Posts Tagged ‘Broken Heart’

Opposite Sides Of The Same Coin

Posted: June 29, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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A few days after last July’s first friday art walk, I called my friend who had gone with us.  I suspected he had seen what I had seen that evening and that he would confirm what I was thinking.  I asked him over the phone, “Are you as confused as I am about why my wife and I are separated?”

“Definitely,” he told me.  “You guys are one.  You’re opposite sides of the same coin.”  I loved that phrase.  I actually told my wife that he said that soon afterward, but I didn’t think she had really paid any attention to it.   In fact, I forgot all about it until she brought it up during the restoration tour.

Right after we got back together, I completed my first triathlon, and my wife was training for her first full marathon.  Once the triathlon was over, I was looking for a new challenge, and we decided to train for some 10K races.  There were two in October – one in Springfield near our loft, and one in St. Louis close to our anniversary.

When we looked into the Halloween 10K in St, Louis, we found out that it’s not just a race.  It’s a fun event where many people run in costumes, there are props and Halloween themed scenes along the route, and a costume contest after the race.  We knew we wanted to be part of it, and we knew we wanted to run in costumes, but we didn’t know what to dress up as.

We kicked around different ideas, but nothing really stood out.  Then one day, my wife said, “Why don’t we go as opposite sides of the same coin?”  I was thrilled that she had remembered that and still thought about it, but I wasn’t sure how you could make a costume out of that.  I asked her, and as always, she had a great idea.

We cut out circles of cardboard and painted them silver.  Then she used a black marker and a projector at school to trace the features of a quarter on each, heads on one and tails on the other.  We used a Missouri quarter because it has the St. Louis Arch on the back of it.  We dressed in all black with the quarters attached to the front of our shirts.  We printed each half of the phrase on different sheets of paper, and attached them in sheet protectors to our backs.

We probably looked pretty silly and they were really unprofessional costumes, but we couldn’t have been happier with them.  We got people to take pictures of us in the hotel lobby and at the race.  It was a great experience and one that we look forward to making an annual tradition.  The only negative about it was that I injured my knee a few weeks beforehand, and ended up having to walk part of it and cross the finish line in a lot of pain.

Even that ended up being a blessing, because my wife refused to run on ahead and leave my side.  I kept telling her not to let me ruin the race for her, and she just kept saying, “We’re together.”  She stayed with me every step of the way, and we joined hands for the last few steps as we crossed the finish line.  Our times were not even close to competitive, but that didn’t matter.  Everything about the race was symbolic of what had changed between us since getting back together.

What had changed was everything.  It continues to amaze me that my wife is so different now.  When you’ve been with someone for more than a decade, you think you know everything about them.  You assume that you know how they will react, and what they will do at any given time, but everything was new and different.  It’s true that opposites do attract.  My wife and I are very different from each other, but it takes the two sides to make the one coin.

First Friday Art Walk

Posted: June 28, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Ever since we moved to southwest Missouri, one of our favorite things to do has been the first friday art walk in downtown Springfield.  The first friday evening of every month, the whole downtown square and surrounding areas are one big street party.  The art galleries stay open, many businesses offer samples of finger foods, while some have wine to taste, and there is live music (some hired and scheduled performers and some street musicians) everywhere.

It’s a lot of fun, and my wife and I have always loved the atmosphere.  Sometimes we only go for a little while and other times we stay out and visit lots of places.  We usually run into people we know, and sometimes we invite friends to meet up with us.  When we still had the kids living at home, we would sometimes take them, and they always looked forward to it.  The only drawback was figuring out how and when to make it time for just the two of us, and how much to share it with others.

Over the years, we missed very few art walks.  Occasionally we were out of town, or the weather was horrendous, but for most of the first five years, if it was first friday art walk, we were there.  Last July, we were separated during art walk, and it occurred at a time when things were really pretty iffy in terms of our relationship.  Where I stood was a huge question mark, and we were at a critical juncture in which way things were going to go.

It seemed too much like a date for either of us to be totally comfortable going together, but we both wanted to go, and not by ourselves.  My wife asked me to bring our Son, who was still staying with me at the time.  He wasn’t able to go, and I ended up asking a buddy of mine, who was a friend of both of us, to come hang out.  He knew what was going on, so he was also rather uncomfortable, but I assured him not to worry and that things would be very casual.

We all met downtown at a cheese steak shop, and set out on foot after we ate.  My wife seemed completely at ease and more and more open with me as the night went on.  We held hands and laughed quite a bit together.  We had a great time and I couldn’t help thinking, “Why in the world are we separated?  We are obviously still a great couple and this is how it could be all the time.”  I couldn’t understand why my wife didn’t see it, or what held her back from returning to me, but she still needed to go through some things before she came to that realization.

After we got back together, it seemed like every first friday, there was something that interfered with us being able to go.  The first one, my wife was sick.  Several in a row were rained out.  I often had to work at Macy’s on friday nights.  For a while, it seemed like we would never be able to spend a romantic art walk as a couple in love again.

We made a few brief appearances here and there, but it wasn’t until two months ago that we really got to enjoy a first friday.  The weather was perfect, our schedules were clear, and there was nothing to stand in our way.  This time, holding hands was as automatic as breathing.  Laughing together is just what we do.   And we didn’t need anyone else there to take the pressure off or keep us from feeling awkward.

At one of the photography studios, they were giving out free samples of cake pops, made locally.  Not only were they a tasty treat, but we decided they would be the perfect thing to serve at our renewal ceremony in August.  It was just an extra little blessing that came out of the evening.

Last month, we invited my friend Joe and his family over for dinner, and they went to art walk with us afterward.  We also invited our friend who had gone with us last year while we were separated, but he was out of town.  We ran into some other friends and people that we knew as the night went on, and it was really just a time to celebrate how good things are now.  In just a few days, it will be the “one year later” art walk and, while we look forward to it as much as any other,  our first fridays have already been restored.

Meeting The Challenges

Posted: June 27, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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When you start working on a project in an older home, it almost always produces unexpected challenges.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s a big job or a small one.  If you think it’s going to take 30 minutes, it will probably end up being at least two hours.  If you’re expecting to work a few hours, it may be a day or more.  The older the house, the more this tends to hold true.

The reasons are varied.  Usually, it’s because once you start tearing into something, or taking something apart, you find out that the problems are worse than you expected.  Very often, this is further complicated by the fact that the construction and the materials are so outdated, there is no easy fix.  It’s not as simple as taking off a leaky faucet and replacing it with a new one.  It turns out that the pipes are rusted out further down and the fittings don’t match what’s being made now, and it always seems to be Sunday evening when nothing is open to get parts anyway.

At those times, decisions have to be made.  Will you insist on the replacement parts being as genuine and authentic to the time period as possible?  If so, what if they no longer meet building codes?  If you can’t find suitable parts, will you attempt to weld and make your own?  Are you willing to allow for updating and modernizing, and, if so, to what degree?

In the case of our marriage, we had a good number of years under our belt when all the problems came to the surface.  Many of these were long-standing issues that should have been dealt with as part of routine maintenance, or when they were small.  They would have been much easier to fix.  As it was, we got through the worst of it by last August, when we began living together again.  Even so, the unexpected problems and issues kept popping up.

Whenever it seemed like things were ready to go smooth and easy, something would always seem to arise that would make us have to stop and deal with it.  There were times that we reached a high level of frustration and we both made statements like, “This is never going to go away,” or “This will never be over.”  As much as we were trying to focus on the present and the future, the past kept creeping up and interfering with the work we were doing on our relationship.  We shouldn’t have expected it to be easy, but we were still caught off guard by the idea that there was going to be more to this than we thought.

As we’ve moved throughout this year of the restoration tour, we’ve experienced incredibly high highs and devastatingly low lows.  The highs are better than anything we used to have in our marriage, and they allow us to see what is really possible when two people love each other the way God intended.  The lows cause us to have to make those same kinds of decisions that come up in a house restoration when things don’t go according to plan.

There are three things that I think need to be stated about the restoration tour.  The first is this:  No matter how difficult or frustrating it ever becomes, you don’t give up and walk away from the house.  Ever.  You have too much invested and you will never be able to be completely ok with letting go of that dream and that place you called home.  You may have to re-think some things, it may take more time and money than you were hoping, and you may have to do things differently than you were planning, but you stay in the house and you do what you have to do.

The second is this: There is little or no room for rigidity when it comes to restoring a marriage.  You have to be willing to be flexible.  You have to allow for the fact that time has passed, and things are constantly changing.  No matter how good some of your past memories are, and no matter how much you want things to be just the way they were, that’s probably not going to be the case.

You can’t get stuck in the past.  You have to make some changes and embrace some newness.  A relationship is a living, dynamic thing that doesn’t just stay still.  Some things you may not be able to fix or replace, and you may just have to come up with something new where that used to be.

The third is this:  Restoring your past mistakes and hurts is not a make-believe game.  It’s not playing dress up and acting like things are different from they are.  It’s confronting those areas where you failed in the past and succeeding in the present.  It’s finding those places where things weren’t built right or sustained damage and either re-doing the work so that it is right, or replacing what’s faulty with something newer and better.

What you end up with may not look exactly like it did in the beginning.  It also may not turn out to be what you thought it would when you started.  If it’s done correctly, though, it will be stronger, more useful, and more in keeping with the times.  It may very well also end up being more beautiful than it ever was before.

Not All Surprises Are Good

Posted: June 25, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Probably the biggest surprise for me of our restoration and reconciliation was the way my thoughts and emotions would sneak up and throw me for a loop at the most unexpected times.  There was the initial newness and bliss of being together again that was so amazing, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  Then there was the completely unforseen dynamic of me becoming very angry or sad because of everything that had happened.

I suppose it was extremely naive and unrealistic to think that we could go through everything we did and that I would just be able to put it all in the rear view mirror and go happily forward.  It seemed like it at first.  There were the fears and doubts that plagued the first couple of weeks of being back together, but those mostly amounted to opportunities for each of us to reassure the other of our love and commitment.

Still, I didn’t expect things to get worse after they had been so good.  I don’t know if I just pushed things down and ignored them and it was only a matter of time before they came back up, or if it was more that I was initially so filled with gratitude and relief that I really didn’t think about any residual effects from our time apart.  I finished up my therapy about a month after my wife and I reunited, based on my doctor’s opinion that I no longer needed to make regular visits.  He left the door open for me to return at any time and, as the months went by, there were numerous times that I seriously considered it.

I know just enough psychology to understand the way I’m wired, and my emotions are very much tied to specific events.  These “events” can be as major as the day my wife moved out, or as minor as a casual statement that she made that struck me wrong.  I tend to have triggers like certain days of the month that correspond to painful memories, or visual reminders of past hurts.

For a while, life began to be a maze where I had to try to navigate without getting caught by any of those reminders.  Fairly quickly, I realized that it was not only unhealthy, but a form of running away to live like that.  My wife also was carrying burdens that she needed to be able to release, and I needed to be strong enough to let her give them to me and help her to heal and be free.

This is where the need for complete trust and honest communication became so critical.  We each had to trust the other’s love enough to be able to open up and talk about the things we were having trouble with.  We needed to know that even if these conversations were painful, they were necessary to produce healing for us.  Unfortunately, the more I knew, the more I had to heal from.

I decided at the beginning of this summer, it was time to make sure any remaining issues, no matter how small or insignificant, were taken care of.  I still hd a few questions and there were a few things that still bothered me.  I wanted us to reach our ceremony and our honeymoon in August completely healed and free from any guilt or hurt.  The truth is, as much as we may not want to talk about these things, the healing comes when we express them and are assured once again, of each other’s steadfast and continuing love.

In just the last few days, my wife and I have both had little things unexpectedly creep up and surprise us.  For her, it actually occurred while reading this blog.  For me, a series of events over the last couple of days took me back too much to a place I didn’t want to be.  Just this morning, I ended up expressing that I was still a little bit angry with my wife over some deception regarding her state of mind before we separated.  It was triggered by three or four things that I still had some painful associations with, and I realized that it wasn’t just going to go away.

That’s really what the restoration tour is all about.  It’s about identifying those memories that have been corrupted by gaps in our love, commitment, and faithfulness, and revisiting them.  Not to rehash the hurts, but to replace them with new, better memories.  We are taking back what used to be ours and claiming those things for us that hadn’t been ours before.

A Historical Stop On the Restoration Tour

Posted: June 24, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Today, the restoration tour took us by bicycle to the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.  It’s a historical site of a civil war battle that has, in a roundabout way, played a role in our lives ever since we moved to Missouri.

Our first house in Missouri was located on about 80 acres that the landlord ran cattle on.  Just to the north was the Wilson’s Creek Battlefield.  If you walked straight out our back door, you would come to the boundary of the battlefield, where Terrell Creek merges with Wilson’s Creek.  That was the house that was destroyed by the tornado on March 12, 2006.

The history and effects of that tornado have already been documented in this blog, but that event was the single biggest factor in the changes in myself that led to the downfall of our marriage.  The fact that the battlefield was there was incidental, but it did provide the backdrop for many good hours of fishing, hunting, and exploring before the tornado.

When we moved back to Republic in 2007, we always talked about going out to the battlefield some day, but we never did.  Then, last Spring, my wife got into cycling right about the same time we were splitting up.  We also got interested in becoming triathletes and we heard that the trail through the Wilson’s Creek Battlefield was a good place to train because of the hills and conditions.

I got my wife her first road bike for her birthday that year, and I also bought her a pink cycling jersey.  This was during the time that we still lived together, but that she no longer thought that she loved me, and things were already in motion to break us apart.  I took her and her bike out to the battlefield so that she could ride the trails while our son and I ran.  We took pictures of her with her bike and her jersey and I tried to be happy for her despite the circumstances.

About a month later, she bought a new bike and moved out.  We only went out to the battlefield a few times together, and I went several times by myself after that.  I still have those pictures, and they’ve always made me kind of sad because of the memories they invoke.

Since we’ve been back together, cycling and fitness have been, once again, a big part of our lives.  We both have nice road bikes now, and during the summer, we practically live at the gym or out on the many trails near our home.  During the school year, it’s not uncommon for us to cycle the 18 miles to work.  This August, on the day of our renewal ceremony, we plan to spend the morning riding the 62 mile Tour De Cox.

Just recently, after much indecision, my wife decided that she does want to compete in the Tiger Tri this August.  Since we really do need to step up our training, we decided that this morning, we would ride out to the battlefield, do some running once we get there, and ride back.  This led to a comedy of errors, thanks to the navigator on our phones and some unmarked country roads that we may or may not have been supposed to have taken.

We did eventually reach the battlefield, and as we rode into the parking lot where we used to unload bikes from the back of the car, I realized that my wife was wearing that same pink jersey from more than a year before.  I hadn’t intended today to be a restoration tour stop.  I just thought it was going to be a long ride and brick workout, but when I saw where we were and the memories came flooding back, I realized that this was a part of our restoration just as much as the planned stops.

Sometimes that’s the way restoration works.  Sometimes you’re just doing work that needs done, and you discover something you didn’t expect.  It could be a color of paint underneath that shows up while scraping.  It could be a discovery of something that was built over, but is still there and can be incorporated back into being part of the house again.  The great thing is, those discoveries happen, and then you get to choose what to do with them.  Whether it’s a house, a life, or a marriage that’s being restored, it will almost always end up being a combination of the things you planned to do and the things you discover along the way.

A Toast To Love… And Swimming!

Posted: June 23, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Facebook and social media is such a part of our lives today that it’s almost hard to remember being without it.  Of course, social networking can be a double-edged sword.  It’s great for connecting with people in today’s busy world.  It can also be a place where people air their dirty laundry, share too much information, and are victimized by predators.

While we were separated, my wife and I were both careful about what we posted on our Facebooks and for that I am grateful.  I understood that my wife wasn’t including me in her virtual life during that time, even though she never changed her relationship status from “married.”  She simply never responded to my posts, and didn’t interact with me online.

We had also been going to the gym separately, which was excruciating for me, especially when chance put us there at the same time.  I wanted her to want to work out with me, but instead she barely acknowledged me.  I respected her boundaries and didn’t push.  I understood why she was doing what she was doing and even though I didn’t like it, I took the unselfish road of loving her in the ways she would allow me to, and not trying to force anything.

Last August, in those first days of being back together, we were still figuring out where we stood with each other.  Of course, we went to the gym together then, but things were still awkward.  Even though my wife had dropped out of triathlon training, she had kept up her swimming and was constantly increasing her distance.  She would set goals for a certain number of laps and then raise the amount as she obtained each goal.

Ironically, she had never learned to swim as a youngster.  I took it for granted that my mother had taken us for swimming lessons every summer when I was a kid.  When we first started going to the pool together last Spring, I had to show her the strokes and convince her that she could do it.  At first, she couldn’t even do one lap.

Soon after she started swimming, we split up.  I only swam as much as I needed to for training, because I view the swim as a necessary evil of being a triathlete.  She found that swimming energized her and the water gave her a type of solace, so she began spending a lot of time in the pool.  After only about four months from when she began, she set her sights on two miles with no rest.

The morning she was going to attempt it, I started out in the pool with her.  It was going to take about two hours by her estimate, so I was only beside her for about the first thirty minutes.  At that point, I got out and went to run and do other things while she continued.

In our fitness center, there is an indoor track that has windows on one side overlooking the pool.  When I knew she had been swimming for more than 90 minutes, I began taking a look each time I came around.  At first she looked steady and strong, but as it approached an hour and 45 minutes, I could see that she was starting to struggle.  Her form was faltering and I could tell she was exhausted.

I decided to go down to the pool and I knelt by the edge of her lane.  She saw me and gave me a signal of how many laps she had left.  I stayed there and gave her encouragement each time she turned around.  When she finished, she hugged me.  It was the first time she had publicly shown that type of affection since we reconciled.  Then she posted on Facebook that she couldn’t have done it without me.

That was a breakthrough for us.  I don’t really know why, but somehow, her accomplishing that goal and me being there supporting her changed things.  Where she had been so reserved for so long, the floodgates opened.

A Toast?

Champagne is a universal drink of celebration, and she had planned her next tatoo as a celebration of swimming two miles.  The fact that it not only occurred right after we got back together, but also provided the catalyst to set her free to love me outwardly again made it a celebration of much more than just swimming endurance.  I’ll drink to that!

What is Love?

Posted: June 20, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The question has been asked thousands of times for thousands of years.  Songwriters ask, “What is love?” and “How will I know when it’s love?”  Poets and painters, preachers and philosophers, psychologists and pundits all have their take.  “I want to know what love is,” sings one man who found that being a rock star, with all of its trappings, didn’t satisfy that inner longing for something deeper than money and fame could provide.

The need for love is basic to the human condition.  The lack of understanding of what this somehow elusive entity is, underscores how far from the path we humans have wandered.  The scriptures declare that, “God is love.”  For some, that is far too simple.  For others, such an idea is far too complicated.  I would humbly suggest that, if God is the creator, then apart from Him, love is irrelevant and cannot truly be found.

While my wife and I were apart, I searched both my heart and the scriptures for answers to the many questions I was struggling with.  I was led to two words.  One, of course, was love.  I wrote out pages of verses that contained the ideas of love and marriage.  I read them out loud and prayed them day after day until they took root deep in my soul.

The other word was fear.  Again and again, God led me to that word.  He revealed to me that there was a stronghold of long-standing fears that were holding my wife’s heart captive.   She didn’t know or understand this, and would have denied it if asked, but it wasn’t important for her to know it.  It was important that I be willing to fight for her, and to know what I was going up against.

I’m not really comfortable putting on the hero’s cape and going out to rescue the damsel in distress, but love drove me to do what I had to do.  Just as with the word love, I wrote out pages of scriptures about fear, and prayed and meditated on them.  Even after we got back together, there was an ongoing battle for both of us to conquer our fears and overcome those beliefs and tendencies that still remained from previous failed relationships and unhealthy interactions with people who didn’t show true love.

During the height of all of this, once again, a song spoke deeply to both of us.  I was in the car and a song came on the radio that literally stopped me.  I was so blown away by what I was hearing that I had to sit and take it in.  I found out later, by searching the web, that it was called “Please Don’t Let Me Go,” by a band called Group 1 Crew.

God’s love is a rescuing love.  His love is relentless and unstoppable.  He loves in the face of rejection and hurt, even to those who spit in His face, and most especially to those who are lost and confused.  Deep beneath the surface, where she appeared to be detached and independent, my wife’s heart was crying desperately for real love.  A part of her closed up her ears against those cries, because sometimes it’s easier to deny a need exists, than to face the idea that you might not be able to get it met.

My wife desperately wanted love to be real, and she wanted the love that she had believed she had from me when we married.  If she couldn’t have that love, she didn’t know where to go or how to live in this world.  It was up to me to break through her walls of fear and doubt and set her free to love and be loved the right way.  In order to do that, I needed to be filled with God’s love, because none of us have that kind of love on our own.  It simply doesn’t exist apart from Him.

Two verses were very powerful for me during that time.  The first is a prayer.  It says, “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other.”  The second says, “There is no fear in love.  But perfect love casts out fear.”  Perfect love doesn’t come from us.  It only comes from God.

As I allowed Him to fill me with His love, it began to overflow to her.  The love that she was then receiving was coming from Him, through me.  Once she was filled to overflowing, she began to return that love back to me, and I, in turn, was returning it back to God.  He returned it back to me, and the cycle continues.  The cartoon is right, when the child asks, “Dear God, if I give all my love away, can I have a refill?”  Not only a refill, but a neverending supply.

For Future Generations

Posted: June 19, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Today is Father’s Day and truthfully…I don’t remember Father’s Day last year.  My wife doesn’t either.  So as far as the restoration tour and Father’s Day, we’re just going to assume that last year wasn’t good.

My wife and I both had kids from previous marriages, so when we got married, we did the whole blended family thing right from day one.  We never had any kids together because she was no longer able to.  All of the kids she already had were very young, so I was in their lives from early on.  I had a daughter who didn’t live with us, and my wife had two daughters and a son.

They don’t give you an instruction manual on raising your own children, and raising step-children is even more of a challenge.  I always tried to be there and provide stability, but I never tried to take the other parent’s place.  The kids had a “real” father, and replacing their blood relative was never a thought for me.

It took time for the relationship to develop between myself and the kids.  There were custody and visitation issues, as well as the problems left over from the previous failed relationships, and those are things that you just have to figure out as you go.  I thought that if her kids saw me treating their mother right, that was about the best thing I could do for them.

From the very beginning, we agreed that there would be no “your” kids and “my” kids.  We were married, so everyone was part of the family.  We always referred to all of them as “ours” and we still do.  That wasn’t to say that they no longer belonged to their other parent, it just meant that in our household, there would be no favoritism.

My wife’s oldest daughter, Angie, developed the earliest and strongest bond with me.  She had been a teenage pregnancy, and her biological father had chosen not to be a part of her life.  Even though she knew him, I was the only “Dad” she really had for most of her life.  She is one of my heroes, because she overcame the rejection and dysfunction of her early childhood, and has become a shining example of what can be, rather than what could have been.

When things went bad between my wife and I last year, Angie was as devastated as I was in her own way.  She cried and agonized for the same number of days and months that I did, so much so that her own marriage began to suffer for it.  What neither of us realized was that she had watched my wife and I through the years, and seeing the beautiful marriage that we had gave her the faith to believe that she could have that too, despite her less than ideal beginnings.

When people are going through troubles in their marriage, it’s very easy to forget that there are future generations who have a stake in the outcome.  While my wife and I had alternately cast our love for each other aside and wallowed in self-centeredness (i.e. focusing on what I want and MY needs and what makes ME happy), we lost sight of the fact that there were other people who were going to have to live with the consequences of our choices.

A friend of ours got a divorce after her husband cheated on her, confessed, and then went back to the same woman.  As much as it was a horribly painful experience for her to be betrayed like that, she discovered that the future pain that she had to watch her children go through was even worse.  She once told us, “If I had known what the divorce was going to do to my kids, I would have invited her (the other woman) to live in my house and sleep in my bed.”  While she wouldn’t have in actuality, the point hit home.

When a marriage fails, it’s not just a husband and wife who experience the pain of loss, and their pain is not necessarily even the deepest.  For my wife and I, our pain was very real, and our loss would have been great.  For Angie, there’s no telling what the final toll would have been if we hadn’t made it.  She said to us that she had based her whole marriage and choice of a husband off watching us, and if we couldn’t make it, then what chance did she have?”

When we reconciled, we not only saved our marriage and created a testimony of hope for others, we positively affected generations down the line.  The other kids have been affected, and have since shared things that we never realized they saw in us and thought about us.  Today, those kids are celebrating with us and wishing me a happy Father’s Day, even though I’m only their Step-Dad.  I would like to believe that they would still care about me if our marriage had failed, but there’s no guarantee that I wouldn’t have lost both a wife and a family.

Making “Her” Place “Ours”

Posted: June 15, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Going back to the apartment in Republic to get “my stuff” was very bittersweet.  I could tell that my wife was growing tense even while we were driving down those old familiar streets.  I asked her if it was bothering her to be going back and she admitted that it was.

I could have gone by myself to do this, but I wanted her to be a part of it.  I wanted her input on what to keep and what to get rid of, but more importantly, I wanted her there when I walked into and out of that place for the last time.  When we had moved there, I thought our marriage was going to get better.  After spending all those painful nights and days in that place, I didn’t want my last time going back to be without her.

In truth, most of “our” stuff was already at the loft.  We had picked the place out together with the hope that we would be able to work things out.  With an eye to that end, we had agreed to bring those things that we would both want to have there at the time my wife moved in.  The things that were at the old apartment were mostly my clothes and some basic survival stuff for the kitchen and bathroom.

It wasn’t the things that were important.  It was the idea of making the change permanent, and restoring some of the damage that the separation had done.  It was the idea that we were now together, and always would be, so this wasn’t something that I had to do alone.  It was a necessary step on the restoration tour, and we made it short, although it certainly wasn’t sweet.

A big part of me really didn’t want to live in the loft, because I associated it with us being split up, and her pursuing her own life without me.  I had always dreamed of having a loft, but in my dreams, it was never like this.  On the other hand, it was the place where my wife had grown and changed and was still becoming the person I was now more in love with than ever before. She had done a masterful job of organizing and decorating the place, and her personality and good taste were all over it.

One of the things I had vowed to myself when we got back together was that I would be there to give to her and not take from her.  Another was that I wouldn’t try to control or manipulate her.  Even without me saying much about it, she understood the need to make some changes.  She knew that my mental and emotional health would be improved if some things about the place could be made different.

It was great to rearrange the furniture, change some things about the decor and the atmosphere, and feel the support from my wife as we began to slowly make the loft “ours.”  I wasn’t going to demand that any changes be made, and she was more than willing to try to make me feel more comfortable about living there.  I’m a visual person, so being able to walk in and see something different from what I used to see while we were split up was important.

That’s really what’s at the heart of the entire restoration tour.  Changing negative associations into positive ones.  We can’t go back and undo what’s been done.  We can’t take magic wands and pull certain memories out of our heads.  Some part of us will always know things we wish we didn’t, and will always remember things that we wish had never happened.

Restoration isn’t about denial.  It’s about repairing, strengthening, and replacing.  You don’t try to hide what’s wrong with an old house that needs work, so that you can pretend the years haven’t taken a toll.  You identify everything that isn’t as it should be and you make it right.  So it is with our marriage.  We don’t try to pretend the damage never occurred, but we don’t accept that we have to live with it either.  Much like the prayer of the addict, we are hard at work on accepting the things we cannot change, and changing the things we can.

After the Phone Call… Now What?

Posted: June 8, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The day of “the phone call” was July 31st, so school was out, and it was a Saturday, but I did have to work at Macy’s later that day.  I didn’t expect to see my wife, but she showed up with our oldest daughter soon after my shift began.  Her face was flushed with excitement, and she had been sharing the good news with our daughter, who had stood strong for us throughout the entire ordeal.

There are two moments in my life that I will never forget.  They are forever etched in my memory like living photographs.  One is our wedding, when I first saw my wife at the back of the church.  At the risk of sounding cynical, I’ve never bought into people saying someone was the most beautiful bride ever, but that moment is permanently frozen in my mind, and I’ve never seen anyone or anything so beautiful. 

The second moment was that afternoon at Macy’s, when my wife got me away to where it was just the two of us, looked me in the eye, and told me that she loved me.  She repeated it, as if to make sure that I understood what she was trying to say, and she looked at me with eyes that melted me completely.  If you’ve ever seen the movie, Notting Hill, you know the scene near the end when Julia Roberts says she’s “just a girl, standing in front of just a boy, asking him to love her.”  In my wife’s eyes was both a statement and a question as she repeated an almost pleading, “I love you.”  The statement was clear. “I didn’t mean what I said before.  I do love you.”  The question was equally obvious.  “Will you love me back?  Will you please love me back?”

She told me that she had been wrong and had made some mistakes.  She said that she had done some things she wasn’t proud of.  I told her that it didn’t matter and that if I had been the man that she needed me to be, and the man that she believed she had married, she would never have been put in a position for any of this to happen.  I told her that I took full responsibility for the entire mess and that I would never again allow her to ever be in that type of situation.

She said she needed a little bit of time to clear her head and get things ready, and she asked if it would be all right if we waited until Monday evening, when I got off work, for me to move in.  I told her that was fine and to do whatever she needed to do.  We kissed right there in the store and I didn’t care if I got in trouble (I didn’t).  I don’t really remember much of anything about the rest of that day or the next two days.  Monday evening just couldn’t come fast enough. 

On Monday, August 2, 2010, my Facebook status was the famous quote from Al Michaels, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”  This was no hockey game, though.  This was a marriage pulled from the wreckage and rubble, being rebuilt, restored, and made new again.  This was the result of countless tears, unmeasured anguish, hours and days of prayer and faith, and work.  Work like there was no alternative but to do this, no matter how long, how hard, or how insurmountable it may have seemed at any given moment.

If you are reading this, and either you are struggling in your marriage, or you know someone who is, let me be very clear.  It is never too late.  It is never beyond hope.  If the two of you loved each other enough at one time to marry, that love can be rebuilt.  That’s what it takes.  Building love by your actions and not getting stuck in the past or the what-if’s.   Just like you’ll never get fit unless you start working out, the feelings of love won’t come back until you start building the love back up in your relationship.

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