Posts Tagged ‘Healing’

The Joy of Rediscovering

Posted: June 14, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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It’s amazing how you can know someone for so long, yet not know them nearly as well as you should for the time you’ve spent together.  As my wife and I began to take our first steps together on the restoration road, we got to experience what very few couples ever find.  We got to fall in love all over again.  We got to discover once more, what it was about this person, compared to all the billions on the earth, that made being together so right.

Every day was literally like living a dream.  I walked around with a dumb grin on my face and made statements like, “I am the luckiest and most blessed man on the planet,” for several weeks, at least.  It was even better than I had pictured things being while we were apart, and what I had pictured had been awfully good.  I’m sure some people got tired of it, but people were mostly happy for us, especially those who really knew what had been going on.

There was also a part of me that kept being afraid that it really was a dream and that waking up was inevitable.  I am well aware of the old saying that, “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”  I wanted it to be true, and I didn’t have any reason to believe that any of it was fake, but I was still nervous that somehow, it was all going to blow up in my face.  Even some of my friends, although they were happy that we were back together, kind of kept their distance and watched, as though they didn’t believe it was real, or they thought that at some point, some other shoe was going to drop.

As was so often the case, God used a song to speak to me.  I like to listen to Pandora while I’m working out, and I have several stations. Which one I choose on any given day depends on my mood.  I don’t always pay attention to the songs, but on one particular day, I found myself hearing lyrics that sounded like they were describing me.  The song was “So Far Away,” by Staind, and it says,

This is my life, it’s not what it was before
All these feelings I’ve shared
And these are my dreams
That I’d never lived before
Somebody shake me
‘Cause I, I must be sleeping

Now that we’re here, it’s so far away
All the struggle we thought was in vain
And all the mistakes one life contained
They all finally start to go away

These are my words
That I’ve never said before
I think I’m doing’ okay
And this is the smile
I’ve never shown before

Somebody shake me
‘Cause I, I must be sleeping
I’m so afraid of waking
Please don’t shake me

Now that we’re here, it’s so far away
All the struggle we thought was in vain
And all the mistakes one life contained
They all finally start to go away

And now that we’re here, it’s so far away
And I feel like I can face the day
And I can’t forget that I’m not ashamed
To be the person that I am today

So Far Away

The song inspired me to begin to let go of all the fears and the bad memories.  Instead of being afraid of waking and finding that it was only a dream, I could acknowledge all the changes and celebrate how different things were now.  Hope is always stronger than fear, just like joy is so much more powerful than sorrow.

I realized that we had a whole new world open to us, and we could make a brand new life of our own choosing.  We didn’t have to be bound to our past mistakes, and we weren’t doomed to repeat them.  We could move forward as a brand new couple.  We were familiar with each other, but we were now going to get to know each other on a much deeper level than ever before.

Finding A Church To Belong To

Posted: June 13, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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A few weeks before my wife and I got back together, I was at the gym one day working out.  I was thinking, “I’d really like to go to a church this week where I could just worship and not have to worry about what everyone’s thinking.”  Later that day, a friend of mine called me and asked, “Would you like to go to North Point with me this Sunday?”

North Point is a large, non-denominational church that plays rock and roll music and is very non-traditional.  I told him that yes, I would like to, as a matter of fact.  It was just another answered prayer on a minor level, but would turn out to be a major blessing as time went on.

We met in the parking lot on Sunday and went inside.  In the auditorium, it was much more like a concert than a church.  During the music, there were strobe and stage lights, fog, special effects, and five large video screens, making it difficult to focus on anything.  Add in the fact that I didn’t know any of the songs, and I mostly just stood there looking around.

I don’t remember much about the message because I was on sensory overload.  My friend asked me what I thought and I told him honestly that I didn’t know. I figured I’d have to go at least a second time, when I would know what to expect, to really decide whether I liked it.  I knew I was done going to my old church, and I would have to do something.  I just didn’t know if this church was it.

The next Sunday, I went back by myself.  It was a completely different experience.  Instead of looking around with curiosity, I found myself being drawn in.  By the third song, I began to break inside.  Tears streamed down my face, and I felt like God was right there with me, meeting me right where I was.  The rest of the service was just a time for Him and I to spend some quality time together.

I still wasn’t sure this would ever be my home church, but I was encouraged that it was a place where I could heal and be ministered to.  I was also impressed that people dressed and looked any way they wanted to, and some of the people in the worship band, as well as the pastor, sported tattoos.  I knew that if things ever worked out with my wife, she would be very uncomfortable going to a church that judged people by the way they look.

Once we had moved back in together and gotten things cleared up in our relationship, the next most obvious thing that needed to be fixed and restored was our spiritual life.  Amazingly, my wife, who was still angry with both God and His church, asked me if I wanted to go to North Point with her.  I told her that I had been a couple of times and that I wasn’t sure how she would like it, but one thing that was for sure is that they wouldn’t look down on her for having a tattoo or piercing.

I hoped that things would go really well, but they were a disaster.  They weren’t having regular church that Sunday.  It was more like a business meeting where they announced that they had bought a property and were opening a second location.  They told the history of the church, the state of their finances, and other such topics in a panel discussion format.  My wife was still angry when we left, calling it, “a waste of time.”

The next week, she unexpectedly announced that she was willing to go again.  We did, and this time, her experience was like mine had been the second time I attended.  She broke during the singing, and we both cried all through the message, which was about the prodigal coming home.  It was a beautiful experience, as if God had set it up just for her.  She gave her heart back to Him that day, and we’ve rarely missed a week since.

I still cry in church almost every week, and God continues to heal, minister, and bless.  We now belong to two small groups and lead a third in our home.  We volunteer, serve, and continue to grow as a couple and as individuals.  I am overwhelmed with gratitude and joy again and again as I stand in the congregation with my wife at my side.

Better Communication: Better Intimacy

Posted: June 11, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Intimacy implies so much more than sex, but that’s what most people think of when that word is used.  It’s the part of a relationship that should be reserved for marriage, but without emotional intimacy, a sexual relationship, even between spouses, can be hollow and dysfunctional.  Sexuality should be a loving product of the relationship, not the point, or the driving force to it.

Mort Fertel, who I’ve previously referenced in this blog, says the two most important keys to a good sex life are physical condition and emotional intimacy.  The physical part is a pretty easy fix.  If you’re not in shape, get to work, and you’ll get there.  Anyone who commits to physical fitness can achieve the results.

The emotional part can be more elusive.  One thing became painfully clear to me during our separation and it now seems so obvious, I don’t know how I missed it.  Two unhealthy people can’t have a healthy marriage.  It doesn’t even make sense.  If the people in the marriage are struggling with personal issues, those problems will be part of the relationship.

If these are significant issues, then each person will have to get well as an individual. This may mean therapy, as I needed, or being healed by God’s love and grace, which my wife experienced.  Whatever problems you have apart from the marriage, you will still have within the marriage.  Finding someone to love does not make these go away. It may temporarily take your mind off them, but they will still be there, and they will affect you.

For the small stuff, and, to dismiss another popular cliché, it’s not all small stuff, the secret is incredibly simple.  It’s communication.  You have to tell your partner what you think and feel.  He or she can’t read your mind, and it’s selfish and immature to assume that your spouse “should know.”

I used to keep everything inside, and resent my wife, who not only hadn’t done anything wrong, she didn’t even know there was anything wrong.  Then, at some point, I would blow up.  Whatever was going on at the time would usually have little or nothing to do with what I was upset about.  It just reached a certain point and I unloaded.  Nothing was accomplished except that my wife would get hurt, and I would feel bad.

During those first few days that my wife and I were back together,  and before we had talked everything out, the stress of the uncertainty about our relationship was affecting me in the bedroom.  I’ve never had issues there before, and it really caused me some anxiety, which only made it worse.  I decided to talk to my therapist about it.

He told me it was very common under the circumstances, and that it almost certainly wasn’t a physical problem, but an emotional one.  He said that we should take things slow and talk everything out, and that the problem would most likely go away on its own.  At my next appointment, I told him, “I took your advice about talking everything out, but didn’t follow the advice about taking things slow, and as far as that problem going away, oh yeah…it did!”

It was the open, honest communication that created the emotional intimacy.  That led to a new level of physical intimacy that wouldn’t have been possible without it.  We began applying that same communication to every area of our lives. If I had a question about something, I asked.  If something bothered me, I said so, instead of telling myself it wasn’t important, and my wife started doing the same.  We were careful to say it in loving, non-accusational ways, and it created a mutual trust and understanding that kept the air clear and brought us closer than we’d ever been.

As an example, my wife likes to play video games and I don’t.  For her, they are a way to “disconnect” for a time, especially when work has been stressful.  I used to see it as her disconnecting from me and I would resent the time she spent playing.  We had never talked about it.  Now, I willingly give her time to play because I know it blesses her, and she willingly limits her game time to make sure to give me the time and attention I need.  Additionally, we discovered that I do like to play kinect and we bought one so we can play together.

Just last night, my wife was talking about something and she stopped herself and said, “That’s the old way of thinking.”  I asked her what she meant and she said, “Hoping you’ll figure out that I don’t want to go instead of just saying so.”  It really is a new way of thinking, and it leads to a new way of acting.  We communicate openly about everything, and we’ve never been closer.

The Tour Begins

Posted: June 10, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Waking up that first Saturday together was a miracle on so many fronts.  I have had more than one person tell me, both before and since, that they have never known a couple who has gone to the place we did and come out of it together.  There were times that my best friends made their doubts evident in things they said.  They stood by me and prayed for our marriage, but also said things like to be prepared, “just in case this thing goes badly.”

While the outward miracle of my wife and I moving back in together and re-committing to our marriage was in every sense spectacular, the things taking place on the inside of each of us were even more amazing.  I was literally living the final phrase of the famous “footprints” poem.  I was being carried by my Savior and I knew we were going to be all right.  There was going to be some work left to do, and more that we would need to heal from, but I knew that if He was carrying me, He would carry both of us. 

The most wonderful miracle for me, though, was what I saw in my wife’s eyes that next morning.  There was a transparent honesty, a release from some long-standing fears, and a vulnerability and openness that I hadn’t been sure that I would ever see.  It erased all my doubts about our reconciliation working out.  Her eyes have captivated me since the first time we met, but looking into them that morning, there was a depth and a newness that was more beautiful than I could have even imagined.

It was then that our “new” relationship truly began.  It reminds me of the very final stages in the restoration of a house.  The inside is never completely finished until after the outside is done.  There are always those details on the inside that put the finishing touches on the place and make it completely ready to be lived in. 

For the neighbors, and for people driving by, the outside being finished is the signal that it’s ready.  They see it looking done on the outside, and they want to see the inside, or they wonder why no one has moved in yet.  The people doing the restoration know that it isn’t finished, and they know what still needs to be done to make it just the way they want it. 

Some people live in the house during the restoration process.  Others move into temporary housing and then come back when it’s done and ready.  We always stayed in the houses while we worked on them, no matter how big the job was.  It was difficult and beyond inconvenient (think bathrooms and plumbing here) at times.  Often it was very tedious and seemed like little or no real progress was being made.  Other times, though, a lot came together at once and you could see the transformation happen. 

Once such moment is a favorite story of ours, when a friend, who generally didn’t knock, opened the front door and suddenly backed away.  She looked around in confusion, as though she’d gone to the wrong house and didn’t know where she was.  What had happened was she had stepped right into one of those moments where a lot had changed seemingly overnight.  It really didn’t happen that quickly, there was just a lot of work that had gone on unseen before the visible part appeared.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians contains the line, “I’m convinced that God, who began this good work in you, will carry it through to completion.”  The work in our marriage wasn’t finished, but the outcome was no longer in doubt.  My wife and I were both being transformed on the inside, and those changes were going to make our future so much different from our past. 

The plan for the restoration tour began to form in my mind almost immediately.  Nothing could be done about missing the bike ride, but I knew that it was an annual event and, much like I had set the Tiger Triathlon in my mind as the time that we would get back together, so I began to envision a year of restoration leading up to the next Tour De Cox.  We had a year to heal, to grow, and to repair our past mistakes.  Where I had been working on restoring our marriage alone, we would now spend a year of restoring together, ending with our renewal ceremony after the 2011 Tour De Cox.

Moving In… and Moving Forward

Posted: June 9, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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I have to confess.  When I left Macy’s the following Monday, my thoughts were running wild with the reception I would receive on my first night “home.”  I imagined my wife waiting for me, breathless with anticipation.  I pictured her taking hold of my tie, pulling me close, and leading me upstairs.  Even though we had been together for more than 15 years,  I was as nervous as a new boyfriend. 

When I got to the loft, absolutely nothing happened.  No joyful reunion.  No passionate encounter.  Nothing that suggested that this was anything other than the most ordinary night in the most ordinary of marriages.  I was confused and let down.  It was all very surreal after Saturday morning.  I had no idea what to think, but it was infinitely better than being separated, so I decided to take it as it came and let it develop.

As the week went on, things became increasingly awkward between us.  There wasn’t nearly enough communication, and we were tiptoeing around each other, unsure what to say or do, or what our roles were to be.  We took some bike rides together and went to the gym, and we were getting along well, but there was an uncomfortable feeling to it all.  It was as if we just stepped from one life into another with no transition or adjustment period.

For me, there was the obvious adjustment of moving “my stuff” into “her place” and trying to not completely disrupt everything that she had worked so hard to accomplish.  I wasn’t sure what the boundaries were.  She would casually say, “It’s our place now,” as if it was all completely natural and expected, and for her, it may have been.  I wanted to make sure that my moving in would be a blessing to her and not a major disruption. 

For her, the issues were less clear, but I could tell she was dealing with some fallout from the separation.  I didn’t want to push her to talk about things she didn’t want to, and I kept trying to reassure her that we were going forward into our future, not back into the past.  We both had some fears and doubts after what we had been through, but I had no intention of letting anything stand in our way now that we were living together and committed to one another again.

The Tour De Cox, a 62 mile annual bike ride, was scheduled for the upcoming Saturday and we were planning to participate.  It was to be the first organized cycling event that we would ride in as a couple.  By Friday, the tension was nearly unbearable for me.  I had moved in and there were way too many elephants in the room to ignore for much longer.  At some point, we needed to talk.

I prayed a lot throughout the day that Friday, asking God what was going on and what to do.  I wasn’t getting any answer, so I figured I must already know. I was listening to Flyleaf’s second CD and the song that was playing contained the line, “We’ll cry tonight, but in the morning we are new,” and I took it as a sign.  When I got home, my wife was sick to her stomach.  I almost changed my mind and decided to let it go, but I had resolved that we needed to get this taken care of, so I told her we needed to talk. 

I told her that I needed to know why she had called me and asked me to move back in.  I needed to know what had happened and why she had left me and now had come back to me.  I needed to know what was going on in her head and her heart and her life.  We simply had never talked it through and we needed to.  I felt really bad because she was feeling so sick and I suspected that this would keep us up for too much of the night to be able to make the bike ride in the morning, but once I asked the questions, there was no backing out.

We talked everything out, and we did cry together, just like the song said, over the pain we had caused each other and the choices we wished we could take back.  After a time, my wife was able to fall asleep.  I held her for a while, then went downstairs and sat by the window.  I spent some time praying and meditating and looking ahead to the future that I could foresee.  I finally came to bed for good around 3AM, knowing that the bike ride was out, but that we had needed to do this.

In the morning (also just like the song said), it was if we had somehow hit a “reset” button during the night.  The air was clear and everything looked new and beautiful, like it was the first day of a brand new marriage.  It was then that the restoration tour truly began.

Something Beautiful – Something Whole

Posted: June 6, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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My wife’s favorite scene in the movie Joshua is where a character named Maggie tells Joshua, “My life is a mess,” and Joshua responds, “Your life’s not a mess; your life is beautiful.”  Maggie says, “My life was beautiful.  It was great.  It was whole.”  Then she smashes a glass vase on the ground and says, “That is my life, and it can’t be fixed.”

The next morning, the priest tells Maggie, “Wen Joshua left, he gave me something for you.  He said he made it.”  He holds up a glass angel and says, “Amazing.  The guy takes a million pieces of broken glass and makes something beautiful out of it”  Maggie takes it in her hands and stares at it in wonder and then finally says, “Something whole.”

There are times in a restoration project that you just have to tear down parts of the house.  They are too flawed, too damaged, too overcome by the years and everything they’ve withstood.  In another scene in Joshua, there’s a church that was hit by a tornado.  Joshua begins to dismantle it and sates, “Sometimes you have to tear it down to build it back up.”

My wife’s childhood and early adulthood is the stuff of daytime TV talk shows, made for TV movies, and soap operas.  An abuse victim from a very early age, growing up around mental illness and dysfunctional relatives, it is nothing short of a miracle that she has any kind of stable, successful life.  When I married her, I wanted to take her away from all that.  I wanted to be the rescuing knight who set her free and transformed her life.

Unfortunately, I am as flawed as the next guy, with a tendency toward some mental illness myself.  Even so, I always believed that, as the years went by, and I didn’t abuse her and was always there for her, she would heal.  They say that time is the healer and that time heals all wounds, but that’s another cliché that simply isn’t true.  A person with a severe laceration or a compound fracture doesn’t go to the doctor and be told that time will heal it.  It won’t.  It needs to be treated.

I’m not making excuses for why I did any of what I did, and there is no excuse for how I could have reached the point that I thought I wanted to end my marriage, but my frustration and feeling of helplessness continued to grow as certain things never changed no matter how many years we were together.  There were parts of my wife’s heart and mind that were inaccessible to me, and I had no way of fully understanding the things that she had been through and how they had shaped and affected her.  There were things she carried, and no matter how desperately I had wanted to set her free from them, my love wasn’t going to be enough. 

During our separation, my wife was keeping up appearances on the outside, but on the inside, she was growing more and more unhappy with the choices she was making and the direction her life was going.  She got to the point that she knew she wanted to try to come back to God and back to me, but she didn’t know how, or if she even could.  Christ is referred to by many names in the Bible.  Two of His titles are The Great Physician and The Master Builder. 

Some friends of ours used to have a poster in their house that said, “God can heal a broken heart, but He has to have all the pieces.”  As The Great Physician, He knew that time would never heal her wounds, and as The Master Builder, He knew that some things had to be torn down – shattered like the vase in the movie – so that my wife could be built back up, and made whole. 

I called Joe one night and told him that we had the upper hand now and urged him to join me in a final push in prayer to break through and finish this.  He spoke prophetically again without knowing it.  He said, “When this is over, you’re going to have a brand new wife.”  He didn’t mean a new person to be my wife, he meant my wife would be a brand new person.  Just like the yielding over of my hard, stubborn heart was terribly painful, so my wife needed to be broken to pieces in order to be healed, so her life could be made into something beautiful, and something whole.

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