Walk with Me

Have you ever been blindsided by a crisis?  I have.  In the beginning, I always live in denial.  It takes me a little while to grasp the reality of the situation.  The longer this, "what just happened?" phase lasts, the worse it is going to hurt when reality hits.  

Have you ever noticed the pause between when a baby gets hurt and the cry that comes out of her mouth?  If the the cry comes immediately, the injury is probably not too serious.  If she holds her breath, and is silent for several seconds before she lets out an ear piercing shriek, it might mean a trip to the doctor.  It is the same with me.

One night my now ex-husband broke down my carefully constructed wall of naivety about the true state of our marriage, by confessing that he had had an affair. The numbness lasted for weeks.  When the shock finally wore off, I was totally paralyzed by pain and fear.  I felt like no one in the history of the world had ever suffered as badly as I was suffering.  I was sure that no one could endure this pain and live.

At that time, I longed to hear a similar story from someone who had been where I was and lived to tell about it. I didn't really want advice, I just wanted hope that there could still be a future for me.  I especially wanted to hear a story about infidelity that ended with "and they lived happily ever after." Infidelity is such a private devastation that few people are willing to tell their story.  Many, many people suffer through it alone.  If they successfully repair the relationship, in all likelihood, no one on the outside ever knows there was a problem.

If you have been hit with the stunning blow of infidelity or with another no-one-has-ever-hurt-this-badly kind of crisis, I invite you to walk with me for a while.  I want to tell you my story bit by bit.  I want to tell you of the pain and God's faithfulness. I want to share some of the things I learned; truths that strengthened me and brought me comfort. God did the unimaginable for me.  He allowed me to live through my worst nightmare, but he turned it around and used it to bless me.  In the middle of my years-long darkest night I would not have imagined that the story of my life could be anything but a tragedy.  But it isn't a tragedy at all.  It is a good story.  Really.  I promise.