I don’t want to write this… I don’t want to open up like this…but Here I am Lord.
These are the words that are playing through my heart and mind as I type these words.
For over a year, I have been battling anxiety, fear, and depression within the context of my marriage.
I have found myself in highs and lows, but over the hills and valley’s God has been faithful.
The past few weeks was the most intense it has been.
My days were riddled with elaborate lies that crippled my train of thought.
Secrets which I kept inside, to avoid the judgement of others.
It even got to the point that I felt like avoiding church all together…
The comfort of home had sounded better than going because I felt ashamed for my seasons of grief, for the fear of being exposed, and most of all for the fear of feeling fake.
I had felt shut off from God, guarded by my short comings and ridiculous thoughts.
The enemy had been running my mind in circles and to be frank… it sucked.
I had struggled and continue to struggle with insecurity. I know many of you are thinking, who doesn’t right?
But my insecurity was like a prism of darkness, specifically turned inward and projected into my thoughts about my marriage.
I had constantly struggled with feeling as though my husband will betray me.
It’s embarrassing to say the least, but it is true.
My mind had gone as far as to make me believe he would betray my with close friends or even family members.
It was devastating and it had crippled my heart.
Throughout this journey, I struggled because I felt crazy…
I know my husband and I know his heart is for me…He would never…
Yet, day after day, I would analyze his actions, his words, and what I felt like were the lack there of and turn them into the evident truths that I wasn’t enough.
I know the Bible tells us in our sins and struggles to confess to them to one another…
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James 5:16
but, I hated that I had to look the man I love in the eyes, knowing he is the man who loves me and say I feel like you have been unfaithful… even though I know there is not a single reason why I should feel that way.
Through the pain and discomfort of being obedient, time and time again, I would have to confess…
It was awful, devastating, and isolating.
It had felt like a trap, a rabbit hole that I keep falling down into and couldn’t seem to crawl out of.
Many people around us had experienced hurt in their relationships recently.
Infidelity had been a major pattern throughout my life to watch, witness and feel victimized by.
The truth is for many years I had overcome this battle, surrendered it and left it at the cross but so cunningly it snuck back into my story and riddled me with angst.
As this spiral played out… I was struggling and confessing, almost like clock work.
In retrospect, I now can see, the biggest issue was not the struggle itself but what the struggle was masking…
You see when this struggle turned outward, I only reflected back inward.
I had only looked at how “I” was affected, not paying any mind to how my husband was being affected by my confessions and fears.
All that time, I had been praying for God to restore, expose any truth of these thoughts, and bring healing and he answered…
One night as I had been confessing, I felt the tug of my heart strings. When the words had fallen out of my heart through my mouth, it felt more like accusing…
It felt like I had bought these truths as fact, like I was a defense attorney grilling a criminal of a crime he had convicted.
It seemed like I wouldn’t allow truth to truly enter my mind and be registered as truth.
It wasn’t until my husbands voice had shaken and the tears came streaming down that I saw the hurt I had been inflicting on him in my spiral.
The whole time he had tried to be the comforter of my fears, I had been combatting his efforts with yet another spill of insecurities and short falls.
It had felt to him like I had placed a ever heightening mountain of expectations for him to reach because all I saw was “I.”
All I saw was the situations I had absorbed from the atmosphere around us.
I had turned other’s difficulties into not just situations that I needed to be on guard of but, that I was battling for others.
I had worked so hard on guarding my marriage that I didn’t guard my heart. (Proverbs 4:23)
Once the defense of my heart fell, the defense of my mind followed.
All along my husband hadn’t been betraying me…my mind had been betraying him.
He had been placed under countless convictions, felt inadequate, helpless and he in turn experienced the same out of control feelings of my anxiety.
The mask had finally fallen, the veil was torn and the Spirit broke through.
God answered…He restored. He showed me the truth in my searching. He has healed and will again.
God had used every piece of this broken season to pull me closer to Him.
Many nights when I was deep struggle God would show up in sunsets, in my children devotional, in the wise guidance of sisters in Christ…. He would show me, He is for my husband and I and He is with us always.
I don’t know what you are riddled with or what is crippling you today. I haven’t walked in your shoes but, I have walked with the Lord and I know he is faithful. He is everything He says and more… Just keep pressing on into Him, even when you think He isn’t there.
I know waiting for the healing isn’t fun, walking through the hurt is gruesome. PRESS ON. (Hosea 6:3)
Lord thank you for your sovereignty. Lord thank you for your comfort. Lord be with those who have felt the pains of adultery, betrayal, and abandonment. Father today show them that you are president and that you will respond to us as surely as the dawn. Give them a touchstone to confide in but father always remind them that they are second to the cornerstone, Jesus. Thank you for being a mighty counselor, the everlasting father and the prince of peace. Jesus hold us up and let us be bold against our fear and shame. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Reason 2911 