You know, life is hard. Nothing about it is easy. But we were never promised easy, now were we? I have wanted a place to talk about the hard stuff for quite a while now, but a blog about my family, house renovations and gardening just didn't seem appropriate. So here I am. Blogging my way through the hard stuff.
But first, a bit about me and my story. I'll update this and fill in the blanks over time.
My Former Life
I had a good life. I got to travel all over the world...Tokyo, Kyushu, the Canary Islands, Madrid. I had two sweet dogs (even if one was a bit schizophrenic). I didn't HAVE to work. I was living in Madrid, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.And I was miserable. My marriage was a sham. No matter how hard I tried or how hard I prayed (and I prayed a LOT) nothing ever seemed good enough. You see, I was in an abusive relationship. I just didn't know it. And when he had an affair with my best friend, THAT was where I drew the line. I could point to the affair and say, "That is wrong." I asked my ex to make a choice. He chose her. I found myself alone in a foreign country betrayed by the one person who was supposed to have loved me forever.
Shortly after leaving the relationship, I moved back home to regroup. I had been overseas for most of my 20s and was starting ALL over. I moved in with mom and dad while I tried to rebuild my life. An important key to this recovery was the professional counseling of Karin Confer. My appointments were on Thursdays. And every Thursday, we would uncover some new ugliness about my former life that literally knocked the wind out of me. She would send me home with required reading and I would literally crawl into bed and stay there the rest of the day trying to process the day's discovery.
It was during this time I discovered that I had been in an abusive relationship. At first I was shocked. I am an intelligent accomplished woman. How did I let this happen? Well, it's kind of like boiling a frog. At first you start out with lukewarm water and slowly increase the heat. The poor frog never even knows what happened...he's just being BOILED ALIVE with no protest. Abuse is kind of like that. And at the beginning, what is a typical sign of abuse can be seen as endearing. He gets jealous? Oh, how sweet. He must really care about me. As time goes on that jealousy turns into control and rage. And abuse is so insidious. The abused feel like it is all their fault. Like they are crazy. I worked so hard to try and keep him happy. But nothing was ever good enough. By the end of the relationship I was always walking on eggshells, terrified and unsure of what might cause the next tirade, but knowing that something would, and I would get it.
So, there I was. Almost 30, living with mom and dad, seeing a therapist once a week trying to recover from the hell that had been my life. And looking back, I wouldn't change any of it. I am who I am today because of that experience. It doesn't DEFINE me. The abuse that is. Or the betrayal. What defines me is God's grace that got me through it. What defines me is the strength that came from facing my worst fear and walking away. Scarred, but alive. And knowing that through it all God was faithful and delivered me from that hell. And sharing in Christ's suffering at Calvary and knowing that he suffered so I might live. "I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead." Philippians 3:10-11
