend the summer with my family instead of staying with me. I can't say I blamed him. He needed the break from me and his dad. He left in April to stay with my family an hour and a half away.
During this time my ex and I were talking. The talks were sometimes good, sometimes bad. Even if not a fight, just spending time together was difficult. We had made plans to see certain movies together and it felt just wrong to see them apart. We had always done things as a family. And, yes, there was still a physical aspect to our relationship. But it hurt too much each time we saw each other. I know it hurt me a lot. It felt as though my heart were breaking every time we saw each other, every time I visited his apartment, every time we would do something and then go our separate ways. But every time I did that I believe I did get a little stronger. I was experiencing what LOA teachers call contrast. I was learning what I didn't want and it helped me clarify what I did want.
I did have to stop reading The Love Dare. It got to the point where it hurt too much to continue and I wasn't able to do all the exercises. But I did continue making amends where appropriate and I wanted to think more positively. I wanted to put my energy into something for me, something to help me continue to grow and change. I wanted to be a better person, not because I thought it would help me win back my husband, but because I knew I didn't want to be the woman I'd been for so many years.
I was feeling differently than I'd felt in the past. I had always said that if my husband left me, if we divorced, that I didn't believe I could make it. It would hurt too much. Well, it did hurt. But I was surviving. Not only surviving, but making it through. And if I could survive the loss of a 20 year marriage, what was there to be afraid of? So I continued my learning and growing, reading After the Locusts and Why You Do the Things You Do, sent to me by a friend who'd also gone through a divorce some years back.
Then I decided to finally read Think and Grow Rich. I'd had a copy of the ebook for a while as well as a hard copy of various essays written by Napoleon Hill and his partner, W. Clement Stone. It was also during this time that LOA entered my life, although I had no idea there was a name for it. Some call it the Universe or a Higher Power. But I knew it was God answering my prayers. I believe that this is how God works in my life, in all our lives. He works through the Law of Attraction.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Forgiving Myself
Some of you reading this may wonder why was I taking all the blame. He had the affair. He left. Biblically I was innocent. But I didn't feel innocent. I knew I had disobeyed. For months God had been trying to open my eyes and I was refusing to see what was in front of me. That is what I needed forgiveness for. I needed forgiveness for disobeying God. I needed forgiveness for my actions toward my family, toward my son, and yes, toward my husband. I could not control the choices he made, his reactions to what I said and did. All I could control was myself. It took some time for me to learn that, but God was patient and gentle with me as he rebuilt my self-esteem.
I had to forgive myself. I was not going to heal any other way. I was full of regret, full of anger. I kept asking myself why? Why had I not seen evidence of an affair before? Why had I been so selfish, especially that Valentine's Saturday? Why had I not listened to God and bought that book? So that was where I started. I bought a copy of The Love Dare. It didn't matter to me that my husband was no longer living in the house.
I was going to be obedient.
I bought the book, began to read it, and my new life began.
First, it convicted me to my selfishness. I saw myself acting as a child, always wanting my dreams to come true, my desires to be fulfilled. It didn't matter if anyone else got anything as long as I got what I wanted. I was 39 years old. Why was I acting like that? And I realized that I had shut people out of my life. My entire immediate family had done that for many years. The house was messy. We were hoarding cats. We were disorganized. But we had actually begun to turn our lives around, I had thought.
The fall of 2010, when I believe I was starting to wake up, we'd been making some changes. We'd made a difficult decision to give up most of our cats. We knew that there had to be a choice made - us or them. We
could no longer continue caring for ourselves and our pets. We prayed over them and took them to the animal shelter. It was one of the hardest things we'd done. But it was a step towards taking our lives back. As much as we loved them, we could not keep living that way.
We'd started to clean up the house and organize better. It was still crowded, still cluttered. It was a small rental and didn't have a very good layout. But we made it work. So change was happening in a small
way. I had no idea that the world would blow up. But as the small changes grew, it seemed bigger changes were needed to get things truly moving.
So my marriage ended and I was betrayed. I was feeling sorry for myself. And I allowed myself to hurt. Those who have been studying the Law of Attraction for a while would call this despair on the emotional guidance scale. I was at the bottom of that scale. All I could do was work my way up to feeling better.
So I started taking melatonin to help me sleep. I participated at church events and attended a Divorce Care group. I did a second job working from home.
And I read The Love Dare. I started doing the exercises. My eyes opened and it was like God had slapped me upside the head. I apologized to my son. I called my grandmother just to chat. In the past I'd tried to avoid her because I didn't want MY time to be wasted in talking about idle chitchat. I swear she cried when she hung up the phone because all I did was let her talk about herself. Nothing about me, what I was going
through. Just her. And it felt good.
I called my mother-in-law. We had a very honest conversation. I had believed for over 20 years that she hadn't liked me, that I wasn't good enough for her son. We had both been living under a lie for so long. That's the trouble with rumors. You let them grow and soon there is no truth left.
God was working on me and I was coming to understand myself. I had to take responsibility for my actions. Yes, my husband had hurt me. Yes, I had every right, biblically, to a divorce. I had the right to be angry and upset. But I realized God doesn't see levels of sin. I had sinned, I had disobeyed, and I had to deal with the consequences to MY behavior. But God didn't deal with me in a cruel or unkind way. As I read The
Love Dare I realized that it could apply to relationships of all kinds. I applied it to a relationship with my son. I applied it to my parents. I applied it to my grandparents. I applied it to my brothers. I applied it as much as possible to my ex husband. And over time I applied it to myself.
God sent me many little things along this path to show me that he loved me and that he cared for me, despite my disobedience. I didn't feel worthy of forgiveness. Here are some things he shared:
From Nora Roberts' novel Ever After - (heroine is looking at a lovely necklace in Ireland).
"How much is it?" she asked. "Ten pounds," was the answer. "Oh, it's so lovely. It must be worth so much more," she said. "It is, but then so are you."
I will never leave you nor forsake you. Hebrews 13:5
I will restore to you the years the locust has eaten. Joel 2:25
There were more. I felt loved and comforted, especially at 3:00 am when I couldn't call my mother and wake her yet again. But God was always there. We talked about a lot of things and I never had to worry about waking him up. I let out all my anger, my hurt, my frustration, my desires, all my lost dreams, all the things I missed so much. I gave my ex husband up to him many times. I was finally understanding that I could only control myself, my thoughts and actions. And I understood, finally, that God loved me unconditionally.
Remember that these verses and thoughts apply to you as well. You are worthy. You are loved. No matter what you've done, you are worthy of forgiveness. As a creation of God, as his child, you are worthy. You don't have to do anything to earn forgiveness. You just need to ask for it.
The leader of the women's group at church played this song for us one night and it touched me in a way no other song has done in a long time. It still means a lot to me. As it played, I sat and cried. I knew without a doubt it was God telling me that he was there and that he loved me.
I had to forgive myself. I was not going to heal any other way. I was full of regret, full of anger. I kept asking myself why? Why had I not seen evidence of an affair before? Why had I been so selfish, especially that Valentine's Saturday? Why had I not listened to God and bought that book? So that was where I started. I bought a copy of The Love Dare. It didn't matter to me that my husband was no longer living in the house.
I was going to be obedient.
I bought the book, began to read it, and my new life began.
First, it convicted me to my selfishness. I saw myself acting as a child, always wanting my dreams to come true, my desires to be fulfilled. It didn't matter if anyone else got anything as long as I got what I wanted. I was 39 years old. Why was I acting like that? And I realized that I had shut people out of my life. My entire immediate family had done that for many years. The house was messy. We were hoarding cats. We were disorganized. But we had actually begun to turn our lives around, I had thought.
The fall of 2010, when I believe I was starting to wake up, we'd been making some changes. We'd made a difficult decision to give up most of our cats. We knew that there had to be a choice made - us or them. We
could no longer continue caring for ourselves and our pets. We prayed over them and took them to the animal shelter. It was one of the hardest things we'd done. But it was a step towards taking our lives back. As much as we loved them, we could not keep living that way.
We'd started to clean up the house and organize better. It was still crowded, still cluttered. It was a small rental and didn't have a very good layout. But we made it work. So change was happening in a small
way. I had no idea that the world would blow up. But as the small changes grew, it seemed bigger changes were needed to get things truly moving.
So my marriage ended and I was betrayed. I was feeling sorry for myself. And I allowed myself to hurt. Those who have been studying the Law of Attraction for a while would call this despair on the emotional guidance scale. I was at the bottom of that scale. All I could do was work my way up to feeling better.
So I started taking melatonin to help me sleep. I participated at church events and attended a Divorce Care group. I did a second job working from home.
And I read The Love Dare. I started doing the exercises. My eyes opened and it was like God had slapped me upside the head. I apologized to my son. I called my grandmother just to chat. In the past I'd tried to avoid her because I didn't want MY time to be wasted in talking about idle chitchat. I swear she cried when she hung up the phone because all I did was let her talk about herself. Nothing about me, what I was going
through. Just her. And it felt good.
I called my mother-in-law. We had a very honest conversation. I had believed for over 20 years that she hadn't liked me, that I wasn't good enough for her son. We had both been living under a lie for so long. That's the trouble with rumors. You let them grow and soon there is no truth left.
God was working on me and I was coming to understand myself. I had to take responsibility for my actions. Yes, my husband had hurt me. Yes, I had every right, biblically, to a divorce. I had the right to be angry and upset. But I realized God doesn't see levels of sin. I had sinned, I had disobeyed, and I had to deal with the consequences to MY behavior. But God didn't deal with me in a cruel or unkind way. As I read The
Love Dare I realized that it could apply to relationships of all kinds. I applied it to a relationship with my son. I applied it to my parents. I applied it to my grandparents. I applied it to my brothers. I applied it as much as possible to my ex husband. And over time I applied it to myself.
God sent me many little things along this path to show me that he loved me and that he cared for me, despite my disobedience. I didn't feel worthy of forgiveness. Here are some things he shared:
From Nora Roberts' novel Ever After - (heroine is looking at a lovely necklace in Ireland).
"How much is it?" she asked. "Ten pounds," was the answer. "Oh, it's so lovely. It must be worth so much more," she said. "It is, but then so are you."
I will never leave you nor forsake you. Hebrews 13:5
I will restore to you the years the locust has eaten. Joel 2:25
There were more. I felt loved and comforted, especially at 3:00 am when I couldn't call my mother and wake her yet again. But God was always there. We talked about a lot of things and I never had to worry about waking him up. I let out all my anger, my hurt, my frustration, my desires, all my lost dreams, all the things I missed so much. I gave my ex husband up to him many times. I was finally understanding that I could only control myself, my thoughts and actions. And I understood, finally, that God loved me unconditionally.
Remember that these verses and thoughts apply to you as well. You are worthy. You are loved. No matter what you've done, you are worthy of forgiveness. As a creation of God, as his child, you are worthy. You don't have to do anything to earn forgiveness. You just need to ask for it.
The leader of the women's group at church played this song for us one night and it touched me in a way no other song has done in a long time. It still means a lot to me. As it played, I sat and cried. I knew without a doubt it was God telling me that he was there and that he loved me.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Law of Attraction Awareness
I think it's interesting that this morning the nursing director at work left me a postcard with a note on it regarding a file I'd left her. The front of the postcard was a dandelion with some of the seeds blowing in the wind - almost exactly the same as my blog design that I chose last night.
Sometimes I think we make LOA too difficult. We don't have to think of things we want ALL the time. We don't need mantras that we repeat a certain number of times. Sometimes it's just a fleeting thought that we have and one day that thought is reality. It's when we are allowing, when we open ourselves to that thought - that's when it happens.
I'll share a little more about some fleeting thoughts I've had that have manifested in my life a bit later. Now that I know about LOA, though, I've paid attention to these things more and realized, oh, yeah, we talked about this, didn't we? As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as coincidence any more.
Sometimes I think we make LOA too difficult. We don't have to think of things we want ALL the time. We don't need mantras that we repeat a certain number of times. Sometimes it's just a fleeting thought that we have and one day that thought is reality. It's when we are allowing, when we open ourselves to that thought - that's when it happens.
I'll share a little more about some fleeting thoughts I've had that have manifested in my life a bit later. Now that I know about LOA, though, I've paid attention to these things more and realized, oh, yeah, we talked about this, didn't we? As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as coincidence any more.
Backstory continued
He'd come home that Saturday in February and I was about to leave to go shopping. He walked right by me and didn't say anything. He looked tired. He looked sad. God told me, go to him. But I didn't. I got upset because he hadn't talked to me. I left to go shopping. While waiting for our son in the game store I called him and asked him why he didn't speak to me when he came home. I was angry about that. I said we'd talk later and finished shopping. Later, our son and I stopped for a sandwich at Subway. I didn't get my husband one. I told my son, if he can't speak to me why should I get him a sandwich? On the way home we passed him driving up the road. I called him. He was going to his mother's home. He'd be back the next day. I felt my heart sink. I asked him to come home. He started crying and said no, he couldn't come home. He told me that night he wanted a divorce.
I hate recounting this story because I hate myself in this situation. I don't like the person I was. If I'd been watching a character in a movie or reading about this person in a book I would have hated her immediately. Well, no wonder her husband left her. She doesn't support him, she doesn't care about him. I felt as if I deserved the hurt and pain because of my disobedience to God.
He moved out at the end of February and into a small apartment closer to his job. I stayed in the rental house we'd moved to the year previously. Finances were very tight. I applied for food stamps. I joined a Divorce Care support group and the sponsoring church paid my rent one month. My home church paid the electric bill for two months. I upped my hours at my part-time job and began looking for a full time job with benefits. I had no choice but to ask for help and turn to the one thing that was constant and true - my faith in God. Although I felt completely undeserving of any type of forgiveness, from God or man, I knew that He was who I needed to turn to. It was too late to stop my marriage from ending, but I could learn from what I had done. I could be a better person in the future.
In my searching, in my desire for forgiveness and healing, God has put many things in my path over the past eight months. And now I truly believe that I can live the life that I want to live.
I hate recounting this story because I hate myself in this situation. I don't like the person I was. If I'd been watching a character in a movie or reading about this person in a book I would have hated her immediately. Well, no wonder her husband left her. She doesn't support him, she doesn't care about him. I felt as if I deserved the hurt and pain because of my disobedience to God.
He moved out at the end of February and into a small apartment closer to his job. I stayed in the rental house we'd moved to the year previously. Finances were very tight. I applied for food stamps. I joined a Divorce Care support group and the sponsoring church paid my rent one month. My home church paid the electric bill for two months. I upped my hours at my part-time job and began looking for a full time job with benefits. I had no choice but to ask for help and turn to the one thing that was constant and true - my faith in God. Although I felt completely undeserving of any type of forgiveness, from God or man, I knew that He was who I needed to turn to. It was too late to stop my marriage from ending, but I could learn from what I had done. I could be a better person in the future.
In my searching, in my desire for forgiveness and healing, God has put many things in my path over the past eight months. And now I truly believe that I can live the life that I want to live.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Backstory
Seven months ago my world turned upside down. My husband of almost 21 years left me Valentine's Day weekend, 2011. I spend the weekend crying. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I didn't see him until Monday night. By Thursday, he'd filed for divorce and we'd signed the papers by the following Monday.
I didn't know which way was up. I felt as though I'd been blindsided. I knew we were having trouble. I'd known since the fall of 2010. I had been ignoring things, not pushing too hard, keeping my worries to myself. I finally suggested we go to counseling. We didn't have a lot of money but our pastor recomended a counselor. We set up an appointment and she was willing to see us and we could pay her later. I thought we were starting to make some progress, but it was clear that something was going to break. After about four counseling visits my husband made the decision to leave.
Two days after we signed the papers I discovered he'd been having an affair. He denied it, even after I found records of phone calls and spoken to a friend of his that he had told me he'd been spending time with. I don't know how long it had been going on. His version is that it lasted three months and was over. I heard that it had been going on almost a year from someone else. I don't know. All I know is that I was hurt all over again. Even though the divorce was going through and papers were signed, I felt betrayed all over again.
I had felt strongly that God had been speaking to me for some time. He'd been trying to wake me up, doing his best to tell me that I needed to do some changing. But I was disobedient. I was downright rude to God. We had watched the movie Fireproof a few months before and God was telling me to buy the book, The Love Dare. I refused. I came up with excuses. We didn't have enough money. Why should I buy it? Why shouldn't he? But I felt I needed to do something, so I looked up online to see if anyone else was following the book and to see what the excercises were. After seeing some of them - greet your spouse every day. Ask your spouse how you can help him / her. Tell your spouse you love them. Buy your spouse something. Again the excuses came. He's the one doing x, y and z. Why should I change? I had become selfish, demanding, and a very ugly person. And I didn't even see it. By the time I did, it was too late.
I didn't know which way was up. I felt as though I'd been blindsided. I knew we were having trouble. I'd known since the fall of 2010. I had been ignoring things, not pushing too hard, keeping my worries to myself. I finally suggested we go to counseling. We didn't have a lot of money but our pastor recomended a counselor. We set up an appointment and she was willing to see us and we could pay her later. I thought we were starting to make some progress, but it was clear that something was going to break. After about four counseling visits my husband made the decision to leave.
Two days after we signed the papers I discovered he'd been having an affair. He denied it, even after I found records of phone calls and spoken to a friend of his that he had told me he'd been spending time with. I don't know how long it had been going on. His version is that it lasted three months and was over. I heard that it had been going on almost a year from someone else. I don't know. All I know is that I was hurt all over again. Even though the divorce was going through and papers were signed, I felt betrayed all over again.
I had felt strongly that God had been speaking to me for some time. He'd been trying to wake me up, doing his best to tell me that I needed to do some changing. But I was disobedient. I was downright rude to God. We had watched the movie Fireproof a few months before and God was telling me to buy the book, The Love Dare. I refused. I came up with excuses. We didn't have enough money. Why should I buy it? Why shouldn't he? But I felt I needed to do something, so I looked up online to see if anyone else was following the book and to see what the excercises were. After seeing some of them - greet your spouse every day. Ask your spouse how you can help him / her. Tell your spouse you love them. Buy your spouse something. Again the excuses came. He's the one doing x, y and z. Why should I change? I had become selfish, demanding, and a very ugly person. And I didn't even see it. By the time I did, it was too late.
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