Letter #1: A broken heart

Dear Friend,

Whatever has led you to this blog, I’m so deeply sorry. This is the club you never wanted to join. Well, here we are ~ with the hope that the stories included from  many women connected with The Guest House Project will make you feel a little less alone and a bit more sure footed. 

You know all too well the crazy making of walking this uncharted territory ~ the pain of finding yourself with an unsafe person who is your primary person; the tangled web of lies.  What we thought we had wasn’t true. And if it wasn’t true, what does that say about us? Our past? Our future? Our sense of self and grounding? The family unit we were building?  As if that wasn’t enough, the extra layer of madness is that your person mixed in bits of truth with the lies, making it incredibly difficult to sort through and recalibrate your lost sense of reality. 

And that’s an incredibly dark place to find yourself. 

When my “d-day” came, the world had just shut down in March of 2020. All the “how will I explain why my husband isn’t here” of birthday parties, weddings, graduations and funerals evaporated ~ an event in history that will most likely never happen again allowed me the grace of time. Lots of time to weep myself sick and begin the seemingly endless journey of sorting through the beautiful pieces of my life that now looked like a distorted and mocking mirror where nothing was as before.  

I was told by a wise counselor that running away from grief would delay my healing and cause more damage to myself and everyone I loved. I certainly didn’t want that so I dove in with abandon. Stacks of books lined the empty side of my bed covering how to salvage your marriage after an affair, trying to understand affairs and how this happened to us, grappling with betrayal trauma, how do you know if your marriage is fixable and when to call it quits, the impact on my children, and legal advice if we ended up moving towards divorce. And that doesn’t begin to include all the betrayal podcasts and websites that started popping up on my feed as my browser recognized I was desperately looking for answers. 

I let a few trusted friends into my inner circle. I wrote down every word that helped me. I kept a list of verses that jumped off the page and every single provision God made for me. I read autobiographies looking for people who had endured suffering and what I could learn from them. I talked with people who had endured deep loss and survived ~  one was a woman whose husband left when she was in her  70’s. Her softly repeated phrase as a 92 year old probably gripped me the most, “I never thought I’d stop crying.”  I wrote down the nuggets learned from my time with a counselor. I went to the doctor. I took medicine so I could eat and sleep and function. I listened to scripture so I could fall asleep. I prayed face down on the floor for God to hold me together. It was a mountain I often didn’t think I had the mental or physical capacity to climb. I literally wondered if I might die of a broken heart. 

I didn’t die. 

You won’t either. One day, you may actually want to live. 

I’m now 4 years past my D-Day. I doubt the sadness of my original broken marriage and family will fully go away. But I’m hopeful again. I’m not in minute to minute acute pain. Family and friends say I look like my old self. I laugh easily. I believe firsthand in God’s faithfulness and gratefully recognize his specific and personal care for me.  I’ve set aside the manic book reading and opted for a place of peace, knowing I will never fully understand. Lastly, I think I’m realizing that life always offers you two buckets ~ joy and sadness.  I think I’m beginning to learn to live with both of those buckets in my two hands. That's more than I could have imagined in those early days. 

As we share together over the next months, I hope the stories and thoughts of so many women will deeply encourage you. We may have started as strangers but quickly will become sisters on the journey. As they say, “we are all just walking each other Home.” May you feel His presence and full empathy through their words. Even amidst the mess, He loves us so much more than we can fathom.

Love,

Your Sister on the journey

“The Lord is faithful to all His promises and loving towards you. The Lord upholds you and will lift you up as you bow down.” Psalm 145:13b-14