Can’t stay Away

When this all came out I can remember asking my friend Kerstin, on a daily basis, how long it would take to get over all the hurt and pain I felt almost everyday.  It seemed like I was never going to start feeling better.  I felt that this was a hopeless cause and that I was just enduring more torture by continuing through with it.  I thought I would never be able to see brighter days.  The only thing going through my mind on a daily basis was the disgusting thought of them being together.  It made me sick.  I cried constantly.  More often than not all this pain and all this hurt just came out as bitter rage. 

I’m not going to lie; it was like I had completely forgotten everything God had taught me in the months before. 1 Corinthians 13 was no longer something I walked out daily.  It was now just a memory of a once humbled Lyryn.  I no longer had patience. I was no longer was kind.   In a matter of days, that humbled spirit that God had been nurturing got pushed aside and the hurt spirit that took all the rejection during the affair and all the mean and nasty words Jesse had spoken over me, responded with a vengeance.

In no way am I excusing my actions. I was completely wrong to treat him the way I did.  I could have controlled them if I had really tried hard enough, but in my twisted selfish mind, he deserved hell and that was exactly what I was going to give him.  The more I spewed hurtful words of venom and spoke a hopeless outcome for our marriage, the more and more he receded and began thinking, was this really worth fighting for?  He was completely honest with me and put everything on the table.  He did everything he could think of to work on fixing what he had broken, but I just wouldn’t have it.

Fear ruled my life.  The devil knew just the right words to make me second-guess everything Jesse was doing to fix this mess.  I was too scared of getting my heart broken again.  I could not look like a fool again.  I WOULD NOT look like a fool again.

I had convinced myself that I needed to constantly test him and treat him as badly as I felt he had treated me during the affair and that if he really did still love me he would just take it.  I wasn't going to let him back into my heart so easily. I couldn’t handle going through all of this pain  again and if I trusted him too quickly, I felt that it was bound to happen again down the road.

Unfortunately, my plan to build a wall around my heart and to get back at him by being verbally abusive backfired on me.  Who would have thunk?!  I can't believe how stupid I was.  I practically told him to run back Lauren!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR,  I'm insane!!!!!!!

Only three months after the affair had ended, curiosity got the best of them.  As the story goes; (let me also add that even now I still do not really understand how it even came to happen) Jesse made contact with Lauren on an account he had told me about, but I believed was deactivated.  For six weeks they communicated back and forth through email and AIM.  While that was happening I began to see the past repeating itself.

About four weeks after their communication had started I took notice.  He started to shut me out now and began to go back to easily becoming annoyed with me.  I knew something was up and I knew he had returned to his old ways. And this time I knew without a doubt that it was Lauren. I just couldn’t prove it, yet.  This wasn't my first rodeo and boy-o-boy was my home-wrecker radar up and in high alert.

I could hear the devil telling me, "See, I told you so!" I knew I had handled this all wrong and that if I was serious about making this marriage work then I was going to have to lay down my pride and really fight with Jesse, not against him.  I was humbled all over again and brought to my knees.  You would have thought I would have learned the first time... but I hadn't.  I prayed, asking God to show me what I needed to do to stop this crazy cycle I was allowing in our marriage.

On November 14th 2008 (Oh, the irony of that date - For those who don’t know, November 14th is Jesse’s and my dating anniversary) I was sitting at my husband's desk and I felt this need to pick up his phone and look at it. Not thinking once that I would find anything suspicious I was shocked to see there in plain sight, an IM for her saying, “I love you too.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! Really?

I could not believe my eyes!!!  With my chest pounding a mile-a-minute I calmly asked Jesse to come upstairs (because we had a good friend over that night and I didn't want to look like a lunatic in front of him) to explain this.  Honestly I really didn’t want to hear it from him, I was so pissed!  I really just wanted to see the shock on his face that I actually caught him this time.  I know, real mature... but I couldn't believe that they would do this again!!!!!!!  COME THE FRICK ON!  Here we go again.

I proceeded to ask him if he wanted to be with her again.  This time he quickly came back with a, “No.”  I felt a little better hearing his response to that question this time around.  The last time I had this conversation with him he wanted a divorce. This time I seemed to be the higher priority even though I had just seen him tell her that he loved her.

I couldn’t deal with this.  I told Jesse I needed to go think and get out of the house.  The only place that seemed a logical place for me to go was over to our friends Kerstin and Bryan’s house. On my way there I got so ticked off with Lauren!!!!  She had looked me in the eyes three months ago and told me it was done and she would never talk to Jesse again, but here she was talking to him secretly for six weeks?!?!?  I needed to say something, I couldn't just let this be!

I pulled off to the side of the road because I was so angry.  I texted Lauren, “You told me this was done, you told me that you would let us be. Then why have you been emailing and talking to my husband?” It took her a while to respond, but finally she did. Honestly... I cannot remember how she responded word for word so I won't try and quote her inaccurately.  She did apologize (whether I believed it or not) and once again assured me that it wouldn’t happen because she wanted to make it work with her own husband.

I know you will all yell at me for writing this, but I do blame myself this time around. Yes, he was the one that made the bad decision to contact her and to keep talking to her over six weeks. But I was being terrible.  I was intentionally being nasty to him on a daily basis.  I was hurtful with my words and very cruel at times. I was doing exactly what he had done to me and I KNEW how badly that cut me down yet I still made him suffer through it.

To be put down every day, to be reminded of your mistakes and to be told you are not good enough will do something to your spirit. The words I spoke should have never come out of my mouth and I greatly regret how I acted those first few months.  I will say that after that, things quickly got better. I was less likely to freak out on him for things I didn't understand, and ask questions first instead of jumping to conclusions. There were moments I still messed up royally, trust me. I'm sure he can attest to that.  And even today I'm still a work in progress.

A few months after that happened the church we were attending was doing a small bible study on the book "Love and Respect." Goodness, I wish I had read that before I got married! I mean, ah-mazing book! If you haven't read it... read it!  I realized that I was not giving my husband the respect that he so desperately wanted from me, and that what I had been doing was encouraging this crazy cycle that constantly kept us spinning downward into messes.

Each day got easier as we started to understand one another better. As we started to understand one another better, we started to connect better and communicate like we never had before. I was now able to see some real effort and repentance coming from his heart. I knew this was only the beginning of more healing and better things to come.  I could finally see some light.

God Of Second Chances

Carlos Whittaker

(Jesse picked this song)