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Deceived, again. Unnecessary deception, flattery to my face deception in the heart. Psa 12:2 (KJV) — They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.
Unnecessary and hurtful.
I am cautious and prayerful in all of this. I hear the words “I love you, only you. You are it, I am not looking anywhere else”, I will accept them at face value, with caution. In the past this is all it would have taken, in the past I would have said all is forgotten and I am all yours. That was the past. And in the past, the truth about the dating sites would have been revealed and I would have accepted blame and been devastated. The past is over.
When confronted with the truth of the choice I hear “It’s not that simple.” But yes it is. It is not simple to carry out, sometimes making the right choice takes more effort, requires overcoming fear, but it is as simple as a choice. The choice is do I trust God and what He says or do I try to maintain control by deceiving?
Still I am called by God to love, to forgive. The question becomes “Father, what does love look like in this situation? Loving makes me vulnerable, love expects the best of a person. What does this relationship look like Lord?”
I struggle with this. My answer is always ‘adios amigos’. I don’t deal well with pain, and people who bring pain have to go. Far away preferably. From the time God removed me from the middle of his chaos I have been called to love still, not to return, but to maintain love. I don’t always do it well, if I lose focus on God unhealthy behaviors and poor boundaries emerge.
The answer the Father gives me is “Love sees the best in the other person, even when they give you their worst. Love is the part of discernment that says ‘I know what you have to give, even though you won’t give it’. Love offers grace and mercy in the midst of deception. It is NOT accepting lies and deception, it IS saying ‘I CHOOSE to love you even from the distance you created in our relationship’. It is how I have loved you.”
I picture His love for His children, for me. He loved me long before I surrendered to Him, He loved me through my struggle to surrender. His love for me didn’t change because of my sin, my relationship to Him did. My sin separated me from intimacy, but He never stopped loving.
Deception has already changed the relationship, God removed me and made very clear to me that my heart belonged to Him. I have continued loving, and will. This does not mean “accepting” deception, as I have done in the past. It means accepting the person and honoring their choices. Deception is a choice that goes against building relationship. Proverbs 26:24 says “Enemies disguise themselves with their lips, but in their hearts they harbor deceit.” It is a choice to be separate from people and God in your heart.
I can love a person, but if that person is being purposefully deceitful God will not let me give them my heart. It belongs to Him. The deception hurts me, absolutely. Sadly it also hurts God and the one doing the deceiving. My heart hurts for this. And love says I forgive and pray for the deceiver to see this.
The now is I know who I am and who I belong to. And I am happy there, I am loved and cared for by a God who calls me His own and will not drop me. I can say “I will not live with your deception” and be okay. I can love and pray from where ever my Abba places me. My Abba loves me and purposefully removed me from the lies and deception. They simply cannot be part of my walk. I cannot be an involved party that watches and enables the lies and deception, they hurt me, they hurt God and they hurt the deceiver.
I will not dishonor God by pretending that those choices are alright, that you can live a deceitful life and serve God and love me. That isn’t truth
My prayer is for…truth. Change
Four months and one day. That is how long it took until the morning that I woke up and realized I was going to be okay. That is how long it took until the pain of what felt like losing a limb subsided. Four months and one day.
Four months of loss, shock and numbness, grief, anger, denial. Mixed emotions, an overwhelming sadness that came at the most inopportune times. Four months of trying to do what was best in my life while somewhere in the back of my head hoped this was only a bad dream. Four months of wondering how I was supposed to put my life back together when I no longer had any idea of what it was supposed to look like.
Four months, and one day I woke up and realized I was alive, I was okay. I am not where I want to be, but I am in a very good place. Four months and one day it took me to realize that what I had was not at all what I want, that I am worth so much more. To be able to look back and see the truth.
The truth is he is gone. He was gone long before I left. The truth is I am here, content with where God has me and confident that God is going to take me where I need to be. The truth is I am healing, and I realize that loving someone doesn’t mean putting up with the bullshit.
The bullshit has been big. It has been lies, stealing and cheating. It has been me keeping secrets and taking the blame. Thinking if only I could change he would love me, cherish me. It has been me being the least important thing in his life when I should have been more. It has been hearing things like “You WANT me to cheat and watch porn”. (Yes, because that is what every wife wants to see happen). And even into the last four months.
“I have always loved you.” Interesting statement. I am pretty sure that when you love someone the above is not what happens.
“I only did _fill in the blank_ because you…” The latest was when he said I spent my child support (I didn’t, I just didn’t give him full access to it for obvious reasons) and that undermined everything he was working for. He was chasing one girl and having an affair with another. Sorry to have undermined that.
“I want to be with you.” Oh, well, yeah, you WERE with me and you wanted everything else. Now that my proximity has changed you want to be with me?
“I want to work things out, but it’s not just up to me.” True. It isn’t just up to him. And that statement takes the responsibility for a failed relationship right off his shoulders right? No. But nice try.
Four months and ONE day. To the day. Waking up to a new freedom, freedom from being responsible for his choices. Freedom to make choices that are best for my life. Freedom to realize I am totally worth more, and that I can offer more knowing that. Freedom to pray for him without wondering if he is going to break my heart again. Freedom to lean into God as my all in all.
I have no doubt that there is still much in me to work out, that there will still be moments that I will look over and realize he is gone with a sort of sadness. That is to be expected when so much of me was invested in him. But ONE day I will look back from somewhere beautiful and say “It’s all good, look what God did. He had me the entire time.”
The text reads “I just thought you should know I love you.”
The words have always been I love you, the actions have been, let me rip your heart out.
The most recent words were “I will love you forever.” I think he may have gotten February and forever confused.
“I love you.” I want to respond.
I want to say why yes that explains the gaping wound in my heart, the ache of wanting that to be truth and knowing that it isn’t. It explains the Caitlyn Nunes Smith affair, the Ada Autrey draw, and the late night texts to Miss Audrey Jones that said how beautiful she was and that you could talk to her all night. The women whose names I don’t recall. You know them. It explains the flirting, the inappropriate friendships, the porn. I love you.
We were married, I meant forever. I believed being Mrs. David Frazier meant something. Now I have to look at the truth, and I don’t see it in your words.
The truth is I worked hard to make things work. I didn’t always do well, for too long I went along with pretending everything was okay, that your unfaithfulness was a slip and it was over. That doesn’t work for me, especially not over and over again. The truth is I am worthy of honesty, integrity, and faithfulness. I am worth the truth.
I was the one that should have been in the circle of intimacy, that you shared your life with. Not everyone else. I was the one that should have been a priority. Not Tori, who needed “work” done at her house, or who’s car broke down at two in the morning. I should have never come after your “friends”, or even your family.
I love you. That was a covenant, made with me and God. It was broken, I did not break it.
I love you, and as much as I want that to be true and be comforted by that I know that statement is going to hurt me if I do. I have a choice, I choose not to be hurt. I choose to be worthy of truth and faithfulness, integrity and to walk in this truth. I choose to say no to deception and walking into something that will cause me pain. I choose healing.
I told him I wouldn’t leave him, that the only thing that would make me go was him telling me or God telling me to go. When the porn was discovered God said stay. One year later I explained to him that words were not the only way to tell me to go.
He seemed to understand. I think I was clear. I set the boundaries. He said he would be a man, he said he chose me.
Six months later it turns out his actions were clearly saying GO. And I did, one bag and my dog in the car I came to the safe place God provided. A tearful mess, scared and uncertain, broken I fell apart in the arms of a friend.
One month later I went and moved the last of my stuff I could find. We had coffee and talked first. He went on and on about what he was learning about loving me and marriage. How we both had stuff to fix, that our expectations and communication problems, blah, blah, blah. That he was learning how he was supposed to treat me. Very interesting.
Interesting that the issues he wants to fix are valid issues, issues I have pointed out for years and have prayed fervently over. Interesting in that if those were THE issues this would not be where we are right now. Those issues weren’t enough for me to go. THE issue is infidelity, adultery, unfaithfulness, seeking self instead of God.
He claims to be working on those issues. As he begs me to let him hold me. I hope and pray that is true, and my heart breaks. But he won’t address those issues with me, except to say he understands I can’t trust him. And I say it is time for me to get my stuff. I need to do this.
I thought it would be easy, truth is it is even harder with him there. I am crying, he is crying, and I am at a lost for what to do. I cannot fix this, and I cannot stop. I absolutely must move forward. I must get what needs to go out. The alternative is unhealthy.
He wants me to stay. He wants to comfort me…in truth he wants to seek comfort. In truth, I want to be comforted but I know you do not go to the source of pain for comfort, so I leave. He requests his leather jacket back before I go. I go to what is my temporary home, heart hurting yet again as I drive away.
Safe and secure where I can seek God the pain hits like a hot poker searing through my side. I have lost everything. My best friend, my lover, my husband, my home. I know in my head that they were all an illusion, he was never real enough to be those things in honesty. But I had my dream. I had my vision of a marriage that reflected God. I had hope. Now I have nothing left of that, nothing but a leather jacket I am unwilling to give up yet.
And I tell him. I am keeping it for now. I have to. He begs me to come back. I can’t I need to go to Abba for comfort, I need to grieve in the arms of God who can restore and comfort me. I grieve for what I have lost, I grieve because I left, I grieve because part of my heart wants to go back and finally I grieve that the right choice hurts.
I could go back, but God says forward. I could let him hold me, but I refuse to stand in the way of what God wants to do with him. I refuse to diminish his responsibility for the choices he made. I pray for the strength to stand in that.
My head holds on to offenses. Not what would appear to be the big ones, the porn, the spending. I can look at those and say those hurt, especially when I wasn’t expecting them. I can move beyond that though and say they are not about me. Those are not really my problems. It’s the words that kill me.The words pierce my heart and affect my being. They leave me broken.
The words haunt my head and separate me from him. The blaming, the accusations, the tearing down. They replay in my head and build a vacuum in my heart that just sucks away anything good that could be happening.
They are the offenses that linger. The words seem to be about me. They tore me down, they were specifically directed at me, as if he lifted a bow, took aim and shot an arrow directly into my heart. I have found myself holding on to them, not so much as an act of the will, but subconsciously.
The act of the will is forgiving and letting go. Being brought to the awareness that offense is there and I have to give it over to God. Truthfully, without completely realizing it, I have held on to them wanting him to make retribution for them. To admit to his tearing me down, to his hurting me, to somehow fix it. Holding on hasn’t affected him at all really, other than probably not getting the response he expected when he decided to play nice. Mostly it has affected me.
The affect is profound. It makes me miserable, tired and even more suspicious. Those are not qualities that make me fun to be around. It makes me feel further from my Abba and less able to hear His voice. Still HE is faithful.
I wasn’t fully aware of holding on to those offenses. Now that I am it is time to prayerfully be obedient and let go, forgive.To stop giving the enemy a foothold and seek healing. I am under no misguided conception that I can do it on my own. God is going to have to do some work in me. The fact that these words, that weren’t so much about me as aimed at me, wounded me in such a way is a clear indication that there are some wounded areas in my soul that God would want to fix.
The words weren’t about me, I need to let those go. I need to be able to see them in the light of what they truly were and let go again. Letting go, forgiving, and trusting that God has a purpose and plan. Realizing that his wounds made him feel he needed to wound back, without even realizing that is what he is doing. They were an indication of his deeper hurt and need for healing, a symptom. I can’t fix that, but I can move past my hurt and let God continue doing what only He can.
It is amazing how God can use a week and people and his word to bring you to where you need to be. This blog has been focused on my hurt and the deception that caused it.
The truth is, the man I married was not who he presented himself to be. I don’t know why he presented himself as someone he wasn’t. I don’t know if that is the man he desires to be or what. I do know that from the beginning the signs were there. I ignored them.
I recently saw a little saying…Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is your stupid and you make bad choices. Ouch.
The truth is I was. The signs were there. I can bemoan the hurt I am feeling at the lies and betrayal. But I got to this place because MY focus was not on the Lord. MY focus was not on completely following his precepts. I walked into the relationship and I looked for fulfillment from a person when I should have been seeking out God. There were times I flat out ignored God. The saddest part about that is I did to my Savior exactly what has been done to me in doing so.
So now I can choose. I can choose to focus on the lies and deception, which yes,still are happening. I can focus on my husbands need to surrender to God and get healed. Or I can focus on MY walk with the Lord. It isn’t really much of a choice. The only way to peace is to focus on my walk. To focus on my healing.
Let’s be honest, it was the broken parts of me not relying on God and walking like He led me that got me to the place. It wasn’t my husbands brokenness, it wasn’t his lies and deception that got me here. I allowed that by not keeping my focus upward.
It was my selfish desires that put me in a broken relationship. God allowed it, because he let’s us make our choices, whether or not they grieve him. Now it is time to move on. To confess, repent and allow God’s grace to take the situation where He sees fit. It is time to move my focus from my hurt, away from my husbands brokenness and on to admitting my wrong and walking forward in Him.
God can heal my husband. He just has to surrender. That is my prayer for him. That is not my focus. Allowing anything other than God to be my focus or fulfillment is what got me here. And it has taken up to much of my peace and joy. It only took nine months, and a lot of being hurt, and wallowing in it. Thank God for his love and faithfulness, to bring me to the place, in his loving patience, of MY healing.
Psalm 119
The Message (MSG)
119 1-8 You’re blessed when you stay on course,
walking steadily on the road revealed by God.
You’re blessed when you follow his directions,
doing your best to find him.
That’s right—you don’t go off on your own;
you walk straight along the road he set.
You, God, prescribed the right way to live;
now you expect us to live it.
Oh, that my steps might be steady,
keeping to the course you set;
Then I’d never have any regrets
in comparing my life with your counsel.
I thank you for speaking straight from your heart;
I learn the pattern of your righteous ways.
I’m going to do what you tell me to do;
don’t ever walk off and leave me.
It’s been a while. Business with work, school and life.
We went to counseling. It was interesting. It was made clear we have a communication problem. I was blamed for his not playing in a band anymore. I refused to wear that. I stated I didn’t trust him. He fired back with he doesn’t trust me either. Boo-ya. That’s when he brought up my past depression and despair. The times I just wanted it all to end. I wore that, and I didn’t mention that the desperation stemmed from never knowing what was next, financially, emotionally. Being captive to another persons choices. I should have. Maybe we wouldn’t be here now.
Now I have to look at that. He pissed March’s rent away, as well as the money for his truck registration. April is due in two weeks. We are just managing to pay March’s by the grace of God, with what should be April’s. I am done.
I am done ALLOWING myself to be held captive by the choices of a selfish and immature attitude that says “I can have what I want without regard to the others in my life.” I am done driving an unreliable gas hog of a car, sitting on a couch that has the stuffing coming out while he has a truck, two boats and a motorcycle, I am done hearing “I’m sorry, I’ll fix it” when it is something that should have never been broken in the first place.
The bitch is back. I am not a door mat, I am a daughter of Zion and I will not stand idly by with my mouth shut on any of the issues anymore. It is time to grab the bull by the horn and throw out the bullshit. First things first. I need a car. Anyone want to buy a boat? They are going on craigslist.
Sometimes writing is cathartic for me. That is why there is this blog. To process, to evaluate and to be able to look back and see what it is God is doing. I could have blogged it privately, maybe that would have been more appropriate I am certain that there are some who would think I am airing my dirty laundry for the world to see in my blogs and to make a blog specifically for a situation is wrong. But to be honest, I wasn’t led to do it that way.
So here it is. My blog about my hurts, my marriage and the betrayal of my heart. My blog about how my choices led to it, and how God is going to clean it up. I know I am not the only one who has had the issues. I also know it tends to be a dirty little secret that no one talks about. I don’t think that is any healthier than blogging.
This is about recovery and healing. Specifically mine, prayerfully my husbands and my marriage. It is about pain, hurt, obedience and trusting God.
If you like it, great. If not, don’t read any further.
An intimate Journey 