From Ashes to Beauty

September 20, 2015

It's been stirring in my heart for a long time now to share "my story", but I've battled the desire to share publicly my struggles and triumphs.  After all, it puts me in a vulnerable spot, and how people may see me after I put it out for all to see could be very different.  I guess I still have some strand of "people pleaser" in me... after all, don't we all?  But recently a well meaning friend made a comment to me saying "well, that's YOUR side of the story.  I'm sure the other side has a different one."  But although she didn't mean that to hurt me, it did.  See being a survivor, you quickly recognize that sometimes sharing your story makes you vulnerable to the looks and judgement of others.  But more importantly than that to me, it gives me a place to relate to others walking in the shoes I've walked.  Shoes that may appear strong on the outside, but on the inside, women (and sometimes men) like me are shattered and broken and desperately need someone who's walked thru the brokenness, and come thru the fire to become a voice willing to listen and fully understand their pain, believing them instead of doubting their story.  I've always said that if God can somehow use my pain for HIS glory, then it's worthwhile.  Little did I know when I first said that 2 years ago that God still had SO much work to do in me, but also how He would use my heartache and healing to speak to my kids in their loss of innocence and bleeding hearts as well.

So I want to backtrack to my childhood.  I was raised in an amazing home with 5 brothers and 1 sister, all super close in age, and with parents who loved us and loved Jesus in a genuine and tangible way more than anyone I have ever known.  My parents are a living breathing walking Jesus.  They are the definition of people who let their actions speak louder than their words.  They walk their faith daily.  They're prayer warriors.  They're the type of people who sacrifice and give to unending measures.  They love fearlessly.  I can't remember exactly how old I was, but I do know all my siblings and I were still spread between elementary, middle and high school, and my dad felt God called him to quit his full time job in computer management to step down to a part-time position so he could go into the inner city of Columbus and serve the homeless.  From that day forward, I remember my family always had a "less fortunate" family living in our home.  Some were there only for a short time, and others stayed months, even years.  We learned to love each family as my dad and mom tried to be a tangible Jesus and teach them life skills and help them find jobs so they could be on their own and be a "productive member of society".  There was everything from single moms with their kids, to addicts trying desperately to get clean, to Satanists who were trying to escape the cult of lies to spare the lives of their 2 beautiful children who were meant to be born to be sacrificed, to college students from a foreign country who had no family so were lonely and needed a family away from home to love on them.  My parents were that and more to each of them.  Each lonely and hurting in their own ways, and just needing a tangible touch of Jesus' love.  A God kiss as I call it.  My parents are the reason I learned to give and love.  They didn't just talk the talk.  They walked the walk.  They weren't afraid to love, and to show tough love too.

I learned to love without boundaries at a young age.  Love didn't see color or status in society.  Love just loved for who they were.

It was during those young years of life that my innocence was first stolen.  I think that's why it breaks my heart so desperately watching the innocence of my own 4 kids be taken from them thru the nightmare of the circumstances surrounding my divorce.  I used to love to play school with my friends.  We had a room in the basement that we set up with desks and a giant chalkboard and we'd play for hours.  I guess that's a perk to having so many siblings and neighbors... there was always kids to have to be your "students" in class and I could play teacher :)  I remember vividly playing with my best friend at the time.  We were setting up our class and the person staying at our house at the time was downstairs in his room.  I don't remember all the details of what happened next, but the next thing I remember was him touching my friend and I in ways I knew were totally wrong but I didn't know what to do.  Fear kept us quiet.  I don't know how long after that I got up the courage to tell my dad, but I remember the anger in my dad's face as he put that man in his car with all his belongings and drove him to the bus stop and told him to never come back.  I was damaged more on that day than I would ever realize until much later on in my adult life.  I buried that day deeply.  Honestly so deeply that I "forgot" about it until just a few years ago when going thru some intense counseling I'll share about a bit later.  But I realize now how it began to shape me.

I became an insecure teen.  I struggled to "fit in" through middle and high school.  I desperately wanted what I think everyone wants deep down... people to love them, think they're fantastic, and admire them.  I always tried to "be the best".  I played Ice Hockey on an all guys team in an all guys league.  I sucked, but I played :)  I played Lacrosse and loved every minute of it (that one I was actually decent at!  lol).  I partied with the best of them, and could drink most of my friends under the table, and then hid it all from my parents and would show up to church the next day and sing with the best of them there.  I moved on to college to do the same.  I was supposed to go to Ohio State and play lacrosse, but I had a big knee injury playing ice hockey and ended up changing plans at the last minute due to having to have surgery, and headed off to Liberty University instead.  For those who know Liberty back in the day, it was a school FULL of rules.  I guess I made it my mission to break every one of those rules as fast as possible. :/  I continued my party lifestyle.  I remember getting caught by one of the deans at the time, and he made me call my mom and tell her what I'd done (I had gotten caught drinking at a guys house off campus).  I remember sobbing, not because of what I'd done necessarily, but because I knew I had disappointed my parents.
My insecurities continued to grow... from a struggle with anorexia, to a serious relationship with my best friend at the time.  We dated 2 years and planned our wedding for after graduation.  God had different plans up His sleeves though... I've come to realize that happens often :)  His plans aren't my plans.  My senior year of university, I got sick.  Excruciating pain daily sick.  My hands and feet swelled to twice their normal size.  I lost total feeling in my left hand and right foot.  Doctors had no clue what was going wrong.  I refused to stop school, so I would scoot on my rear down the stairs of my apartment, hobble with the help of my roommates and/or boyfriend to my car, and then to class.  Doctors were at a loss and just kept increasing my doses of prednisone to try to kill the pain.  Before long, I was up to 80mg a day and still fighting incredible pain.  They ran test after test.  And after what felt like ages, they finally came up with a diagnosis... Systemic Lupus.  They said it would be bad and I needed to plan accordingly.  My boyfriend couldn't handle that and jumped ship.  Honestly, who could blame him.  But I was determined to fight the odds.  I up an moved to Colorado with two of my best friends right after graduation.  I was determined not to let the Lupus control me.  I lasted a few months before the pain became unbearable and I had to catch a flight home to head to the hospital for what ended up being a month of IV treatments.

What I left out above was that right after that breakup, I met the person who would soon become my husband.  It was a long distance relationship from the start.  There was no cell phones or e-mail back then, so we wrote letters and talked on the phone.  I lived out west, and he lived out east.  I moved back home to go to the hospital.  He stayed east and came to visit.  Before the end of that summer, we were engaged.  I've realized now that there's some of us who so desperately want a relationship that we just jump into the first available that seems to "feel" right.  We don't take the time to step back and evaluate and listen to the counsel of others.  We think we know best and plow forward.  Hindsight is always 20/20... but I fully own that I plowed ahead.  By January of the next year, less than a year after meeting, I was married.

Both of us were stubborn and strong willed.  Within the first 2 years of marriage, and an overwhelming amount of conflict, we moved 6 times within 2 states.  Tension continued to rise when we started having kids.  We sucked at communication.  I knew every button to push that would make him angry, and he knew mine.  "Discussions" became quickly heated, and voices raised.  I wasn't a very good wife in a lot of areas.  I was good at shutting down and putting up walls when arguments started.  That only added fuel to the fire, and I quickly was labeled with various unpleasant, nasty names.  What started as verbal abuse quickly escalated with kids on the scene.  It was then the physical started.  I was slammed against walls and thrown onto the sofa so that I could be pinned in a spot where I would "listen" to what he wanted to say and I wouldn't just walk away (as I was good at doing when my walls went up).  I've heard it asked a million times over "why didn't you just leave".  Great question.  And from the voice of a victim, I don't have an answer.  Maybe it was fear?  Maybe it was that I desperately wanted my marriage to work?  Maybe it was because I really did make those vows before God and wanted to honor them?  Maybe it was because I had some glimmer of hope every time an "incident" happened and then the apology and "it'll never happen again", that once and for all that really would be the end of it?  I don't know.  All I know is that I stayed silent.  For 10 years I never breathed a word to a soul.  I remember when the final straw happened late one night... after being wakened by shouting and my phone being crushed before my eyes because my phone records had been searched and I had talked with my best friend out west for 8 minutes and 22 seconds that I hadn't reported that day, I knew it was time.  After a heated argument, I dodged and locked myself in the commode of the master bathroom.  I knelt at the toilet and sobbed, begging God to wake me up and make this all just a bad dream.  When the pounding on the door finally quieted, I heard footsteps go back downstairs and I vividly remember climbing quietly back in bed, tears still streaming down my face.  But the battle wasn't over.  Suddenly I was pinned to my bed with an arm bar across my neck, and my quiet tears turned into desperate sobs of fear.  "God let me breathe.  Please.  My kids need me."  I fought and wrestled, begged and cried.  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but in reality was probably only a few minutes, he stormed out of the house.  I remember finding an old cell phone (we didn't have a home phone so all I had was internet and some old phone I found) and calling a friend at the time who lived nearby.  I sobbed and begged for help.  They found him out driving around, and came over to mediate.  I was told I was disrespecting my marriage by talking to my friend, and although his actions were wrong, if I hadn't talked to my friend (who was a male, yes, but my best friend since middle school!), then this wouldn't have happened.  I can honestly say that night, I threw in the towel.  I don't give up.  Ever.  But that night, I was done.  My walls went up full force.  I was determined that I would just walk on eggshells to get by until my kids graduated from high school and I could leave.  I didn't want my kids to face divorce.  That's not what I wanted them to see.  I was determined to pretend... fake it until I made it to their graduation.  I started counseling.  I'd never opened up to anyone about my struggles before.  I grew up relating to men better than women, probably because I had 5 brothers, so I just seemed to relate better.  But I wasn't "allowed" to have friendships with men anymore, so I had female "acquaintances".  Nobody I could fully trust though.  Except my counselor.  Over the course of the next 2 years, I gradually opened up to her.  She was my safe place.  She invested hours upon hours into my life, helping me uncover the incredibly deep wounds of my past.  She encouraged me to find women I could relate to.  Women who would push me closer to Jesus.  We had changed churches, and the church we attended had a women's Bible study so I thought I'd try that.  It was incredibly out of my comfort zone.  The women cried a lot.  I didn't cry about anything.  They poured out their hearts.  I didn't trust anyone enough to even scratch the surface of that.  At first.  Over the course of the next year though, God worked in my heart.  I began to soften.  I began to trust tiny pieces of myself and my story with these girls.  Some of them even became my good friends who I ended up taking little "get away" trips with and girls nights out with.  My schedule began to change as his job changed... again.  He was now on to job #5.  We had now gone thru another half a dozen moves, and multiple other job changes, and my schedule became increasingly difficult to escape during the day to get to Bible study.  Tension continued to be like a pressure cooker at home... I would walk on egg shells for a long time, and then I'd slip and say something that would make the pot explode.  One day, when that pot exploded, but instead of me being the brunt of the anger this time, it was one of my kids.  It was a nightmare unfolding in front of my eyes that still haunts me to this day.  The terror in their eyes and the trembling sobs of my babies are burned into my mind forever.  I can't begin to describe how many times I've begged God to remove that awful night from my kid's memories.  I still pray He does.  I won't go into detail because I honestly can't bring myself to put it onto paper yet, but it was the breaking point where I knew that the marriage was over.  There was no way I would make it until the kids finished high school.  I was done.  And for the emotional health and safety of both myself and my kids, we needed out.

And so it was over.  I asked him to leave.  My dad came down and helped me.  Now when I say that, please know that my dad did not in any way support divorce.  He just wanted us to separate to both work on our own messes.  We were both a train wreck and needed serious help.  In all honesty, I don't know that I even realized just how much of a toll it had all taken on me until now.  We had been married 14 years.  I had only begun to scratch the surface of my pain with my counselor that I'd been seeing for nearly 2 years at that point.  I needed help.  So did he.  So did our kids.  I had the separation agreement drawn up, mainly because I was terrified about what could happen.  I spent the next few months making myself as busy as possible to kill the pain.  The more busy I was the less time I would have to think about the pain.  And on the nights I was alone while my kids were with him, I drank so I could fall asleep and not just toss and turn as my mind raced.  Not healthy I know.  But it's honest.  I met with my counselor weekly.  I had begun to have horrific flashbacks at night, and was fighting unrealistic fears.  PTSD was real in a whole new way.  I found myself alone in so many ways I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around.  I poured my time into my job and my kids when I had them.  Those girls I had started to trust and hang with... they turned their backs and walked away.  I received letters of judgment and hate from ones who used to say "I love you" and "I'm so thankful you're family".  I guess in hindsight I was too much drama and hurt, and after all, who really wants to hang with "Debbie downer" all the time.  I was alone.  Me.  God.  My kids.  And a whole lot of people that I could put on a brave face and smile for, but would go home and lie down and cry because none of them really knew what was behind that smile.  I decided to join Divorce Care.  It was one of the best decisions I ever made during those months of pain.  Little did I know God had a precious friend in that group that would soon become on of my closest and dearest friends.  And two other girls who had been "acquaintances" up until then, suddenly began to invest in my life and share their personal stories with me.  Both had walked thru painful divorces.  One, multiple divorces.  The other, a marriage and divorce from a narcissistic abuser where our stories are eerily similar to the hell I was walking.  All three women, God gave me to push me towards Jesus.  They wrapped their arms around my broken and messy self, and gave me courage to hold on.

I found out only about 3 months into our separation that my ex was seeing one of those Bible study friends.  Talk about a painful stab.  But it also explained why the others had walked away during my time of crisis.  I'm not going to dwell on that because it is what it is.  I have worked thru a lot of pain and hurt from that betrayal and from the betrayal of others thru it all.  I honestly pray she's able to be something to him that I could never be, because God forbid my poor children (and hers too) have to walk thru yet another nasty divorce.  I've told my kids over and over, forgiveness lets you out of your own prison.  I've walked it.  I know it's true first hand.  It's a daily choice, sometimes hourly.

So I come to today.  Less than a week away from my ex getting married to that girl.  My emotions have gone from extreme highs to lowest of valleys.  But I sit and look back and honestly am completely overwhelmed with thankfulness for how far God has brought me.  I've no where near arrived, but I can see a rainbow after the storm now.  It's still drizzling rain, and sometimes pouring, but the hurricane has settled a bit.  I'm surrounded by the most incredible prayer warrior and encouraging team of my family that anyone could ever ask for.  My parents have stepped up to love on me, encourage me, and surround my kids and I with DAILY strength and scriptures.  My siblings have loved hard.  They've all asked me tough questions and loved me with unconditional love.  They've gone to bat for me when I feel like I have nothing left in me to fight anymore.  My incredible support network of friends both far and near have loved on me like I've never felt love before.  I can honestly say I've never had such incredible love from female friends in my life as I've been flooded with the past 2 years especially.  And my male friends continue to keep me grounded... pushing myself with my competitive side and knowing this girl needs to get a solid hardcore sweat on before she can face a tough day :)  And my kids... whoever said kids are resilient was right.  BUT I would argue that behind that resilience, they are fragile and innocent little miracles who just need stability and to know that they're loved beyond a shadow of a doubt.  I'm SO thankful God picked me to be that tangible face of strength and love to them right now.  I've wiped more tears from their weary eyes, and pinched more snotty boogers from their drippy noses the past few months than I ever wanted to see fall from their precious faces in their lifetime.  I've pointed them to Jesus because I have no answers for their hurting hearts.  A lot of the questions they ask are the same ones I ask.  They've slept in my arms more nights than I can begin to count.  And I wouldn't trade a single night for the world.  Because it's in those dark nights when the lights are out that their tears fall and they ask the tough questions and bare their bleeding hearts.  They're perceptive.  Bright beyond their years.  Innocence has been robbed from them.  But I hold to Hope, believing that God will use them and their story in mighty ways one day, for HIS glory.

If it weren't for my years of brokenness, I wouldn't know my Jesus like I know Him today.  I wouldn't believe it were possible to have friends like I do.  I would have never been able to see God provide in literally miraculous ways for the kids and I for our basic needs like food and money for bills.  And my kids would never have been able to see a mom who went from a bitter and broken victim, to a woman who can stand tall and smile and know that with forgiveness and letting go, healing comes.