Call me Callie??

Haven't written in a while. Sick of always sounding like a whiny baby. It's been a tough week and well I need someone to talk to about it. So here I am, hopefully not whining too much but talking to friends.

Do you watch Grey's Anatomy? This week Callie and Arizona took a 'break'. At the beginning, Arizona was pushing for it, breaking Callie's heart... Again. By the end, Arizona realized what she had done, and Callie, much to even her own surprise, didn't want to come back....and I was cheering for her. Go Callie! And of all the fans of this dumb show, I may be the only one cheering...

I feel like that could be where my heart is heading and it scares me. I have prayed and prayed for God's will in this situation-knowing He, of course, wants me to stay married to my husband and fix this mess.  Well it dawned on me, He knows things I don't and maybe NOT going back is His will. Maybe it is His protection. Maybe I  want that marriage I thought I had, that love I thought I had, that security I thought I had, but by my husbands free choices, it is just not going to happen......and did I ever really have it??

He talks about getting help but it's just lip service-does absolutely nothing to find it. He lives in another state. He says I need to learn to have an opinion yet what he means is I need to loudly and proudly state HIS opinion and never really my own. He wants to call me on the way home from work  everyday to show me how committed he is-yet when he was leading his double life, he did the same darn thing. Side note-zippers zipped, ring on finger AND heart, fighting like hell for me and our marriage and our family-those are just a few things that show actual commitment. I will never grow to trust him with him there and me here. We would have to be together for that. Well I am not moving back there in the foreseeable future, if ever. I have that sick feeling in my stomach-which could just be just last nights dinner.....or it could be intuition I ignored while his disgusting affair was going on. How will I ever know? Will I ever be willing to risk getting THAT knock on the door or THAT phone call or see THAT on his cell phone again? Today I just don't know. I just don't know. And this scares me.

He is God's son

He is God 's son. His will be done.

This is how I have started to pray. I need rest. I need comfort. I need to rest in my Father's arms. I am His daughter. He is his son. His will is the absolute best for both of us. And I need rest. Peace. And only He gives me both. Will you pray for my husband and I too? Pray for His will? Thanks. Really.

Betrayed Wives' Club-thank you for putting my heart to words

From one of my favorite blogs... Betrayed Wives' Club. Mmmm so powerful.  Her words came from my soul!!

How Trauma Breaks Open Our Story

People usually only come to this frontier when they have had a terrible loss in their life or they've been fired or some other trauma breaks open their story.  Then they can't tell that story anymore... they hit present reality with such impact that they break apart on contact with the true circumstance."
~David Whyte

They hit present reality with such impact that they break apart on contact. Sound like you? It sure as hell sounds like me.
I hit the reality of my husband's cheating with such impact that I shattered.
And it's hard, when you're shattered, to recognize that this breaking apart might, one day, be exactly what you needed. It's damn near impossible to understand that it's only when trauma has broken open your story that you're able to write a new chapter.
From my stop farther down the road, however, I can see that my husband's cheating – the trauma from that betrayal – meant that I couldn't keep telling myself the story I had been. It meant that, once I was able to pull myself back together, I had to admit that my story wasn't entirely based on fact. It was up to me to begin writing my own rather than let others dictate it to me.
Until then, my story had gone something like this:

I married a wonderful, principled man who adored me. We had three wonderful healthy children. Life was good, better than I expected or, frankly, deserved. The end.

What I tended to ignore because it didn't fit with the storyline I wanted desperately to believe was that it disappointed me when he wasn't able to acknowledge the casual cruelty of his family towards me.
It hurt me when I felt emotionally abandoned after the birth of our first child.
I felt invisible when I would express fairly mundane needs (please walk the dogs in the morning, please have breakfast with me instead of sleeping in...) and he wouldn't. (Hismodus operandi, which he'd used for years with his own family, was to agree to whatever they wanted and then do what HE wanted. I, a firm believer in taking people at their word, took years to see what he was doing. Which might mean I'm either a) a hopeless optimist or b) kinda stupid.)
And it was confusing to me when, sometimes, I felt like a blow-up doll during sex. As if I – a fully present human me – wasn't supposed to be there, and certainly wasn't supposed to have my own needs.
But by not allowing those truths to be part of my story, I was living a fiction. The fiction of my adoring wonderful husband who would never-not-EVER cheat on me.

Shattered.
Broken Open.

In the wake of that breaking open, we begin writing our new story.
I realized fairly quickly that my marriage hadn't been quite so polished and perfect as I had wanted to believe. I could see just how broken I was even before his betrayal completely shattered me. One of the hugest revelations for me was to recognize just how much I'd already betrayed myself.
I had assumed that my needs were less important than everyone else in the family.
I had accepted that, if his family rejected me on some level, it was because I wasn't deserving of their love.
I had been living my long-held deep conviction that I wasn't enough.
I accepted love that was, frankly, not so great and told myself it was more than I deserved.

As I healed, I began writing my true story.
And in this new story that has emerged, I am learning that I am enough. Have always been. Always will be.
I am learning that, in a healthy relationship, nobody's needs trump another's. That we all matter and can negotiate a family in which that's the guiding principle.
I can now spot the myriad ways in which I betray myself. My clue is a spark of resentment (which, left unexamined, grows to a roaring house fire of anger). When I begin to hear the voice in my head muttering "look how much I do", and "I'm exhausted!", and "why doesn't he...", and "why won't they...", I know it's time to take good look at how I'm NOT taking care of myself. When you hear yourself saying one thing when your heart and soul are screaming another, you're betraying yourself.
But what's clear to me is that all of this stuff, these rich lessons that have shaped my life in wonderful ways and deepened my relationships to friends and family and my children, arose out of my shattered self, my broken story.
It can be hard to see when you're surrounded by wreckage. It can feel like warmed-over platitudes ("out of suffering comes wisdom") that make you want to bash in the face of anyone offering them up.
But it was through my broken story that I gained the control to change the narrative of my own life into something that is far more likely to give me a satisfying ending. An ending, of course, to be determined.

You might also like:

My cousin Mke

My cousin Mike. I love my cousin Mike. He lives across the country from me. We are one year, almost exactly, apart. We went 20 years. without getting to see each other and when we did....it was like we had never been apart. I love my cousin Mike.

His birthday was Sunday. He turned 49. And his 20 year old son was killed by a drunk driver. Happy birthday sweet Mike.  I cannot imagine his heartache. I cannot fathom how he is even breathing. I cannot imagine.

I wonder what their last conversation was like. Hopefully filled with love and laughter....and more love.....and zero regret.

Because my sweet cousin Mike will never, ever, ever get to have another last conversation with his baby.  Never. I cannot imagine....

What is my last conversation like with my loved ones?

I lost another cousin a year ago totally unexpectedly to brain cancer-found out one week, dead the next. I was so struck by that. You just don't know when people will be taken.

I hope everyone I love, KNOW how much I love them. I hope I have told you. I hope I have showed you. I hope you love......and forgive....each other. And then love more and more and more.  You REALLY may never get another chance. Really....never...another chance..... Please know I love you. Please please love each other.

And please pray for my cousin Mike.