Run with me through rows of Speeding Cars

[believing_isaiah43]

More from past Journals:

January 27th:(H had just broken up with OW a few days prior)
Tall, seeminglyly insurmountable mountain ahead/in front/on top of me.

Past = crap to overcome
Present = pain/betrayal, he-loves-another to overcome
Future = can it BE overcome?

God, REVEAL yourself in me, through me, for me, in spite of me.

HEAL me.

January 30th:
Long road. Discouraged. Sad. Sometimes I'm prepared for long and arduous and sometimes I'm just NOT. I want it OVER. I want to be on the other side. I want to SEE GOD HERE. FEEL HIM. FIND LOVE AND HOLD IT. The days, hours ... minutes are LONG. I ache to change the past. I ache to hold my husband and smell the safety in him. I have no safety there ~ I want to weep into next week from that loss. Large hacking sobs from my toes. Want to be held and comforted. Want. Want. Need. Desire. Long for. Ache. Oh, where is my God of comfort? my Healer? my Redeemer? my God of Hope? I mourn and grieve.

January 31st:
What I would not give to go back and LIVE these years again, from this perspective I have now. My prayer is to LIVE now, from now on, CORRECTLY and REAL. To work it out - to have GOD WORK THROUGH ME. Finally, to live OPEN and unzipped. Yes, that scares me. But never changing is scary too. To live more of THIS, reaping more of the same? NOT. NOT. NOT. CAN'T. WON'T. PLEASE GOD NOT MORE OF THIS INTERNAL LIFE. Open the inner & clean it out for You. for my family.

February 10th:
a quote from Larry Crabb~
'When the top priority of our live becomes "I will not hurt now" we must understand at that point that we are not pursuing God ...Any effort to relieve that necessary ache leads us away from God ... Self-protection and loving others are absolutely incompatible. When my purpose in a relationship is to keep myself from looking bad, from feeling bad, from hurting, from being embarassed, from having my disappointment re-accentuated - then my purpose is to protect myself, and I'm not there for the other person.

another quote from Lottie K. Hillard~
'To refuse to be vunerable is to refuse to receive love. In the pursuit of my self-protection, there were some significant people I had failed to love... My self-protection had come in handy when I was a child, but I had paid a high price. I had taken control, kept the world out, denied my need for anyone, became my own strength. I had pushed away my very life.'

So how do you finally change from what you are when you are ready to do it? When you don't know how to, how do you do it? I know I want to change, I am ready to walk out of this fog and struggle with being who God intended me to be. What I do NOT know is HOW. STEPS. The DAILY. HOURLY. WHAT TO DO. What NOT to do. I am LOST and lonely. I need His grace to be sufficient.

February 24th:
One month OW-free. Tiny baby steps by God's grace. I brought home a carnation for H to say 'thank you'. I went to bed early and he came upstairs to say goodnight & kissed me on the cheek. I was pleasantly surprised and equally saddened to be so surprised. Lord, please help me trust the nice things that happen w/out immediately doubting them.

OW contatcted him via email ~ he did not reply, forwarded me the email, and told me not to worry about it: "I am where I need to be. I don't want to be where I don't need to be." I want to trust this ~ so many emotions run wild thru me and fluctuate daily. Some days I am stronger - some days I am weaker - some days I cannot foresee the happy ending that my heart so desires. I SO need the Lord in every part of this.

(March 12th, we ML by me initiating and it was definitely NOT just 'something to do' - ha. And yet, there is no more ML for another 2+ months. sigh.)

March 17th:
H had lunch in City X with Friend (who had also had an A and lost his job about 2 yrs ago. Reconciled with wife and just had 2nd child), and finally found someone to really talk to about his story. I'm glad for him, I'm also conflicted with waves of anger & sadness/betrayal. Had to get in the car and leave the house to watch the sunset. Alternately listened to Sarah McLachlan & Jars of Clay and wept. And I don't entirely understand why...Comfort by H waiting at the door to apologize when I walked in, him having tried to call my (turned off-) cell phone twice and hugging me. All good things. And yet. And yet.
I don't trust what is, compared to what was. I want someone enamored and in love with me. I WANT WHAT HE GAVE TO HER, and all I feel that I have is willful obedience. I have to ASK for proximity, a touch, any of that ~ when it is completely 2nd nature for me. I just LOOK at him and want to touch or be close to him. That's not reciprocated & I don't know how to live okay with that. I want patience - but I've also been fcuking patient for years w/ no physical comfort/affection. This makes me hypersensitive to what is NOT. And he came to bed at 3am; three-fcuking-A-M. I don't care if he was curing cancer, your wife is upstairs and you don't need 5-6 hours downstairs to "relax" or whatever. Could you look outside yourself to how that makes me feel? I had total PTSD OW flashbacks and had to finally go sleep on the sofa I was so furious.
God, please give me peace & comfort.

Now that you've cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. 1Peter1:22

Be good husbands to your wives. Honor them, delight in them. 1Peter3:7

(April 4th was our 10th anniversary, and who contacts him via email? OW. Here's what she wrote:

"Hi-
I'm sorry that you want nothing to do with me. I ran across an email from you the other day and it made me miss my friend. Hope all is well.
OW"

On my anniversary. Oh, if thoughts could kill a human.
So H forwards the email to me with this note:
"I did not respond, or want to, but I wanted to send you this. I will block her email from this account. I should have done that sooner. Please take this in stride. Believe me when I tell you that this did not move me at all.
I want you to believe that I want nothing to do with her. I hope that one day you will know and believe that. I am here, and I am staying. No regrets and no second thoughts about being right here in Our City with you and our children.
Your Husband,
H"

SO: after he came to also tell me in person, I said "I'm contacting her" and he said that was fine with him to do whatever I wanted but he wasn't getting near it. So I mulled over what to do (email? phone call? hit man named Guido?) and what to say that wasn't a novel of a tirade.

In the end, I forwarded H's email (with hers attached) to OW, with this email at the top from me 2 days after her email was sent:

"OW,

As you can see below, H & I want you to stop your repeated attempts to contact him. We are both committed to our marriage and by the grace of God, we will survive this.

Please do not ever contact my husband again or I will be forced to contact yours, and I do not wish to do that.

believing_isaiah43"

Ya'll. If I were an OW, and heard from the wife, that would shut me up quick-like. Oh, but NO. This chick has some serious testosterone between her legs. No more than 3 hours later, I get a REPLY in my inbox. I saw her name, and almost needed nitroglycerin and a defibrillator. I thought I was having a heart attack, my heart was pounding so furiously in my chest when I saw her name in my inbox.

Here's what she wrote:
"I apologize. We are on vacation and I had too much to drink. I should not have tried to contact him as I am working on my marriage as well. It was stupid and I promise you it will not happen again. I am glad that you both are committed to working it out and will pray that you do."

Harlot. Liar. Wicked Evil Hussy. Anyway, there you go. H said she's either sincere or I scared her to death. We both agreed that I scared her to death, but I just couldn't believe she wrote back; she is definitely Ms. Last Word. She was that way with H, too.
=======

Well, we're thru January to early April. I'll continue more tomorrow. As we know about me, this can make me gnaw on the crazy-bone if I think too much about it in one sitting.

Hope these long posts don't bore the fool out of you, and someone actually reads them and perhaps gets something from them. But if it's just for me too, that's okay. It's helpful to see how far we've come, but also difficult to see how far I still have to go personally. groan