I slowed down blogging two years ago when I started dating my now husband just because I wasn't about to just blog about this guy I was dating because that would be weird. Somethings just shouldn't go on social media.. ya know? And then of course, we got engaged we got married, we moved to a new place and never got internet. So that was my main thing. But also, some really awful hurtful things happened/ were said to us shortly before we got married and that's something something to blog about either so that just created writer's block altogether. Like.. what do you even write about? Your day-to-day routine?
Since it all happened amidst the whirlwind of wedding things and big life happenings, rather then sit down and process what was said and what happened, it was easiest/ seemed best at the time to just shove it in a box and pack it all away in a closet, much like some of our beautiful wedding gifts that we will get to take out when we buy a house. Shoved to the bottomest, darkest corner of my mangled, gutted heart. I'd like to clarify that Shane was zero part of the hurt, at least he did not inflict it or cause it or provoke it. Although, him trying to see the very best in all humans including the ones who had done the hurting DID lead to SOME little marital conflicts about taking sides.
Let me tell you kids, if you get the opportunity to start your marriage without some horrible ugly flesh wound in your heart, do that thing. Because, it wasn't something that my husband could just make better. He tried. He's good at fixing things. Let me tell you, the knob on our closet door was loose when we moved in and since he didn't have a washer to put behind the bolt he drilled a hole in a nickle and that fixed it pretty good. He has re-installed and re-wired THREE of the light switches in our apartment and is on such good terms with our apartment handy-man that Brian (We're on first name basis with him now) is perfectly happy if Shane just waltzes into his shops and snatches up the part or lightbulb or whatever he needs to fix the next thing.
Anyways, good all fix-it Shane couldn't fix the fact that someone I had once counted as a friend had damaged and mangled me so completely. Which, also, love your friends guys.. but if you get some sort of warning sign that one of them might be going feral.. you should probably cut them off the two years before that happens...back when they were showing the signs and not the two years later after they say and do the awful things that are the very worst last memory of them.
So, here we are 14 months later. That's an awfully long time to go as a broken person who has to keep shoving it deep down just because you haven't had the time or know how to deal with that. Like, I've realized, there are some things in life that take very intentional moments to dig out and get rid of but, when you're first married, you just want to soak in every moment of the happy stuff.
Still not good right. While I would say that Shane and had a very blissful first year of marriage, we had never, and I mean NEVER had a single conflict in our relationship prior to that whole "whatever you would call the whole thing that transpired over the course of a couple weeks with the former friend." Literally never. We had been REALLLLLLY good friends for the 3 years before we started dating and we almost didn't date because it was too perfect and we didn't want to ruin it. And our dating relationship was perfect. Again, not a single disagreement, not even on where to eat for supper. But then, the thorn in our side showed up and stuck a wedge between us.
Our blissful first year of marriage has been 99% conflict free. Just like the diamond I wear on my finger. The tiny 1% of any conflict has been 100% related to the THING. Because I was hurt and Shane was hurt and Shane dealt with it because he's perfect and I didn't because I felt a little bit like God had something to do with it. And that sucked.
In an effort to resolve the thing, Shane and I sought some wisdom from some people we trusted and we prayed about it and then we met up with the offending party to resolve the thing and it got worse. I felt a little left out to dry after that whole thing. Half of me felt like God had to have been there because I said none of the cuss words that I had in mind the previous day, but the rest of me felt like God wasn't there at all and I had been completely left to the wolves.
So that's a hard place to be. I suddenly got a good glimpse/taste of how people can come to a KEY stake-in-the-ground moment to say, "This is where God left me and I that was it." And I'm not about to say that I gave up Christianity or my relationship with the Lord, but I put a lot less effort into the whole thing, that's for sure. I mean, Shane and I have read a chapter of the Bible together every day since we started dating. SOME DAYS.. we haven't, but over all.. we still do. We've read almost the entire Bible together.
I used to prayer journal, though, but I have temporarily retired that. Shane and I pray together every night, which has been mostly me listening to him pray and chipping in on "amen." It wasn't until this past February that Shane surrendered to the fact that he wouldn't be able to fix anything and made me start praying for the offending party myself. It tasted like vomit in my mouth, asking the Lord to look after them and bless them. It was like a punishment, my husband waiting until I had muttered out some sort of pray for OP before he would pray something more substantial.
But it worked, or is working. Little by little I've given a little bit more to the Lord and I've hated OP a little bit less. My heart is becoming less and less likely to irrupt in anger and bitterness and depression if the topic is broached somehow.
My dear, sweet mother-in-law recently did a thing I have not managed in 14 years. It was 14 years ago that I was in a car accident that mangled half my face. While they stitched me back up they managed to stitch in tiny shards of glass in the process of re-attaching my ear where it had become detached. I picked glass out of my face for a couple years until all that was left was deep in my ear. And there it has been. I got my ears pierced like every other normal girl with normal ears does. My one ear could never hold an earring more than a day or two. The glass would always click again the earrings and get infected instantly. Plus, my ear is mostly swollen scar tissue anyways and an earring can barely hold the back on it without it falling off. Anyways, Recently, within the last couple weeks, I decided to start wearing earrings, just for fun.
The normal thing that always happens and has happened the last 12 years is that after a day or two, my ear swelled past its normal swollen self and became its infected self since the glass inside was all irritated. BUT, this time, I could tell.. it was surfacing! Shane's mother (I was at her house at the time) got out a needle and a light and successfully extracted 3 pieces of glass. TINY.. TEENY TEENY TINY pieces of glass. You could only see if the light caught it just light to make it glimmer. After letting the infection heal and my ear go back to normal size, I put earring in again and for the first time in all the years I've had earrings, my ear did not swell, it did not bleed, it did not hurt. I can currently squeeze my earlobe and there's not pain. Literally, I have lived more years of my life WITH glass in my ear than I have lived without. What a feeling!!
Anyways.. all that is to say, I'm working on getting out the shards of glass from when my heart was mangled by snow globe full of good memories shattering into a million pieces when my no longer friend decided to be a no longer friend. I've been letting the Lord have the deep dark corner of my bitter little heart and it's making a world of difference.
I think I've held on a little bit hoping that my former friend would magically snap out of the feral, totally-not-themselves state they're in and be the person I wanted to be friends with 5 years ago. But that's just not a realistic expectation. So there's a point where you just kind of have to lay them to rest with the good memories and hope to see their good side on the other side of eternity.
So that's where I'm at. I was a bottled up broken person trying to hold all of my honest broken feelings under the surface like a beach ball and that wasn't working out. Now, I'm on the mend and I'm ready to tell the world all about all of my feelings again.
Since it all happened amidst the whirlwind of wedding things and big life happenings, rather then sit down and process what was said and what happened, it was easiest/ seemed best at the time to just shove it in a box and pack it all away in a closet, much like some of our beautiful wedding gifts that we will get to take out when we buy a house. Shoved to the bottomest, darkest corner of my mangled, gutted heart. I'd like to clarify that Shane was zero part of the hurt, at least he did not inflict it or cause it or provoke it. Although, him trying to see the very best in all humans including the ones who had done the hurting DID lead to SOME little marital conflicts about taking sides.
Let me tell you kids, if you get the opportunity to start your marriage without some horrible ugly flesh wound in your heart, do that thing. Because, it wasn't something that my husband could just make better. He tried. He's good at fixing things. Let me tell you, the knob on our closet door was loose when we moved in and since he didn't have a washer to put behind the bolt he drilled a hole in a nickle and that fixed it pretty good. He has re-installed and re-wired THREE of the light switches in our apartment and is on such good terms with our apartment handy-man that Brian (We're on first name basis with him now) is perfectly happy if Shane just waltzes into his shops and snatches up the part or lightbulb or whatever he needs to fix the next thing.
Anyways, good all fix-it Shane couldn't fix the fact that someone I had once counted as a friend had damaged and mangled me so completely. Which, also, love your friends guys.. but if you get some sort of warning sign that one of them might be going feral.. you should probably cut them off the two years before that happens...back when they were showing the signs and not the two years later after they say and do the awful things that are the very worst last memory of them.
So, here we are 14 months later. That's an awfully long time to go as a broken person who has to keep shoving it deep down just because you haven't had the time or know how to deal with that. Like, I've realized, there are some things in life that take very intentional moments to dig out and get rid of but, when you're first married, you just want to soak in every moment of the happy stuff.
Still not good right. While I would say that Shane and had a very blissful first year of marriage, we had never, and I mean NEVER had a single conflict in our relationship prior to that whole "whatever you would call the whole thing that transpired over the course of a couple weeks with the former friend." Literally never. We had been REALLLLLLY good friends for the 3 years before we started dating and we almost didn't date because it was too perfect and we didn't want to ruin it. And our dating relationship was perfect. Again, not a single disagreement, not even on where to eat for supper. But then, the thorn in our side showed up and stuck a wedge between us.
Our blissful first year of marriage has been 99% conflict free. Just like the diamond I wear on my finger. The tiny 1% of any conflict has been 100% related to the THING. Because I was hurt and Shane was hurt and Shane dealt with it because he's perfect and I didn't because I felt a little bit like God had something to do with it. And that sucked.
In an effort to resolve the thing, Shane and I sought some wisdom from some people we trusted and we prayed about it and then we met up with the offending party to resolve the thing and it got worse. I felt a little left out to dry after that whole thing. Half of me felt like God had to have been there because I said none of the cuss words that I had in mind the previous day, but the rest of me felt like God wasn't there at all and I had been completely left to the wolves.
So that's a hard place to be. I suddenly got a good glimpse/taste of how people can come to a KEY stake-in-the-ground moment to say, "This is where God left me and I that was it." And I'm not about to say that I gave up Christianity or my relationship with the Lord, but I put a lot less effort into the whole thing, that's for sure. I mean, Shane and I have read a chapter of the Bible together every day since we started dating. SOME DAYS.. we haven't, but over all.. we still do. We've read almost the entire Bible together.
I used to prayer journal, though, but I have temporarily retired that. Shane and I pray together every night, which has been mostly me listening to him pray and chipping in on "amen." It wasn't until this past February that Shane surrendered to the fact that he wouldn't be able to fix anything and made me start praying for the offending party myself. It tasted like vomit in my mouth, asking the Lord to look after them and bless them. It was like a punishment, my husband waiting until I had muttered out some sort of pray for OP before he would pray something more substantial.
But it worked, or is working. Little by little I've given a little bit more to the Lord and I've hated OP a little bit less. My heart is becoming less and less likely to irrupt in anger and bitterness and depression if the topic is broached somehow.
My dear, sweet mother-in-law recently did a thing I have not managed in 14 years. It was 14 years ago that I was in a car accident that mangled half my face. While they stitched me back up they managed to stitch in tiny shards of glass in the process of re-attaching my ear where it had become detached. I picked glass out of my face for a couple years until all that was left was deep in my ear. And there it has been. I got my ears pierced like every other normal girl with normal ears does. My one ear could never hold an earring more than a day or two. The glass would always click again the earrings and get infected instantly. Plus, my ear is mostly swollen scar tissue anyways and an earring can barely hold the back on it without it falling off. Anyways, Recently, within the last couple weeks, I decided to start wearing earrings, just for fun.
The normal thing that always happens and has happened the last 12 years is that after a day or two, my ear swelled past its normal swollen self and became its infected self since the glass inside was all irritated. BUT, this time, I could tell.. it was surfacing! Shane's mother (I was at her house at the time) got out a needle and a light and successfully extracted 3 pieces of glass. TINY.. TEENY TEENY TINY pieces of glass. You could only see if the light caught it just light to make it glimmer. After letting the infection heal and my ear go back to normal size, I put earring in again and for the first time in all the years I've had earrings, my ear did not swell, it did not bleed, it did not hurt. I can currently squeeze my earlobe and there's not pain. Literally, I have lived more years of my life WITH glass in my ear than I have lived without. What a feeling!!
Anyways.. all that is to say, I'm working on getting out the shards of glass from when my heart was mangled by snow globe full of good memories shattering into a million pieces when my no longer friend decided to be a no longer friend. I've been letting the Lord have the deep dark corner of my bitter little heart and it's making a world of difference.
I think I've held on a little bit hoping that my former friend would magically snap out of the feral, totally-not-themselves state they're in and be the person I wanted to be friends with 5 years ago. But that's just not a realistic expectation. So there's a point where you just kind of have to lay them to rest with the good memories and hope to see their good side on the other side of eternity.
So that's where I'm at. I was a bottled up broken person trying to hold all of my honest broken feelings under the surface like a beach ball and that wasn't working out. Now, I'm on the mend and I'm ready to tell the world all about all of my feelings again.
