Barganing

They say that you hit a point at this stage where you are trying to reason with your spouse. I guess that is what has happened this week. I e-mailed Daniel and got back a pretty heartfelt and contrite reply and it gave me hope for our marriage, only to be shot down again at the receipt of the next e-mail. I tried to make him see how big of a mistake he was making and that we could try to work it out to no avail. It is still a little unbelievable to me that this is really happening. How could he do this to me, us, our family. I go back and forth between shock and acceptance. From one hour to the next I could be in a different place. I just never know. The betrayal is so sharp and has cut so deep. There is a gaping wound there that will take a long time to heal, but it will heal. All things heal with time. I had to make sure he knew one last time that I was not willing to just let our marriage go, that I was willing to fight for it. I know it is what God required of me. Now it is time to move forward and begin a new chapter in my life as a single person. I do this unwillingly at this point, but I have no choice, a marriage is not a marriage unless there are two in it.

Depression

For the last four weeks of this unintentional journey I have felt pretty good, really good in fact. I have asked myself how I could be handleing everything so well. I know God is with me and He will never leave my side, but I thought I should be feeling a little bit worse. Well today was that day. A bit of depression set in. I think part of it was that I was overly tired, and I kinda overextended myself the last few days. Today I was feeling low. I haven't felt like this since before I had cancer 8 months ago. Today I felt lonely and alone. I thought about how over the years even while married I often felt this same way. I know I am loved by God, but today I was saddened by how unloved I have been by my husband, how he could do such a hurtful thing to the woman he has spent the last 21 years with really cuts deep and leaves a big gash. I considered the fact that after being married for the better part of my life I might spend the rest of it as a single person. That thought is foreign to me. I slept today and as I did I had a dream about Daniel. I dreamed that he came home on leave from his deployment to draft divorce papers and make sure that his pay would no longer go to our checking account, and he brought his girlfriend with him. It was horrible. Seeing them and having it in my face was aweful. I woke up in a funk and haven't been able to shake it the rest of the day. I prayed and asked God to send me some encouragement either from His Word or from someone in His body. A couple of hours later Joshua stopped by and stayed for a while. We talked and had dinner together and I was encouraged. I'm still in a little funk tonight, but I am very thankful that my Heavenly Father heard my cry for help and answered my prayer.

Denial

As I read the first e-mail that said I love you I thought well there could be a simple explanation for that. And, even as I read the next, and the next, I thought well maybe someone else is using his e-mail to send these messages. I hit Facebook and started to read more messages, intimate messages between the two of them. Something in me still didn't want to believe it. Maybe someone was using his e-mail and his Facebook. The first wave of denial came and quickly left as I was left with the discovery that my husband of 20 years was having an affair. Denial doesn't last long, but for a brief moment in the knowledge of the impending storm there is a calm, a maybe, a no it couldn't be, but then the knowledge takes root and as denial slips from your grasp the waves of emotion come rushing in like a tidal wave and there's nothing to stand in its way.