What is this, God? What’s going on? I thought once 1/29 came and went, I’d be feel­ing bet­ter. But instead I’m a mael­strom of so many emo­tions. I guess that’s to be expect­ed, now that the set­tle­ment papers are signed. I just didn’t expect my pri­ma­ry emo­tion would be this huge, over­flow­ing LOVE for him! Espe­cial­ly with the uncon­scionable and despi­ca­ble behav­ior I saw from him at medi­a­tion. I was mak­ing a cup of tea when he stalked by me, stone-faced with eyes full of anger, even hatred. That was just a hint of his behav­ior for the rest of the day. 

For the past 24 hours, though, all I feel is love. All the pure, unfil­tered love I have had for him since the begin­ning. And I don’t know what to do with it. Is this a part of say­ing good­bye and let­ting go? 

I expect­ed to cry, but the tears didn’t come at the best moment today. It was while hav­ing lunch with the kids. My son start­ed feel­ing the hurt a lot again. I could tell because of how fierce­ly he need­ed wor­ship music on – Stef­fany Gretzinger’s “Let­ting Go.”

As soon as it start­ed, I buried my face in my hands, and the tears just flowed. My daugh­ter climbed into my lap with a sad face and said, “I miss Dada.” I told her to mes­sage him on her iPad, and while she stepped away, my son clung his 10-year-old self onto me like when he was a baby, his head on my shoul­der, our arms wrapped around each other.

How could he do this to us? I looked around that kitchen table, with the three of us seat­ed there, all lov­ing and miss­ing and hurt­ing and bro­ken inside because of the same man. And I won­dered, how long will we be like this? They say things get bet­ter after a year, but this was one of those moments when I didn’t know if we could make it through the next minute, and God, how many more of these min­utes will we have to endure? 10/13 seemed inter­minably far away.

My par­ents are in a funk, espe­cial­ly my dad. I know he’s had words with God over all this, but espe­cial­ly giv­en what hap­pened at medi­a­tion. With all the proof we had of his adul­tery for all of last year, not to men­tion his 2014 admis­sion and 2016 con­fes­sion, the $20,000 we can see he spent on the cur­rent affair, the hid­den bank accounts… Dad didn’t expect for the medi­a­tor to basi­cal­ly award him 50–50 of my 401k and the house I paid for. As my broth­er said, even get­ting 100–0 would not be jus­tice, so I decid­ed ahead of time to choose peace, regard­less of even a 50–50 out­come. Because God is still El Roi (the One Who sees all), and He will have the last say. 

I’ve kept my silence and stayed my Nan­cy Drew urges this whole time, know­ing any­thing I might accom­plish pales to what He is doing. The great­est con­tri­bu­tion I can make to jus­tice for me and the kids, and redemp­tion for him, is when I make war on the floor, and offer up prayers, thanks­giv­ing, and worship. 

When you real­ize yet again that you have no real con­trol over any­thing oth­er than your own choic­es and respons­es, then you throw your­self into doing the only things that change both heav­en and earth. You don’t need any spe­cial tal­ents or abil­i­ties, a siz­able bank account, or any cre­den­tials, to come before His throne. You just say a word, and He hears. He doesn’t just hear. He appears. He has shown up every sin­gle time I have called out to Him. Oh, how He shouts in my pain. And I have to keep remind­ing myself He told me not to look at tomor­row. Just look at Him, and think about today.

My husband’s sis­ter mes­saged me today, in her typ­i­cal puerile man­ner, that she’s delet­ing and block­ing me from her Face­book. It’s only with the hind­sight post-10/6 that I now see how they two of them are exact­ly alike. They went through the same abuse from the same uncle, and their lives have been nar­cis­sis­tic mess­es ever since. My hus­band was the one who “diag­nosed” her to the rest of the fam­i­ly on a phone call after one of her many episodes of rela­tion­ship drama.

Lol – shout in my pain? This song was play­ing while I’m writ­ing. Check out the excerpt from 5:42 on. Could­n’t be any more per­fect for what God has shown me on this jour­ney so far.

No one was ever trans­formed through hate. Love does not have an equal in hate. They’re not pit­ted against each oth­er. Love and hate are not equals. They’re not rivals. Hate does­n’t stand a chance. Love trans­forms. Love trans­forms. Love is the only thing that trans­forms. Love trans­forms. And I just feel… There’s an absorp­tion of our shame­ful, hid­den selves being absorbed into the essence of the good­ness and love of God that trans­forms us. The love of God. Not the hatred of our for­mer selves. The Love that tran­scends and sees and pulls us into the real­i­ty, the true real­i­ty of who you’re cre­at­ed to be. 

And then that was fol­lowed by this.

Lord, Dar­by told me my love for him won’t change him. Nei­ther my love nor my words changed him over these last 14 years. 

But Your love leads to repen­tance, and Your Word pierces to the divid­ing asun­der of soul and spir­it, joint and mar­row, and is a dis­cern­er of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 

I pray Your love cap­tures him, wres­tles with him, and won’t release him until he is ful­ly sub­mit­ted to You and emerges as the wor­ship­per with the heart of gold that shines so bright for all to see, like a city set on a hill. 

Oh, would You do that, God? Would You run after him? Would You chase him down? I want to see him tes­ti­fy­ing from stages around the world, giv­ing hope to mil­lions of men who have the same bro­ken back­ground and shame-filled his­to­ry. God, that he will preach, and mil­lions find deliv­er­ance. That he will be trans­par­ent in his wit­ness, that his life will com­plete­ly turn around. Won’t You do it, God? Do it, PLEASE!! I want that for him. I so want him to be free. Real free­dom, not this run­ning away that he’s been doing. Lord, make him run face-first into You, and nev­er be the same.