The 1,284 Notes God's Written On You

If you only knew how many times I had to rewrite these posts.

My plan this week was to tell you the circumstances which led to how, on June 15th, 2013 - just less than six months after Oliver's birth and death - our marriage self-destructed. It’s been almost two years since then, and I expected to be brave enough to just tell it by now, and lay it bare. It’s a story I can mostly embrace today - in spite of the hurt and pain - because there’s more full life and genuine relationship there than my husband and I ever knew before. On our “situation-days” I struggle for sure - but the truth is still there: God is clear and close-feeling when I think about the anomaly of the fact that we’re still together. Three friends only, know my full Ugly-Marriage story. THREE. And now I’m going to blog about it. Cause upgrading from three women to ANY WOMAN AT ALL seems like a great idea.

Only it doesn’t. So fear rushes in. I try to get all creative with myself: Can’t I just give a general, umbrella-like summary instead? That’s acceptable-ish. But that’s not me either - what a miserable blog that would be. I’m that person who cannot stand when people tell their story with the whole elusive, “and then I went through some dark times” -bridge, and move on to the next pretty part. Oh stop - just tell me! Tell me what your dark times were. I love having a dark-times friend - it’s like “love at first-story”. Tell me, tell me! But fine, okay, that’s not fair, cause here I am afraid too.

The only thing that keeps me posting is this unusual nagging peace that persists (Yes, peace can nag. I can be all bent out of shape in every way in life, but the peace about knowing I need to blog my Ugly Things, CLINGS, you guys. Unfair-like, where I actually feel mad about it sometimes. Why can’t peace about our finances CLING like that?! It doesn’t. I have a peace about knowing that writing about the way God ultimately reached our hearts through all the blinding pain has the power to redeem somehow. This is the thing we’re supposed to do. This is how our journey started, and how we were healed - by other destroyed and redeemed couples, courageously putting their most vulnerable moments on the table for us to learn from. But even then, it’s not easy to see or feel that bravery and simple determination most of the time. Following the path to redemption is painful - paved with rejection, doubt, and loneliness. Putting your ugliest out there to even just one person does have moments of redemption, but they are most likely embedded between moments of terrific fear.

But while in that fear, AGAIN, I got tired of me and kicked myself around a little: “BUCK UP. This is the point, get over it. Are you going to blog or not? Why are you such a wuss? Who cares?! So you’re not perfect. So your husband isn't. So what?!” but I’m still afraid. So I self-talk more - for heaven’s sakes, what’s the problem? How can you move on? What do you NEED to be brave enough??? [If you’ve been through any kind of marriage counseling, at some point you’ll notice yourself using your own lessons against you: “don’t shame and kick. Just get to the point straight-like”...]

Answer: I would be brave enough if you - my reader - knew my full story before this part came out. I want you to know me from start to finish: the five year old who was constantly different; the elementary schooler that was too tall and ugly; the middle-schooler than couldn’t do anything right for her mother; the high-schooler that had no idea what gave her value and worth... all of that. Then, I’d also want you to know the extent I’ve gone to, to forget all that growing-up junk and just move on. How I just decided I was going to start a new life at thirty; how I just made the decision that I wouldn’t let the past hurt or control me anymore. That should work. I checked off the boxes, said I was letting God heal that stuff, closed the book of My Past and put it on the shelf (my volumes of “The Past” series do NOT collect dust you guys. Post on that later.) But then I’m all confused... why would that make me feel braver? I mean, if I’m worried about just sharing the marriage part, why would sharing ALLLL of it be an improvement for my insecurity program?

Because. Then you would see me how God does.

I remember the exact moment I realized that God truly and completely knew my whole story, and still, loved me *entirely*. It was July 26th, 2014. In that moment I had this picture of God holding The Story of my life in his hands - a physical book - and while He read it, He filled in the lines that I had left blank and incomplete. A work in progress, at times it looked like a picture book or novel, but more often it ended up looking like a study guide, in-depth research paper, or scholarly commentary. While I may have penned the physical story and obvious emotions those around me could have witnessed, God added *thousands* of footnotes, cross-references, and unique-to-me translations. This is how God sees us - fully encompassed and concentrated within all the symphonies that are our lifelong experiences. He sees the choices we make and the lifestyles we live in the light of this webbed reference book. He writes the notes that give clarity to the pain we’ve never been able to decipher, and gives revelation to the moments we cannot see with our natural eyes and minds. He is our greatest advocate, giving our hearts validation to the pain, and joy, that drove our every thought and action.

Like that time I got pregnant at 17? Oh the shame I’ve felt over the last 17 years (I’m 34. It was half my life ago, and I was still holding on...) that I wasn't a secure enough kid to avoid that. I was just a horrible teen that didn't care about anyone cause I got pregnant and made my Mom lose friends at church. I was horrible... and this was the only version of that story that I knew, the story I was told. It was implanted in my brain by the lack of any other understanding. I didn’t even know why I didn’t try harder to avoid it. So surely, my own pain in giving my first child away was something I deserved, and the shame, merited. But when I finally got to read God’s version of that story, there were 1,284 cross-references to that moment. The seeds planted for the pain that led me there were sown far before that moment was created. Everything from simple, seemingly insignificant moments - like the 13-year-old me, reading the articles in Seventeen magazine about how physical affection would equal feeling truly loved; to complex moments that recurred hundreds of times - like the fact that I was ultimately unlovable by those closest to me. Take those 1,284 experiences that God compassionately cross-references to my unplanned pregnancy, and encapsulate them onto one page, and that's when I broke down - finally able to see My Story the way God does. When I combined His notes, it was easy to believe that He didn’t see me as just a selfish, rebellious teenager out to hurt her family’s religious reputation, willing to “throw her life away” for a moment of fun. God knew the full story - which, ironically, had nothing to do with having fun at all, and everything to do with a scared small girl looking for a way to feel valued, cherished, and chosen. Every, single, moment in our lives is intertwined with every single other moment we’ve already lived. GOD SEES US AS WE TRULY ARE: BROKEN, WOUNDED SOULS, self-concerned enough to believe we can get rid of the pain if we just try something new. He gets it. So He’s pursuing us hard enough, every day, passionately determined to convince our hearts - that that just, isn’t, the story. But the problem is, we don't want to go back and re-read any of our ugly, so we never get to see the beautiful notes He's put there. We close and shelve our book, only knowing our own interpretation, and never knowing a truer version existed.

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So, brave enough, here’s the part of the story that I can write - minus God’s cross-references and revelation: my husband hurt me, deeply. On June 15th, 2013, a massive amount of lies were exposed that delivered incredible depths of pain to our relationship, and rocked my understanding of every single one of the years of marriage we’d had together. In confusion and incredible pain, I retaliated, and isolated my hope and vulnerability from God. It was hopeless stalemate. I was done.

But God had been writing in between the lines of my story long before He put my with anyone. Each step had a million cross-references with multiple landing points that would connect all Stories in a way that only He could orchestrate. The books I thought I’d shelved were suddenly all intertwined as one story, and only God could give it the redemptive twist that would add more chapters. He was going to take all the pain, my current fears, and heal them all - even in the midst of this mighty, incredibly painful, blow.

Oh the beautiful redemption He can create. God is the only author that can write like this.