First of all, just for the record--HeartBlessing, and Hearts Blessing ARE one and the same entity--me. When I came back in 2010, I wasn't able to locate my old login. However, around a year ago, I found it again, and put it away.
I'm very glad you find this article helpful to your journeys. It's the most important connection you will make in regards to yourself.
In the end, because of the changes you will make within yourself, it will come to a point that it really won't matter if you're married or not.
If your marriage survives the MLC, your marriage will become a bonus, rather than a means to an end. The actual success will be through the completion of this journey of learning. This is how I've learned to view it.
Along the way, I learned a lot more about emotional survival, security, and I really did come to know that I didn't need someone to 'complete' me, as I learned to look to the Lord first in order to become complete within myself.
People will fail you, they'll leave you, they'll often choose not to honor or respect you, and because of their selfishness, they'll leave a long trail of destruction in their path.
However, the Lord will look after you, make a way where there isn't one, because He will open doors that seem impossible. He restored my marriage, but it was a long, hard road, before it happened. There were many things I had to learn about myself, and when it came down to it--I learned that I had choices, too.
My husband had control over some things in regards to whether he wanted to stay married to me or not, but he didn't have control over everything, especially me.
Try as he might, he could not take away my choices. He found out that he wasn't the only one who could choose to walk away--I could, too.
Yes, I'm still married,(it will be 29 years this year) things are fine, and life continues to do what it does best--throw a few curves from time to time, but that's par for the course. The tools I gained from having walked all this way have been very valuable in helping me field whatever life decides to throw at me along this way.
I'll tell you something, though. It had to come to a point where I didn't care if I were married or not. I had to learn to stop being afraid of losing something I had already lost, and I had to also stop being afraid of what I really couldn't control in the first place.
You can have hope without being worried or afraid, and I also learned this through my own journey. I stopped expecting anything, learned to live a life of relative peace, and something about that drew him back toward me.
However, there were still feelings within him for me, and I still had feelings within me for him, or we would not have come back together. He did things that caused me a lot of anguish, deep anger, and many times of grief. These things I had to learn to overcome within myself.
On my own part, if I had not been able to forgive him,(and heal fully from the damage that was done), I could not have lived with him. It took a while, but time was what we both had to work with.
I chose my road, and walked it with the understanding that it was my life, my choice to do what I thought was best for myself. I found a change of perspective and perception that opened my eyes in ways that might not have happened if his MLC had not happened in the first place.
If things had gone another way, and my marriage hadn't made it through as a bonus, well, the time would not have been wasted, because I walked my individual journey that I also made a choice to walk--doing it for myself, and no one else.
We all have choices--never let it be said you don't have a choice, because you always have that, when you don't seem to have anything else.
There are NO guarantees in this life except for what you'll gain from taking your individual journey to wholeness and healing. You can't make people do what you think is right, you can't make people take responsibility--and when you realize this, it makes it easier to simply let them go, let God do His work in their lives, while you also let Him do His work on and in you.
Don't lose heart-hope is still alive and well, and as long as you have hope and love, you'll always find the strength to hang in there. Also, don't let fear overwhelm you, there really is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Sure, you're going to walk a hard road at times, the MLC spouse isn't going to want to do what's right, but what they are going through has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them in the first place.
Their actions may affect you, but they cannot destroy you unless you allow this to happen. Tap into the strength that lies within yourself, and learn to stand strong for YOU.
In the end you'll learn to reclaim your own individuality, and best of all, you'll learn to know yourself better than you did before.
So, you learn to do what's necessary for yourself, let them go to do their worst, understand that behind every bad action lies a hurting person, but don't let that stop you from learning to set firm boundaries on their behavior.
Above all, learn you're not a failure if your marriage doesn't eventually reconcile--in the end, it does take two people to make a marriage, and one to break the marriage.
I was in the search engine earlier, and was startled to find this article/post circulating. I actually thought it had gone the way of the archives.
Thank you very much for continuing to circulate such an important piece of information--and the LBS Journey is a very important aspect to walk for all people so they can become what God meant for them to be once this portion of it is done.
For what it's worth, although I finished this same journey long ago, I'm still walking my life's journey forward in different aspects.
Change, growth and becoming should continue throughout one's life because, quite honestly, that's what we are here to do in the first place.
I have gone on to learn many other things, and my learning hasn't stopped.
The MLC spouse has to learn the SAME lessons, taking the SAME journey as the LBS--the timing is different, but the lessons are the same.
Use the time you've been given wisely and well, live your life forward, and last, but not least, learn that you will be just fine, no matter what happens.
