Broken hearts

It has been a very long time since I've blogged. I'm no longer the same person, to be sure. I read a book earlier this week in which the main character found out that her husband was having an affair. The character wrote that "she had died at 10:10 the previous night" when she found out. I think that sums it up pretty well.

You do die when you find out about a betrayal like that. Your heart is shattered and there is no way to make it the way it once was. Think about a vase. When it breaks, if it isn't irretrievably shattered, you try to glue it back in a desperate attempt to make it look the way it did before. But even with the most professional of glue jobs, you will always see the fault lines. It will never hold water the way it once did. If you think about it, it will never be the same. Out of necessity, it may become a decorative piece...it certainly cannot be a functional piece, as it no longer can keep a seal.

So I think that's what a heart does. It shatters. You can try to glue it back together, but I think you have to accept that it will no longer be the same. Maybe it will just beat for a while and keep you upright, but it won't hold those same emotions. Trust, love, hope, happiness. Those will just leak out because the heart no longer keeps a seal.


There are so many levels to betrayal. There's the main betrayal, of course. Falling emotionally and physically for someone outside of your marriage. That certainly hurts. But there are so many levels. Betrayal is more like Phyllo dough than pizza dough. There isn't just one thick layer. You peel it down and there are numerous paper-thin betrayals that underlie the one betrayal anyone can see from the surface. There's the betrayal of talking about your spouse in negative terms to "the other woman." There's the betrayal of having convinced your spouse all along that the marriage was fine. There's the betrayal of refusing to work on your marraige, while reserving the right to blame it for your indiscretions. There's the betrayal of putting things before God, your marraige, and your family. There's the betrayal of tearing two families apart.

There are more, but you get the picture.

There are so many levels to faith, too. When this came out, I knew that God would get me through. That was my mantra: God will get me through; God will get me through. I just need to keep breathing, because God will keep me upright. But as I continued to meet with my discipling friend, I started to learn about all of the many levels of faith. Mine began as something almost superficial. Me taking, taking, taking. "God, I need this. God I need that. Please help me God."

But I'm learning that faith is much deeper than that. True faith is honestly believing with your whole being that God really will get you through anything. Even if things get horribly worse, believing that God will carry you. True faith is letting go of an obsessive fear of the future, agreeing to hand those horrible, fearful thoughts over to God. It hadn't dawned on me that my fear that I was being taken on another deceitful ride was a weakness of faith. That has been the hardest part for me: letting go of fear. Handing those thoughts over to God and not letting them run my life - - letting God run it instead.

It's interesting to me how little things can bring the pain and fear and hollowness and emptiness back. Not little things, because they aren't little. But I'd been going along okay for the past two weeks. I think my brain was trying to pull a fast one by hiding the emotions...it's been doing that for years - why stop now?! But I found out over the weekend that a friend is going through a very similar situation. Hearing that it got worse over the weekend, I found myself weeping for both of us on Monday. Every fiber of my body just aches so badly for her. I so violently want to head down south and run over her husband. I want him to suffer 1/1000 of the amount that he has caused her to suffer. I start to wonder why I didn't feel this violent towards my husband, and then I decide it must be the survival instinct...no point to going to jail.

So hearing of her pain reminds me of mine. It's brought the anger and sorrow and jitteriness all back. And receiving an email from the former friend with whom my husband's betrayal occured has brought it back as well. The nausea, the hollow feeling inside, the sense of unrest...not knowing what to do but needing to be in motion so I can't sit still and think about things.

I suppose it's good to blog about these things. Then there will be a record of this process...whether it is a process of healing, forgiveness, and a new beginning, or a totally different process altogether.

I'm hopeful. He is hopeful. It's a start.