“Write yourself a compassionate, sympathetic letter about what you have learned and understood, what you are grateful to yourself for, what you were courageous about, and what you forgive yourself for.”  Healing A Broken Heart, p. 119

April 22, 2015

Dear Christi,

Although it may not feel like it on some days, you are coming out of the dark and beginning to emerge into the new version of your life.  I would like to promise you that there will be more of what you want and less of what you don’t want, but that would be ill-advised.  What you have endured would have broken the strongest of men or women, but you sought Godly wisdom, acknowledged your need for God and accepted the grace, mercy and support of those who love you.  I cannot imagine the huge chunk of pride you had to swallow to humble yourself enough to admit that your marriage had become unsalvageable.  Or that you had “gut feelings” in advance of your wedding day that, if honored, would have saved you the entire, ugly mess.  But, dear woman, do remind yourself that if you had not endured it just the way you did, you may have continued to believe that what you were getting was the very best that you ever could have.  And that, more than anything, is absolutely untrue.

When you are teetering on the edge of self-pity, remind yourself of how you have since learned, truly learned, the difference between godly and ungodly ways for spouses to treat each other.  God knows how He wants wives to treat their husbands – with respect, and God knows how He wants husbands to treat their wives – with love.  He commands wives to respect their husbands – remind yourself how you would not, no matter how often he begged you, be a nagging wife to your husband.  Remind yourself how you endured more than a year of single-income living as you respected your husband’s dream and aspiration to build a home-based business centered around his passion – art/photography/graphic design.  Don’t forget how you did not complain to him when he opened his separate checking account the second year you were married and kept his money separate from (y)ours.  Remember how you distanced yourself from your family and friends in order to respect his wishes that you stay at home more and spend more time with your new family.

Please don’t ever forget how your husband showered you with his best efforts at love.  Calling you a bitch when you woke him because you needed him to go to the drugstore and get some medicine for your infant son who had an ear infection. Continuing to poke your pregnant belly after you had repeatedly asked him to stop and screaming that he had given you all his fucking time, which, in his mind, justified his staying up all night drinking and bursting into the bedroom, turning on the lights at 3:00 a.m., waking you when you had to be at work in just a few hours.  Screaming at you when you returned home after a weekend away and had forgotten to notify him that you were on the way – not because he was worried about your travel, but because you arrived before he had finished putting together his Valentine’s gift for you that year.  You had been away for 48 hours already, and it was not your fault that he had spent the weekend drinking and sleeping deep into the days and had not executed all that his gift entailed.  It was certainly not your fault that in his upset, he took the gift he had bought you and dramatically dumped it into the trash can.  Should you ever have even a brief second thought about whether or not you did the right thing by divorcing him, reflect carefully and honestly on the multiple times that you begged him to allow you to have a bedroom that was off-limits to his cat, to whom you suspected (and were ultimately affirmed by allergy testing) you were violently allergic.  Remember 2008?  The year you got chronic hives beginning in late January that did not dissipate until December?  Remind yourself of the indignant way that he flung open the bedroom door after you had steam cleaned the carpet, washed all the bed and window linens, and he told you, in no uncertain terms, “This is Phoenix’s house, too, and if he wants to come in our bedroom, he will.”  Or when, after you finally were able to move from that house into a different one, and after spending the first night there, you were almost completely hives-free, how you begged him to be allowed to leave the door separating the living quarters from the sleeping quarters closed because you suspected that it would give you great relief, at least at night.  And he refused angrily.  Or how he confessed, much later, that one weekend, when you were pregnant and out of town, he brought the cat back into not only the house but into your bedroom and defiantly rubbed it all over your side of the bed just to see if it would make you sick again. Please don’t ever allow yourself to believe that that kind of behavior is evidence of love.

Continuing to try and save your marriage to him even in the face of all of those outright betrayals was the most courageous stance you have ever taken.  When you are tempted to condemn yourself or shame yourself for having tried to do things right–create an environment where he could take his time building skills, seeking clientele and creating, you need to stop.  Just stop.  You heard from many other wives that they wished that they had your patience and determination.  You heard from many other husbands that they wished that their wives would support them the way you were patiently supporting your husband.  Stop.  Quit.  Don’t.  You did the best you could with the resources that you had.  And for him, all that meant was that you fell short.  And that the failure of the system was all due to your a) selfishness b) pride c) lack of intelligence d) uncooperative nature e) all of the above.

Forgive yourself for having allowed him to trespass so many of your healthy boundaries.  You attempted, on many occasions, to set firm boundaries that, if honored, would have demonstrated his unconditional love for you.  But, for whatever reason, he could not motivate himself to simply love you.  Forgive yourself for having been so patient with him that you began to feel like a fool.  But you remained patient. And giving.  And supportive.  Forgive yourself for responding in frustration and anger when he repeatedly chastised you for being the opposite of what you were to him – patient, giving, supportive.  Forgive yourself for allowing yourself to believe that the hell that you endured was remotely similar to what God wanted (and continues to want) for you in a partner.  You were excruciatingly wrong about that.  You may have had to endure it all in order to truly understand what the standard should be, but now you know.  Now you know that you should, at a minimum, expect your husband to sacrificially love and serve you, put your needs above his own, treat you with adoration, love you with a servant’s heart.  He should anticipate your needs and meet them – give you space when you need it, not attempt to occupy it all begrudgingly, immaturely, parasitically.

You are not off the hook – you must commune regularly with God, you must allow his Holy Spirit to guide you, convict you, teach you.  You have to be filled with His truth so that you never allow another human being’s emptiness to occupy that space. Know that you are worthy, enough.  Know that you will have to love unconditionally, too.  Know that grace and mercy and humility will try to elude you.  But you must go with God.  And learn from your mistakes.

Love,

Christi