Repairing the Breach, part one
I had said, “But if your spouse does not receive you, that is not the end. Oh, no. Ask me how I know. Okay, I’ll tell you …”
When I was young, I was a perfectionist. I was raised by parents who were perfectionists, and didn’t know any other way to be. After I married and starting having children, my little perfectionist world started to come undone lol. Kids have a way of doing that. My attempts to keep my perfectionist world intact resulted in increasing misery for my family, over the years.
I was fairly blind to the grief I was creating for everyone, however, until the day my husband told me he didn’t love me anymore, we were getting a divorce, he was keeping the kids, and I should pack up my things and find someplace else to live. (We had been married about 8 years.) It was a shocking eye-opener for me.
Well, I didn’t just meekly pack up and slink off. I told him our home was my home too; I didn’t have another, therefore I couldn’t pack up. We were vowed together until death did us part, I reminded him. But I repented right then and told him I was going to get help.
It was here that I learned how to discern truth from lies in my thought life, and how to reject lies and receive truth so that the fruit being produced by my life was not misery, but blessing.
My inner life started changing right away, as soon as I implemented the above. I started feeling God, and His fruit of love, joy, peace, patience and all the rest of it. I started healing from perfectionism to completeness and excellence. And, I started wooing my husband again.
Well, it didn’t work at first. He would not speak to me. If I entered a room, he left it. My presence pained him. So I focused on doing my 30 minutes a day homework to change my life. I focused on what God’s will was for me to do, every day, and did that. I released my husband to God and asked for His help to repair the breach.
I pursued His kingdom and His righteousness, and not my husband’s love, although I communicated love to him as often as I had an opportunity. I was mindful of how badly I had screwed up and wanted to make amends, but I did not beg, cry, whine, or otherwise complain about his lack of interest. I was reaping just consequences, and all I could do was keep walking in my new normal, and treat everyone with love instead of demands.
And, after about two or three months, he repented too. He received me. He did not keep his heart closed, as he could have. My husband is a godly man, and I was and am grateful to him for his forgiveness, and to God for keeping me on His path through that time.
Tomorrow we celebrate 42 years together, the last 34 of which have been mostly blissful. Neither of us are the same people we were when we said “I do,” and that’s a good thing. What if I had let pride get the better of me? I would have thrown away a wonderful future. I am not worthy of Your grace and goodness toward me, Father, but I receive it with thanksgiving!
THE END. (Or is it just the beginning?)
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