If your heart is
broken, you’ll find God right there; if you’re kicked in the gut, He’ll help
you catch your breath.
– Psalm 34:18
“Someone has to
be very close to you to be able to get near enough to kick you in the gut. Don’t
be surprised when your greatest pain is caused by those you’ve loved the most.
Only they have the power to truly, deeply wound you and break your heart.”
– Christine
Caine
I remember the
feeling of being kicked in the gut by the person I love the most. The feeling
of gasping for air but the air does not come. The feeling of my heart
shattering more and more with every word. I remember it like it happened just
yesterday.
It was a
gorgeous Saturday in October. I had spent a fun day downtown with a friend, and
he had spent the day at a seminar for school. I was already home when he walked
in the door. He came and sat down with me on the couch, and we talked about our
days. It was calm and peaceful. It was really, really nice. I remember thinking
that it had been a while since we had had the time to sit down and just to talk
to each other and smile at each other.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
No one likes
those words. No one ever in the history of the world likes to hear those words
come out of someone’s mouth. I remember my whole body stiffened, and I weakly
said, “Okay.”
“I’ve been struggling with an addiction to pornography for a while. Since
high school, probably. And I’ve never told anyone. I’ve tried to stop a lot of
times, but I never confessed it to anyone. I’ve wanted to tell you, but I didn’t
want to make a bad day even worse or ruin a good day.”
Have you ever
had the wind knocked out of you? It takes a second to catch your breath; it
takes a second to figure out what happened before your body breathes again.
That’s what this felt like. I didn’t say anything to him, I just stared into
the eyes of the man I thought I knew. But with every word out of his mouth, I
quickly realized that I had been lied to. Betrayed. Tricked. I couldn’t
breathe. I felt like the room was a thousand degrees, but I pulled a blanket
over my legs and hands so he couldn’t see how much I was shaking.
He talked to me
for probably thirty minutes about everything. That it had nothing to do with me
and everything to do with his brokenness and his sin. A “stupid habit that started when he was a dumb boy and never stopped.”
Somehow, that
didn’t make it hurt any less.
When he was done
talking, he asked me what I was thinking about. I said something along the
lines of, “I mean, I don’t hate you. I’m not going to leave you. I shouldn’t be
surprised, really. It’s so easy in this world and pretty much every guy does
it.” I didn’t really know what I was saying. I didn’t really know what to say.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t do much of anything. I was honestly just trying to
figure out how to breathe normally.
I now realize
that I was just in shock. I always thought, Not my
husband.
Not my man. That’s not our story. He loves Jesus. He
loves me. He’s one of the good ones. And he is still all of those things. But
sometimes, Satan doesn’t care if you’re a good one. Satan doesn’t care if you
love Jesus and your wife. Satan can still get what he wants.
We went to Dairy
Queen that night. I sat in the passenger seat and stared out the window as we
drove. I was quiet. He felt better. He was in better spirits than I was. He had
finally come clean from a disgusting, damaging secret. I’m sure it felt like
the heaviest weight had been lifted from his shoulders. I don’t think I knew
what I was feeling yet. I remember feeling sad. Sad for him, that he had been
struggling. Mad at myself, for never asking and never seeing how big of a
secret he was keeping from me. Sick to my stomach at the thought of how I was
going to still live and be married to him. I think I barely ate my ice cream
without puking it back up.
As we laid down
to go to bed that night, I began to lose it. It was the first of many nights to come where I would lose
it. Lose all of my grounding and just cry and cry until I finally fell asleep.
He asked if he could hold me, and I said no. I can still hear the tone of his
voice saying that he was sorry. Over and over again.
But I didn’t
believe him. I didn’t believe anything he was saying to me anymore.
It took years to
build the trust that held us together, and that trust was shattered in a split
second. Actually, it had been shattered all of those years I thought it was
being built. I just didn’t know about it yet.
It’s been six
months since that evening in October. I have looked at what feels like every
blog post, book, video on marriage and trust and betrayal, and everyone tells
you what happened in their story and most of them are happy endings. A lot of
them even say things like, “It’s been 10 years now and we
are stronger
than ever.”
But what about
the years between finding out and being stronger than ever? What happened during
those years?
I wish that it
was a quick fix. I wish that it only took one, “I’m sorry for doing this. You
can trust me now, though,” to be able to trust again.
But it doesn’t.
Six months
later, and he has given me no other reason to not trust or believe him. He has
done all that I’ve asked of him.
So why does my
heart still ache? Why do I watch where his eyes go when
we’re out in public and around other women? Why do I fight the urge to check his phone whenever he leaves it laying
around?
Why can’t I respond when he says he loves me?
When I have
really hard nights, the kind where I lay on the floor screaming and crying and
clutching my chest, trying to make the ache in my heart go away, those are the
nights where I wish I had someone to tell me that it is okay for healing to look like this. That sometimes it’s an ugly,
crying mess. That this is what the “in-between” looks like. This is where God
restores.
I wish that I
felt that, on my darkest days. To be honest, I wish that I felt that even on
better days.
Sometimes, I
think that God is silent. And that’s okay. And even if this healing process
doesn’t feel like much healing is happening, I will trust that, someday, I will
be able to look at my husband and realize we are stronger than ever. That my
heart doesn’t ache anymore. And when he says that he loves me, I will actually
believe him.
I trust that my
God is bigger than the both of us. And that even though the pain is unbearable,
even when I feel alone and broken, He is here. In the midst of this, He is here
and He is holding us both until we are strong enough to hold each other again. And
what a glorious day it will be when that happens. When Satan doesn’t get to
claim another marriage.
Because although
he might try to get want he wants, and he might do a crap ton of damage to two
people, Jesus still wins.
“Someone has to
be very close to you to be able to get near enough to kick you in the gut. Don’t
be surprised when your greatest pain is caused by those you’ve loved the most.
Only they have the power to truly and deeply wound you and break your heart. It
takes time to catch your breath when you’ve been winded. Give it time and remember
God is with you, even when you can’t feel Him. One breath at a time, one step at
a time and you’ll get your rhythm back. Guard your heart, don’t harden it. Just
because it happened to you does not mean it was about you. God sees. God knows.
God cares.”
–
Christine Caine
~ C. J.
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