The Second Time

Today I have been doing a lot of reflecting.  It seems that the further I step into my future the more I understand my past.  As many of you know I was widowed a year and a half ago. I was in the midst of marriage hell.  I married a man, whom I loved dearly, and who loved me, but he was sick. He had personal issues that were beyond repair.  Those personal issues showed up early in our marriage and the longer we were together, the deeper the issues became.  Initially they ate away at the level of interaction, communication and closeness we had.  Then it ate away at our marriage, then our finances, our security, and finally our entire life.  His issues were destroying him, which ultimately was destroying my life.  I was a casualty of his self destruction.

In the past 18 months I have been spending time healing.  I have been praying. I have been crying. I have been discovering who I am. And I've been hoping! I have hoped that someday I would meet a man who will love me the way I long to be loved.  I hoped that I would find a man who would receive the overwhelming love I long to feel for another.  I hoped that my son would receive from God the promise He gave, a new daddy to raise him.  Friends, that day is here! I met an amazing man, and soon we are going to be married!

When I am with him, everything just fits.  It flows. Its natural.  My son and I find comfort in being part of a family that loves and respects each other.  I have realized the fullness of our lives is not in what we have, but who we have to share it with.  God has blessed us! I have felt emptiness and despair.  I have felt a longing to be loved. I have felt rejection. I have longed to give myself to someone and have them receive it with open arms!  God has answered my hopes, He has answered my prayers.  He has shown me that He does take us from glory to glory, and that the latter will be better than the first.  

Since our engagement, I've been reflecting on my love for my fiancé.  Throughout this whole process of growing in love together, I've been comparing.  It feels so different than when I dated and married my late husband.  I am sure no one wants to be compared in such a way, but in all honesty its completely normal and totally unavoidable! We are going to compare.  And the good news is, the more I compare the more my fiancé comes out on top.  I become increasingly aware of the healthy nature, and maturity of our relationship and love.  Its a completely different creature than my past relationship.

I wish I could find the words to express this difference.  Perhaps the best I can say is this love is deep, like the deep love you feel when you have been married for a while.  When I married the first time I didn't really know my husband.  He never really let me know him. He had a wall.  It was bigger than the Berlin Wall, and longer than the Great Wall of China, and it was impenetrable.   He would say to me time and time again that he didn't want to let me in because he was afraid for me to see the real him.  Ironic isn't it? I experienced the worst times of his life, and my love didn't shake.  But still he felt this need to hide behind the wall.  The wall was there when we met, there when we married and there in his final days. It never came down. 

As I think back on our dating days I think about the great effort he made to woo me.  He showered me with roses, and gifts.  He made every effort to be the perfect man.  As my good friend described it, "I had never seen anyone pursue like that."  And all the attention captured me.  He "won" me.  And I fell into what I thought was love.  I'm not saying I didn't ever love him.  With time, I grew into that deep level of love that is what God designed for us to experience.  But that initial love I felt, wasn't deep.  It was surface.  It took time for me to really love him because I had to first experience him.  

Today I realized he pursued in me that way because he couldn't just be himself.  He didn't want to let me fall in love with who he was because he didn't love himself, and feared if I saw the real man I wouldn't love him either.  So he did all the right things externally, a form of smoke and mirrors to place my attention on his actions and how I felt, instead of discovering the man he was.  He said the right things.  He bought me all the gifts.  He put a dozen roses on my car while I was at work.  The whole time I didn't realize the surface level of our relationship, and the wall which I was soon to encounter.

Its odd to be reflecting on my first relationship so much during these exciting days of engagement.  It seems random to be gaining more understanding about the past I am so far away from.  But it is my past which brought me to this place, on the edge of my glorious future.  And by looking back I am only able to hold on tighter to my future.  I realize the depth of love I feel this time is deeper because there are no smoke and mirrors.  My finance isn't saying and doing all the right things to win me over.  He is real.  He is himself 24/7.  He exposes who he really is: the good and the bad.  This time when I fell in love, I fell in love with a man, vulnerable, unguarded and willing to give himself to me completely.  

Jonathan-ized

I catch myself at different times saying something I haven't heard in over a year.  And my first thought, "I've been Jonathan-ized."  When someone I cared about betrayed me, my first words were "What a pig-dog!" Yes that was a Jonathan phrase.  Or when I was working hard to paint some rooms in my house, I was "jammin'".   Its those little phrases and actions which are so uniquely him.  And I continue to find them coming out of me, even as time passes.

In a way its really refreshing.  It's a small way that he left his mark on my life.  Its a simple reminder that even though its seems like a different life, lived by a different woman, I really did have him in my life.  Its a reminder that I was once one with another, someone that I loved.

There are other ways he left his finger print on my life, deeper than simple sayings.   Jonathan taught me how to include children into everything we did.  When I married him he had a 5 year old daughter, who quickly became my daughter as well.  And when we had her over the weekends, she was always included in whatever we were doing.  Whether it was raking leaves, making dinner, or painting a room.  We would always simplify the task to include her.  That is something I have carried with me.  When my son expresses interest in making dinner, or helping me paint my bathroom, I make a way for him to help.  Thank you Jonathan for teaching me that.

The biggest life lesson I learned from Jonathan, although it was rather indirect, was to see the best in people.  As I've shared before Jonathan had struggles.  He was emotionally damaged which led to many of the "symptoms" and issues he struggled with in life.  But I never defined him by the issues.  I separated the man from the problems.  That's a very hard thing to do.  But for me, with him, it was easy.  I always saw the best in him.  I always believed he was able, and capable. I knew he was not the man he appeared to be by his actions.  Jonathan taught me how to look past a person's struggles and see the heart of the man inside.  Because of that I can say in confidence he was a good man.  He was so much better than what he settled for in life.  I never stopped doubting, I never stopped believing.  I always hoped he would see what I did, and become the man he was created to be.

Someday when I enter heaven, I am going to meet that man.  I will finally see the man on the outside matching the man I knew to be on the inside.  I'm going to see a man who is free.  He will be emotionally whole: no limits, no chains, no walls.  Its going to be amazing to truly see the man I loved exactly as he maker designed him to be!

Seems Like an Odd Time

I am taking a marriage class. "Really?" I ask myself,  "Now?  Isn't this the absolute oddest time for me to take a marriage class?"  And its not because I'm single.  Before I was married, or even dating, I took a marriage class, and it was extremely beneficial.  It helped me to learn quite a few things I didn't know about Christian marriage.  I took another marriage class with my husband during the course of our marriage.  And I even went through almost a year's worth of marriage counseling.  All that was amazing, and very appropriate.  But now I am a widow. I'm purposely not dating right now.  And I am still healing from the loss of my husband, and the issues which we had to face during those last 3 difficult years.  

It doesn't make any sense to me in the natural that I would find my self at this stage in life taking a marriage class.  But God's timing and God's plan doesn't always make sense to us.  Sometimes it does feel a little awkward to be in a marriage class after just losing a spouse. But even as I am sitting here writing this I am realizing how amazingly appropriate it is.  

My husband and I had been through some very difficult times, and through that season of reconciling we attended amazing marital counseling.  After going through that type of situation and seemingly making it through, you think you know a thing or two about marriage.  To be honest, I learned a lot about marriage in that season, which is going to tremendously bless my next one, when the Lord brings it.  But you almost feel like you know it all; after all we reconciled after a tremendous blow to our marriage.  I forgave, I accepted, I did everything right.  "I don't need a marriage class, not now." Between all my experience, previous knowledge gained, and the fact that I am not pursuing a relationship right now, the topic of "marriage" just doesn't entice.  Don't misunderstand me here, I am not saying I'm an expert on marriage, but I did feel very confident that I have a good handle on the topic.  After all I lived it.  But I humbled myself to the schedule set before me for my ministry school and I am taking the class.

I expected the class would confirm somethings which I've already learned.  And I expected to learn a few new things as well, that I could put in my back pocket and save for the future.  I expected to feel uncomfortable and awkward at times.  But what I didn't expect was the healing that God would bring through this class.  This healing is two fold: understanding and confirmation.

I'm receiving some very in depth understanding about my late husband.  God is revealing layers of him.  There were external characteristics he had, which I could easily recognize and associate with difficulties in our marriage.  But God is now peeling those layers back, and helping me to understand why he was that way.  This weeks class really helped me have insight into him, and the more insight I get, the more peace I have.  Its as if I'm getting little slices of closure.  There were several things which I began to really understand, and I'd like to share one of them with you.

The topic was esteeming your spouse.  The main point for the first half of class was how you can't give what you don't have.  If you don't esteem or value yourself you won't be able to give it to your spouse, and you won't receive it when your spouse gives it to you.  One of the hardest things I struggled with in  our marriage was his inability to give and receive love.  It took me years to accurately identify it.  It was extremely frustrating.  I would tell him what an amazing business man he was, or how smart he was, or how I admired him for working so hard for our family.  And he would literally reject it.  It wasn't a fake, "no I'm not" to encourage me to say more.  It was much deeper.  He would feel that I was being condescending to him.  He couldn't receive the sincerity of what I was telling him.  And tonight I understood finally why.  He didn't see it.  

He was surrounded by hurt his whole life that when genuine (me) came along he didn't understand it.  Its sad that he never saw himself the way I did.  In one of our last good conversations I told him that.  I told him that even though I believed in him, it wasn't enough.  That he needed to believe in himself.  Despite the best counseling, and the availability of God's love, he never overcame that negative self opinion.  And it is what destroyed him in the end.  But here's the healing or closure I received tonight: My husband wasn't rejecting me when I'd esteem and honor him, he was rejecting himself.  I also had a fresh reminder that yes my husband did love me.  He just wasn't able to express it to me because he didn't love himself.  You can't give what you yourself don't have.

There is also the healing God is bringing by confirming my actions.  I am not perfect, nor was I a perfect wife.  But I always tried my best.  I was teachable, and would always adjust myself for his needs.  In our difficult times, I did all I could to try to make it work.  I followed the strategies given by our counselor, I listened to what my husband needed of me, and I gave grace, grace, and more grace.  I gave second chances. I gave forgiveness.  I let go of my offenses.  I closed the door on the past and I gave our marriage a new start.  But in the end it didn't save our marriage.  We had a little over a year where it seemed like we had made it.  However, the months before he died our marriage literally was falling apart.   He fell back into some of the destructive behaviors he struggled with, some to my knowledge and some I wasn't aware of.  Then he died.  Had he not, our marriage would have ultimately failed, he just died before it officially could.  

But by sitting in this marriage class, each week God reaffirms me.  As the material is taught I am reminded that I did these things!  I fulfilled my role as wife, with a pure and loving heart.  I did what God expects a wife to do.  I did it in the good times.  I did it in the bad times.  I did it in the really, really bad times.  And I did it when he died.  It wasn't dependent on Jonathan's behaviors, it was dependent on the fact that he was my husband and for that reason alone he deserved it.  It wasn't easy, but I did it!  And God is pleased with me for always honoring my husband.

As I sit in this marriage class I'm being healed.  God is confirming to me that I did all He expected of me as Jonathan's wife, and that I did it well.  I'm grateful for God reminding me I was a good wife.  I'm receiving His pleasure in me, and it heals my heart.  He's helping me to understand the deep inner workings of my late husband, and it frees me.  It releases me from hurt, from questions, and from blame.  It reassures me that he did love me.  So while this may be the most awkward time ever to take a marriage class, I'm so glad I am.