Posts Tagged ‘heart’

Latest Stop: Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Posted: June 26, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Eureka Springs, Arkansas, is a discovery my wife and I made a few years ago.  If you’ve been there, you already know what I mean.  If you haven’t, you really need to go sometime.  It’s just not the type of thing you can really explain.

Stepping into Eureka Springs, especially the downtown shopping district, is like stepping into another world entirely.  It’s an extraordinarily beautiful place that has a little bit of everything.  It’s a bit reminiscent of the town that the characters in Harry Potter visit from time to time.  It’s full of art galleries and places to eat and shop, and live music can be heard playing just about everywhere.

Our first time there, we were just passing through town on the way home from somewhere.  We were so intrigued that we soon went back.  We instantly fell in love with the town, and it was the beginning of many great memories.  It’s close enough that we can go anytime, and it’s perfect as a romantic getaway, or just an escape during busy or stressful times.

Eureka Springs was where we went soon after I came clean about what had been going on in my life and the mistakes I had made.  We booked a bed and breakfast up the hill from the shopping district.  Our sole purpose was to have a make-up session for our marriage and I thought it had worked.  We had an amazing time of renewing our relationship and I figured we were good to go from there.  Of course, we weren’t in the long run, mainly because my heart just wasn’t ever in it like it had been.

During the early days of our marriage problems, and before we actually separated, I kept holding onto the hope that things would just turn around and be ok.  Everyday, I would convince myself that this day would be the breakthrough.  I was sure that it was only a matter of time before my wife would let down the walls and let me back in to her heart.  I knew that no matter what she said or believed, deep down inside she had to still love me.  A love like ours doesn’t just disappear, but it does get lost or buried sometimes.

One day, at the peak of all this tension, I asked her to go to Eureka Springs with me.  I thought that if I could get her to the place where we had such wonderful associations, she would feel the love in her heart again.  She agreed to go, and I put everything I had into trying to show her how much I wanted to be her man and win back her love.  I was very encouraged that she let me hold her hand all throughout the day, but she wouldn’t let me any closer than that.

She was wearing a dress (my favorite) that I had bought for her, and I took lots of pictures of her while we were there.  In all of them, she had a sadness in her eyes that completely tore me up. Even though she looked so beautiful, there was an unmistakable distance that I couldn’t cross.  We ate dinner at a restaurant on a hotel balcony, sat in the park listening to music, and I tried to be as romantic as possible, but to no avail.

Yesterday, we went there again as part of the restoration tour.  It was our first time back since that day, and it was one of the truly major tour destinations for us.  It wasn’t that we had hurt each other there, or created any bad memories in Eureka Springs that we needed to fix.  It was just the feelings of having been there during that time when we weren’t close, and a few regrettable statements that my wife had made during our separation that had gotten back to me that hurt.

It was important that we go back there as a renewed couple, full of love for one another, and with no doubt as to where we stood.   We needed to reclaim Eureka Springs as our special place, with no competing thoughts or memories to drag us down or cause regrets.  It’s was a beautiful time spent together, and it reaffirmed what we always knew.  That us being together in that place is one of our treasures, and one we intend to keep forever.

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!

The Gift Goes On

Posted: June 22, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Last night, we had a couple over for dinner and we got to hear some of their story, as well as share more of ours.  Their names are Kevin and Deb, and this is the same Kevin that I referred to earlier in the blog.  He was one of the heroes during our separation, although he wouldn’t claim to have done anything heroic.  He would say that he was just doing what was in his heart to do, and that’s to help others who are going through painful struggles in their marriage.

Kevin was a friend of a friend who many years ago had walked out on his marriage and, years later, reconciled with his wife and family in spectacular fashion.  Two common themes with my own story of restoration were the healing that took place through love and forgiveness, and hearts and lives being radically changed by God’s love.  He supported and prayed for me while my wife and I were separated, and the one significant phone conversation I had with him during that time led to part of the breakthrough in our marriage.

Having been through all that, he and his wife have spent a lot of their years since doing whatever they can to help other couples find forgiveness, healing, and another chance at true love.  My wife and I were one of those couples by divine appointment, and now it’s in our hearts to do exactly the same.  Where we used to consider other peoples’ problems to be none of our business, now our hearts break for everyone we meet or hear of who are going through separation, divorce, or marital struggles of any kind.

We will probably never have a satisfactory answer to the question of why God allows troubles and afflictions to come into our lives, but what comes out of those, if we respond by moving toward God, instead of away from Him, is probably much more important than asking why.  That’s another commonality of Kevin and Deb’s marriage, and mine.  We wish we hadn’t had to go through all the pain, but what we have now is so much better than what we ever had before, we can’t help but conclude that we’re thankful for the end result.

The apostle Paul wrote these words nearly 2,000 years ago.  “God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.  He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”  If we never went through troubles, how could we help others?  Would you rather be comforted and helped by someone who has a perfect life, but has read a lot of books about problems, or by someone who has gone through the same problems you are and come through them stronger and better than before?

Before Kevin and I had met, and when I only knew him by what my friend Joe had told me, I used to call him, “that marriage guy.” All I knew was that he had won big in the arena of marriage, and now he wanted to help people like me who were losing.

Yesterday morning, the very same day that my wife and I were going to sit down with Kevin and Deb to celebrate where we had come from and where God has brought us, I received a text from a friend of mine telling me that he had a friend who was going through some difficulties.  He asked me if I could recommend any books or resources that had helped me and that might, in turn, be of help to his friend.  And so the circle goes on.

Why does God allow us to suffer and go through tough times?  Some of it is the consequences of our own choices.  Some of it is because He sees beyond the pain and knows the victories that will be won down the road because of it.  After all, that’s what His own Son Jesus did.  The Bible tells us that, “Because of the joy awaiting him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame.  Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.”

No one wants to suffer.  We would all choose the easy road if we could.  But once we’ve experienced what’s on the other side, where the joy awaits us, we have something to offer to others.  We want to give what we’ve received, and that truly is a gift that keeps on giving.

Food, Fun, Fitness, and Following God

Posted: June 21, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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It’s the first day of summer and my wife and I have been on about a three-day eating fest.  This isn’t exactly productive, since we are both fitness buffs and summer is the busy time for competitions.  There are races and events nearly every weekend, and we should be in training mode.  In fact, we keep telling ourselves that we are, and then revising that to, “we will be starting tomorrow.”

The problem is two-fold.  One, we are both foodies, and two, we’re really enjoying our year of restoration.  There is so much wonderful food out there to eat (and to cook), and we’re having so much fun enjoying each other’s company and experiencing our second chance at love.

Last year was the first year that we were both full-time educators. It has been my dream for many years for us to have summers off together while still being paid from our school jobs.  Of course, last summer started off as a nightmare instead of a dream.  This year, we are living not only the dream of spending summer vacation together, but a summer of being in love again.

Father’s Day began with going out for breakfast at a local breakfast cafe that is really a throwback diner.  The atmosphere is great and the food is anything but healthy.  Then there was going out to lunch with my Dad and family, followed by my wife cooking dinner for our entire small group from church.  I told myself it was my “cheating day,” since I had been in a triathlon the day before.

Yesterday was spent in Kansas City catching up with my wife’s second daughter, who she put up for adoption as a baby, and who just made contact with us last year, right after we got back together.  Had we not worked our marriage out, things might not have gone so well with that relationship, but it has been a real blessing getting to know her and sharing a little bit of our lives.  We sat for more than three hours in La Bodega, a Spanish tapas bar last night, and it would be a major understatement to say that nobody left hungry.

This morning, after our workout, we stopped in for the lunch buffet at Old Chicago, another of our weaknesses, and then celebrated the release of the “Summer Crush” cupcake at our downtown cupcakery.  Tomorrow we will start eating right and being on a training diet, though.  After all, we have races coming up…(wink, wink)

I actually first met my wife when she handed me a job application at a retail store where she worked back in the early 90’s when we were both going to college.  Then, later, she showed up at the fitness center at that same college where I had since gotten a job as an instructor.  I remembered her (you don’t just forget the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen), and we got to know each other a little bit through the gym.

We were both education majors, so we had that in common as well.  Our friendship grew, but we were both in other relationships at the time.  When we finally found ourselves both single and available, we had been friends for so long that we almost didn’t date.  Eventually though, we did, and a third component, our spiritual lives, began to fall into place.

I had gotten away from church and anything spiritual when I had gone through my second divorce.   I knew what I believed, and I knew that eventually I would have to fix that part of my life, but I had spent too long drinking too much and doing my own thing to be much good for anyone else.  My wife didn’t know what she believed and was searching when we first got to know each other.  As I got my spiritual act together, I was able to help her sort hers out and find her way.

Those three areas of life: education, fitness, and spirituality, had formed the foundation for our friendship and dating relationship so many years ago and now have come full circle.  Now, as educators, we have the schedule that allows us to spend time together the way we do.  Working out, being active, and competing together keeps us fit and active, and greatly improves the quality of our lives.  Seeking God, and following Him gives meaning and purpose to who we are as individuals and as a couple.

Food?  Well, that just kind of evolved over the years.  We tend to agree with one of the hosts on Fox Sports Radio, who said, “I’d rather kill myself in the gym and eat whatever I want, than diet.”  Life is truly beautiful now, and we are seeing the fulfillment of so many of our dreams, as well as reaping the fruit of a lot of our hard work.  It’s mind-blowing to think of how close we came to throwing it all away, and what a horribly tragic mistake that would have been.

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.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Posted: June 18, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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I completed a sprint triathlon in Willard, MO this morning – my first since the Tiger Tri last August.  For the first time since I started competing in races, my wife was there to support me and cheer me on.  During the transitions and at the finish, she was there today, taking pictures and offering encouragement.

In my other events, she was either competing also, or simply not there.  I went to all of her events last year while we were having our marital breakdown.  Every time she ran, I was there supporting her and being excited for her.  I was glad to do it and didn’t ask for anything back.  Last year, it was disappointing not having that from her, but I understood it based on where she was (or wasn’t) in the relationship.

There are a lot of things that have changed and turned around completely since then.  It would be one thing for us to have simply worked through our differences and decided to give it another try.  What happened, though, was something different altogether.  During our separation and reconciliation, we were changed. We became new and different people.  Things are not like they were before.

My wife has always had difficulty with empathy.  She was never one to show her feelings, and always kept up the “I’m tough” appearance.  Some of this was a survival technique arising out of an abusive background.  She had a sense that no one had been there to comfort her or empathize with her.  No one made her feel better when she was hurting, so she didn’t really have it in her to offer that to anyone else.

She also never did well with sickness.  She has a very strong immune system and her kids seemed to inherit those healthy genes.  Since she was never really sick growing up, she never experienced a lot of being cared for.  In the same way, her kids were rarely sick as they grew up, and when they were, they would usually recover quickly.  Her attitude tended to be, “suck it up and get better,” because that what was pretty much what she had always done.

My immune system isn’t so efficient, and I’ve had my share of illness during our marriage.  It took me a while to get past the idea that she wasn’t going to pamper me when I was sick.  Eventually, I came to accept that, in our marriage, I was going to more or less have to deal with being sick on my own.  It’s not that she didn’t care.  She just wasn’t wired that way.

Last year, I spent months giving to her in every way I could and asking for nothing in return.  I poured myself into her day after day, week after week, just trying to show her how much I loved her and what that meant.  My only intention in it all was to love her enough that it would break through the wall that she had built between us, so that we could be together again.

Last week, I got sick, completely out of the blue.  I came down with a fever right when I was trying to push my training for the triathlon.  For several days, I was burning up and weak, unable to do much of anything.  It was the first time I’ve been sick since we’ve been back together, and the difference in the way she treated me was astounding.

She constantly asked me how I was doing and if there was anything I needed.  She put blankets over me and held me at night when I was shivering.  She was kind, compassionate, and attentive.  In short, she treated me the way I’ve always wanted to be treated.  Then today, she was my cheerleader as I swam, cycled, and ran.

So how did this happen?  What made the change?  In contemporary language, they say, “What goes around comes around.”  People call it karma.  They say, “What you give out will come back to you.”  Jesus said, “Whatever you sow, that you will also reap,” and “Give, and it will be given to you.”  These are spiritual truths.  When you give from a pure heart and unselfish motives, it changes things.  People still have a free will, and nobody forced my wife to change, but in the context of receiving so much love from me, she wanted to.

Money and Budget = Security

Posted: June 17, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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My wife and I ran some errands and did some shopping this morning and it turned out that she was thinking about where we’ve been and what we’ve come through.  She gets all three of her summer paychecks at once in June, while I still take mine once a month all year long.  Last year, when she got her checks in June, she bought her road bike, knowing that she had her job at Dillard’s to replace that money.  She also knew that she would be living downtown and would be able to use her bike as her primary means of transportation.

We were a mess in terms of our relationship then.  Today, everything is utterly different.  She commented on how things were then, and how things are now.  Now we each have our road bikes and we ride together.   We have a great place where we woke up together this morning, and we’re spending summer vacation together, enjoying each other’s company and more or less doing whatever we want.  We’re making plans for traveling, camping, trying new restaurants, and the list goes on.

The key word in all of this is “together.”  My wife often looks me in the eye and says, “We’re together now,” when I get melancholy or feel twinges of regret for the time that we lost.  It keeps the focus where it belongs: on the present instead of the past.

Another key to our happy life is finances.  We work in education, so we are not what anyone would call, “well off.”  Even so, you don’t have to be rich, or even upper class, to be able to enjoy life.  We have learned, mainly with help from Dave Ramsey, to live within our means.  Through his programs, we learned how to write a budget and how to prioritize income and expenses.  We have learned to control our money, instead of letting it control us.

We have a great apartment, but the rent is very affordable.  We don’t pay for things that we don’t really want or need, so money is freed up to spend on entertainment, trips, and spontaneous fun.  We don’t have cable or satellite, we don’t carry balances on credit cards, and we drive a used car that is reliable, but requires only a very modest payment.

For women especially, in order to fully trust and give themselves to another, security is a must.  Security doesn’t necessarily equal a certain dollar amount.  It’s more the idea that the bills will get paid, there will be money in the checking account, and when we really need something, we won’t have to beg, borrow, or steal to get it.  It’s the idea that she won’t have to go out and get another job, or worry all the time about what’s going to happen.

For so much of our marriage, our finances were a total wreck.  We lived off cash flow and financing.  The stress was enormous, and it was always just a matter of time before we had to take some kind of unwanted steps to try to fix the mess.  We had collectors after us constantly, we had to borrow money often, and we had no idea how to change things for the better.

Very soon after we got back together, my wife was able to quit her job at Dillard’s because we didn’t need that money.  There was no reason for her to be working a second job.  I kept my extra job at Macy’s for a period of time, so that we would have some additional disposable income, and so that she would realize that I was going to take care of our needs.

Trust needed to be rebuilt in a number of areas of our relationship.  During our separation, I had been able to demonstrate committment, faithfulness, responsibility, and more.  Now, with us living together again, I had the opportunity to show her that she would be financially secure.  It didn’t take her long to decide that the extra money from Macy’s wasn’t as important as having me home.  She knows now that I’m willing to work as much as is needed, and she appreciates having time to spend together more than a higher balance in the checkbook.

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