Forgiveness

Today we're talking about forgiveness and the difference between one having godly sorrow and being sorry they got caught. When someone has offended another person in a way that's deeply hurtful, forgiveness may occur though forgetting the offense can be near impossible yet this is what's often asked of the one offended. Michael and I share what this looked like for us and why restitution and closure are so important in bringing healing.

Be sure to join us tonight on our weekly marriage ministry call at 7pm (pst) ~ dial in information is located in the sidebar ~ and our next Marriage Intensive is filling up fast. If you're thinking of registering just shoot us a quick email to let us know and we'll assist you in getting signed up.

Blessings!

Working Through The Pain

In continuing on with bringing you snippets of posts from Joel and Kathy's Marriage Ministry forum, here's one that comes from a wife who writes about working through the pain and mourning she experiences after her husband becomes safe.

Following are some quotes from a book I picked up at the library called, "Healing from Trauma: A Survivor's Guide To Understanding Your Symptoms And Reclaiming Your Life" by Jasmin Lee Cori.

"There are two kinds of suffering you should know about. One is the suffering caused by what happened (the loss, betrayal, injury, or whatever), which includes the suffering of living with that experience and with the symptoms that result from it."

"When we commit ourselves to healing, we open up to a different type of suffering-the pain that is part of the healing process. This is the pain that was too overwhelming to feel before. It's the pain we blocked during the traumatic events and the pain that arises as we feel the full impact of the trauma"

"For me, the pain of healing was very hard to bear; it was sharper in many ways than the earlier pain, but it was finite, and it passed."

"That summer was a turning point for me. That summer I cried every day. It was part of letting up the emotional component that had been only partially present in much of my earlier recovery of memories, and the beginning of a deeper grieving of my losses. The crying itself did not resolve things for me, but it was part of what prepared me for what came later, when the opportunity presented itself to really cleanse the wounds with a qualified trauma therpaist."

I have only skimmed this book a bit, but just the above quotes explain so much about working through the pain we have suffered as wives. I personally am suffering in a deeper way now than I did when I was going through alot of the actual trauma I have lived through. I feel like while I was in the middle of abuse, my husbands depression, porn addiction, hospitalizations, financial distress, seperations ... I just kept going, I just kept plugging along, doing what I had to do, surviving.

Now that my husband is safe, I can actually grieve. I have to walk through the events again as they arise, and it is incredibly painful this time. I am not living on adrenaline, or numb (that mechanism God gifts us with during our trauma), but am feeling deeply the pain that it all caused me.

I hope by sharing these things with you, you can maybe get a better glimpse into what your wife may be going through. Stay the course! One of the scariest things for a wife is the fear that her husband will become comfortable again ... he will revert. Continue to PROVE to her, moment by moment, day by day, that this is not the case! Beauty.

As I've walked this restoration process out with Michael, I can absolutely relate with what Beauty herself experienced. It's such an emotional let down when we (wives) don't have to live in the constant stress of the pain that our husbands bring into the relationship. For me, it was the consistent accusations of adultery and the levels that these accusations elevated to. It was the emotional, spiratual and verbal abuse that came my way day in and day out.

When Michael stopped this and began to live with me in an understanding way; when he took ownership of how he was being with me; when he lay down his life for me; when he listened to my heart and validated me; when he began to show me the love of Christ...I went through a period of mourning a sadness because....I could. Because I needed to. Because he let me and held me through it. This is where closure comes. This is where restoration and rebuilding begins. This is how a husband begins to represent Christ to his wife.

Please join us tonight at 7pm (pst) for our free, weekly marriage ministry call. You'll find the information you need to the right of our blog in the side bar and we sure hope you'll join us; really ~ whether you speak up or just listen in ~ it's a powerful time of ministry.

We love you and stand in faith with you that your marriage can be restored, in Jesus name!

A Burden Lifted, A Heart Healed, A Husband Loved

I really should wait and save this for a Testimony Tuesday post because it's definitely a testimony of the journey that Michael and I are on. I can't though. It's so precious to my heart that I need to share it with you right now.

If you're familiar with our story, you'll know that, in our bad days, Michael would constantly accuse me of infidelity. It didn't matter who, what, where or when. One of the people he accused me of this with was someone very dear to my heart and who, along with his wife, had played a pivotal role in my life after Jeff died. During my third separation from Michael, I shared this with this person and his wife; we were all broken hearted about it. Since then, I've never felt able to partake of the closeness of heart that we all used to share.

It's been a heavy burden on my heart for a long time.

Fast forward to today. Michael and I have a completely different relationship and marriage than we did three years ago and much healing has taken place. And it still is. We're going to be holding our first Marriage Intensive next month and something we decided to do to get the word out was to send out a letter of introduction letting people know about our ministry and our desire to help out other couples.

One of the people we contacted was my friend that I mentioned above. I'll tell you, I was very apprehensive about this. In addition to sending a letter, Michael sent him and his wife an email. In it, he owned what he'd done in the past, sincerely apologized and asked their forgiveness. When I read it, I broke and started crying. I hugged him and thanked him and kissed him and told him that I'd been carrying this burden around for so long. He hugged me and apologized and cried with me. It meant so much to me.

I feel so much lighter now. Safer too. I continue to be amazed at how our marriage has evolved over the last few years; that we've come from a place of utter despair to one of ministering to others and asking them to take a look at hope....try it on for size....to be willing to let it out or take it in as the case may be. I love Michael deeply. I'm blessed that Michael continues to bring healing to my heart and I love God for knowing what I've always wanted to be....

A woman at rest.

Apology 101

Saying "sorry" to someone doesn't mean anything unless it's from your heart. Most husbands, even Christian husbands, will take the approach of a simple apology as a blanket statement to cover all of the ways they've hurt their wives throughout their marriage. Sorry guys, this really doesn't cut it. And the sad thing is that because a Christian woman wants to be perceived as a Godly wife, she will accept the apology for the mere sake of keeping peace in the home without having received any real heartfelt healing and closure from the one who hurt her.

One of the things that the marriage ministry Michael and I are involved in encourages a husband to do is to take the time to write down all of the ways that he can think of in which he knows that he's hurt his wife. The purpose of this exercise is mainly to get a husband to really think back over the course of his marriage and come into a knowledge of what he's done and then to take responsibilty for beginning to repair the damage.

What follows is Michael's apology to me. It's not fancy or flowery and it came via no prompting from me (in fact, I didn't even know he was writing it until he gave it to me). It's raw, and extremely personal (and if you ever speak with us you'll know that we don't hide our stuff because what's the point when healing is involved) and will give you real insight into what our struggles were; they don't seem very Christian at all. But they're real and, sadly, quite common among many married Christian couples no matter how those struggles show up.

Annalea, I apologize for:

Committing adultery
Going on the web looking for women
Having an emotional affair
Looking at pornography
Threatening divorce
Bankruptcy
Broken heart
Suspiciousness
Insulting you
Keeping you up at night
Poking, probing and harassing you
Driving you crazy
Not accepting your friends
Not accepting your family
Following you and having you followed
Taping you
Running a DNA test on your clothes
Checking your phone records
Having you take a polygraph
Blaming you for problems with the kids
Blaming you for our marriage problems
Being mean to you
Calling the police on you
Being physically intimate with you before marriage
Letting you drain Jack and Evan’s accounts
Not providing financially for us
Breaking promises I made to you
Saying Daniel was not my son
Allowing pornography into our bedroom and our home
Hurting your reputation
Suggesting your family and friends were covering for you
Making you, Jack and Evan move out of the house to live in a bad neighborhood
Ruining your credit
Being a hypocrite
Going to a strip club
Masturbating
Accusing you of cheating
Being a fraud
Not being the man you needed me to be
Not making your dreams come true
Not treating you like a queen

Conflict Resolution = Closure

Tuesday’s are the nights that Michael and I facilitate a couple’s call for the marriage ministry we’re involved in and it was a good call last night – a lot of great questions and issues that came up which got worked through during the 5 hours we were on (try getting that much time from your Christian counselor without having a huge bill to pay! – btw, we’re not counselors, just a married Christian couple who have moved from being in complete crisis to being restored). Christian wives got validated and Christian husbands learned how to listen to their wife’s heart and meet her needs. We just love when this happens!

During the course of the conversation, Michael and I will often jump in when there’s a lapse between couples and so last night I began speaking about the fact that I couldn’t really remember the last time Michael and I had argued – actually, I had thought that it was around Christmas time. This is a huge difference from when we were in our bad days and we used to fight and argue more than once a week. Ick!

So, this morning we were speaking to one of the guys who helps out in the ministry with his wife and he brought up when I’d said this last night and then reminded me that it had been more recent then Christmas because Michael and I had been on the phone with him and his wife to get their help on working through the issue that had come up for us – and it was a big one now that I think about it.

Here’s the awesome thing though; Michael is doing such a great job at being Christ like in initiating healing and moving towards me emotionally and physically when we do have an argument, that this amazing thing happens – closure! Once there’s closure, it’s completely possible and natural to forget about a situation that you’ve struggled through or been hurt by. Remember when I mentioned that the last thing we’d argued about was a big deal? It was! But because there was closure involved, we’ve both been able to move forward and not let that dissention follow along for the ride.