Nearly 5 years but who is counting?

[Dawn of Hope]

MMF, thanks for your kind and thoughtful words. Isn't it a nice change to get some support from fellow long-term standers, instead of the "you've grown a second head!" look you get from people when they hear that you plan to stand for your M as long as you are both breathing? I hope that you are healing and walking closer to God every day. (By the way, I am counting too!)

Yes, it was sad when Bob died, but now he is interceding for all of us face-to-face with Jesus! Like you, I receive the "Standing Firm" newsletter, and I find that it helps a lot too, even though it's directed at male standers (I just mentally flip the gendered terms when necessary). I do sometimes wonder how it could possibly have been worth it to Dennis to stand for eight long years and then have his W die a year and a half after R, but I take his word that it was, indeed, worth it, and I am inspired to keep walking the path of the stander because of that.

MMF and snow, I appreciate your comments about the forgiveness and related things. Yes, snow, you are right; I am much closer to God than I was before the bomb, and I have changed for the better in a lot of related areas (still a long way to go).

I do regularly ask God to help me be able to forgive, but so far I haven't succeeded. Sometimes I feel like there's some process that one is supposed to follow that will result in being able to forgive, and I didn't get the memo on how to do it. I do know that this is for me and not for him, and that it's a divine requirement, but that doesn't give me any insight on how to accomplish it other than to keep praying for help.

I feel guilty every time I say the Lord's Prayer in church, since I know that if God forgave me only to the same degree that I have been able to forgive H, I would be in big trouble. I've never had to forgive anyone for anything half this painful, and although I don't have the white-hot anger about it all that I did in the beginning, it only diminished to a certain point, and I haven't been able to make it go away completely. You probably wouldn't ever know it to hear me talk on a daily basis, as I seem very calm, but I know there's this buried vat of bubbling anger socked away where it's not visible. I still have the occasional Lorena Bobbitt fantasy, much as I hate to admit it. That tells me that I still have a long way to go.

I do know that my forgiveness doesn't get him off scot-free, but just takes him off my hook and puts him on God's hook. And I do trust God to do what needs to be done, considerably better than I would do it. But I secretly think that anyone who has made another person to suffer that much (outside of any arguments about whether it's appropriate to say that one person "made" another feel a certain way), especially someone they had vowed to love and care for for life, deserves to suffer at least as much in compensation, and I'm not sure that's part of God's plan, which doesn't seem entirely fair. Not that I believe it makes one iota of sense to expect life (or even God) to be "fair."

I know that I have reached the limit on how close I can get to forgiveness on my own, so I ask God for help with closing that gap. I have done a lot of reading about forgiveness, and tried all the suggestions that anyone has to offer that make any sense. One book I read said that the best you can really do if the offending party is unable to feel/express remorse is acceptance. By her definition, true forgiveness requires the offender to repent and seek to mend what was broken by their offense(s). I'm not sure that's 100% biblically consistent, but it does have the appeal of assuring one that it's not one's own fault that one can't truly forgive.

I pray for H every day (good things, that is, not "May his favorite body parts become horribly diseased and fall off"!). I even pray for OW when I can stand it, because I know it's the right thing to do, whether I like it or not. I try to avoid thinking or talking about H or the sitch to whatever extent is possible in my regular life, although the talking avoidance goes much better than the thinking avoidance.

I was just notified yesterday that my house is going into foreclosure, although I thought that H (who had agreed to deal with the mortgage payments until we can get the house sold) had made arrangements to avoid this, so I'm feeling a bit beaten up and overwhelmed right now. (You can see my thread for more on that.)

MMF, thanks for your graciousness in allowing space on your thread for these discussions. I hope you still don't feel hijacked after this post!

Peace and blessings,
Dawn