The Results of Saying No, When I Should be Saying Yes

This process has been very interesting so far...if you want to read how I got here you can read it here and here.  I have learned so much in just two days...I thought about sharing with you now as I have had a few revelations, but I think that I will wait until Friday when I am finished with the little trip down memory lane and share them all at once. 

Have you ever heard that sometimes things get worse before they get better?  Well, hold on to your hats.

Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.
Dumbledore (J.K. Rowling)

Here is the song for this week:

When you are a little girl...you dream about finding the love of your life and living happily ever after...well, I am very good at dreaming...but dreams are not reality are they. 

I am with the love of my life, but I am not in a fairy tale.  I don't get to live forever happy in a castle far, far away.  I get to push around a vacuum in a four bedroom with three kids, two cars, and a dog.  And that makes me happy, sad, mad, frustrated, tired, hurt, and every other emotion under the sun. And it brings me great joy.  But I am getting ahead of myself...aren't I.

Levi and I met in college and a few years later, we married.  Things started out ok in every way except the bedroom.  I turned him down...a lot.  No one took me aside early in my marriage and told me that this was a need that my husband had that only I could fulfill...that this would bring us closer and keep us there.  I look back now and think...how could I not have known?  I think that I turned him down in order to protect myself...I love him so much that I wanted to keep my heart a little bit protected so that he could never hurt it.  In essence, I helped cause just the opposite.  In hindsight...I had also started to control...all in the name of improvement...wouldn't it be better if you did this, there is a much better way to do that, etc.  I seriously thought I was helping and instead I was tearing down my husband and his confidence...again 20/20 and all that.

I never thought that infidelity would happen to me...that only happened to other people.  Levi would never do that and if he did, there is no way I would stay.  These were thoughts I actually had, but until it happens...you have absolutely no way to determine how you would act.

Months after the birth of our first child, after we had been married about four years, Levi was tempted by someone we knew and made a huge mistake.  He came to me soon after and told me what he had done and I told him he should leave.  I kept thinking that it was some horrible joke, but he said ok and that he would go to a friends.  I stood, frozen for several minutes and then collapsed to the floor.  It was like a rug that I did not even know existed was pulled out from under me, a dream lost, a fairy tale ended.  A hole kept expanding in my heart...empty, and every emotion that I had stuffed deep inside was pushed out.  Our baby was playing happily in the corner.

Hurt

Anger

Failure

Fear

Pain that I cannot even describe to you.  I really think now that it was that this pain pushed every emotion that I had numbed for so long to the surface.  I was dealing with them all at once.  It was truly the worst day of my life. 

I begged God to tell me what to do...I just didn't know what to do...and my sweet, baby boy crawled his way over to me...he thought I was playing...and I said ok God.  It took months of therapy to decide whether or not we would stay married...I wanted to cling to this idea that if he cheated that I had to leave.  I can only tell you that I know that God didn't want me to. He guided me. 

He knew that what did not tear us apart would make us stronger.  I thought that if Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, then that was it...all those kings horses and men couldn't put him back together.  God can put anything back together and make it better than it was.

You can disagree with me until you are blue in the face...that's okay...you are entitled to your opinion, but I saw God.  No, not in the physical sense...you don't have to check me for fever.  I am not suffering from hallucinations.  I saw God in the spiritual and emotional sense.  I was raised Christian, I accepted Jesus, I was baptised, confirmed, married in the church, blah, blah.  But it took this for me to feel him.

 

Phillipians 4:6-7 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, that transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The thing is, and you may think that I am crazy for saying this, but I wonder if I needed it.  Do not get me wrong...I do not think that God caused it, but I do think that we are to learn something in the trials that he allows to occur.  Was it my wake up call?  Was it a way to understand that if I did not work hard and connect with Levi in every way that I would have lost him anyway?  Was it a way to end the idea that life was going to be hunky dory all the time because I was living in some fairy tale? Was it a way to make me realize that no matter how much control I thought I had...I could not control everything?  Where would our marriage have been without it?

Jeremiah 29:11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for you harm, to give you a future with hope.

Now, before you freak out and think that I am making this all my fault...do not fret...Levi has to live with the poor choices he made.  Should he have come to me and told me that something was seriously wrong...yes.  Would I have listened?  I honestly couldn't tell you.  I have long since forgiven him and I hope that he has forgiven himself.

A little side note here that I have since learned that I cannot take the pill...any of them.  It takes away any libido whatsoever.  So we had this going against us too...I thought something was wrong with me and it turns out that I have a very healthy, normal libido as long as I am off the pill.  Just a thought...if you find yourself in similar circumstances...check your medications.  Men often have issues with medications...why wouldn't we?

I want you to know that I am feeling a strange sense of acceptance right now.  I had no idea where this week would take me...I knew I would be sharing things with you that most people do not know.  I wasn't exactly sure why I needed to, but I did.  I am glad that I did...so I do not want you to worry for me...I am feeling such happiness right now.  I am not even sure that any of this is making sense...I just feel like I need to write, check for spelling, and hit publish...(before I chicken out)...so I apologize if this isn't flowing well:)

Tomorrow's post...Continued...Where are they now?