Hurt goes deep. Sometimes we don’t even know why we are hurting. Sometimes hurt comes out and hurts others. But we can’t put a finger on why we are hurting so many people and why we hurt the ones we love the most. I often hear the saying “hurting people, hurt people.” I think this is very true. My hurt from my past I thought had been healed, I thought I worked through my “issues”. But often God keeps teaching you the same things because you keep needing to learn them, again, and again.
Sometimes you have a relationship with someone that you have no idea what their hurt is or that they even have hurt. I never knew my dear husband (DH) had deep past hurts. I had hurts I didn’t know about too, they would heap mounds of hurt onto him. I am not here to talk about his hurts, but to write about how God has brought me on the journey as I deal with my own hurts.
About 5 years into our marriage these things started to come out. The hurt started to come out. The feelings of not being acceptable to my husband (though he never said it). The feelings of not being good enough. These were lies from the pit of hell. So I tried to be better, to do better. I tried to be a better wife, to respect him better, to do the good wife thing and meet all his needs. I tried to encourage him more and when he didn’t feel encouraged I thought I must not be doing a good enough job. I was also having babies. I had 3 boys at the time and I was meeting their needs too. I tried to do everything for everyone in our house. Trying to live up to these feelings of being unacceptable.
DH did plenty for me. We both did what we thought would be best. We thought life was working. But it was a very dysfunctional life that would come to head eventually. The hurts were piling up, unsaid needs not being met, hidden expectations ruled our marriage. I had many expectations on him that he definitely couldn’t meet. Only God could meet those. Through the next 7 years our hurts piled up. Feelings of despair started to come over me. I knew my marriage shouldn’t be like this, but I didn’t know how to change it. I tried to change it myself and failed miserably. Adding to the hurt I was heaping onto him and myself already. I tried to change him, tell him where he could do better. This only made those wounds grow deeper. My feelings of despair grew into depression. I was lonely in my own marriage. I felt empty and needed filled. I thought I needed filled by my DH, but I needed fill by my Savior.
Things got to be bad, I knew it was so destructive to our children I had to leave to take a time away so we could find what truly was gong to bring us joy. We were just arguing about everything and it was no longer an emotionally safe place for any of us. With a lot of prayer, I packed up the kids and took a step to set a boundary in our marriage that has been the hardest decision I ever made. I didn’t leave my DH to get a divorce. I left him in the hopes that we could both focus on making ourselves better and going to God in the pain and healing our hurt. With the hopes of reconciliation.
While I was gone I went through a journey. I went through a journey from loneliness to complete surrender to finding joy in my journey. God walked me through a time where I felt the most utter despair I have ever felt in my life. But he met me their. He walked me through it. I really thought I would go to my family and be taken care of through this hard time in my life. They all wanted to, but God did the caring (though many of them spent loads of time caring for me my physical needs). My parents are both in heaven and I know God knew that. I didn’t have my mom to swoop in and meet all my needs and that was definitely a blessing in disguise. It forced me to totally, utterly rely on God to meet my emotional needs. I never would have thought I would be blessed because my mom was in heaven, but I certainly was. I spent many nights in tears, crying out to God. I filled an entire journal with my prayers, my anger, my hurt. He was there holding me, leading me, guiding me. He eventually led me home.
During the summer away God kept reminding me of the verse, Love endures through ALL circumstance. Its not some, its not the ones that are easy or the ones that make us feel good. Its through all of them and this is still my verse that keeps me going. I could have taken the easy way out and I was tempted to do so, in many weak times, or times of great hurt. But this verse kept coming to my mind. I didn’t choose to love my DH when its easy. I didn’t say I would love him only when he doesn’t hurt me. I made a commitment to God to love him when its the hardest. I hope that love shines through to him and he can see that. I hope it shines through to others and they can see the only way I can love him in the hurt is through Jesus Christ and because of what he did for me with his love on the cross.
While our journey is far from over I just want to yell from the roof tops what God is doing for us. DH is healing from his hurts. I am healing from my hurts. And eventually when God sees fit we can come together and hopefully stop hurting and start loving. I know we will still hurt each other but my hearts desire is to come back together and put God at the center so that when hurt does come we can see each other as God sees us and love through it, and look past it.
Please if you are struggling in your marriage, don’t loose hope. Remember to cry out to God and pour your soul out to him and it may be you who does the changing even when we “know it should be the other person”. He meets us where we are at and carries us as we go through the journey. We need to cry out to him in the hardest times on the hardest days and he will meet us. Please feel free to email me or send me a message and I can just listen. sometimes that is all I needed, someone to listen to me while I worked things out in my own head while talking them through with someone else. I would also love to pray for you or encourage you in any way I can. My journey is not over and sometimes I feel like giving up, but I fall to my knees and cry out to God again and he brings peace and joy to my heart when I have feelings of fear and anxiety.
I am certainly not healed by any means. I was having a discussion with God this morning about some things I am feeling anxious about, but he brought peace right away. I knew that crying out to him and telling him “hey I am scarred about this”, would allow him to talk to me and tell me I’ve got you dear child. I imagine his hand resting on my shoulder as I face these fears and trust in him. I go to counseling weekly, I have meetings with a mentor, and I have some amazing friends who help me when I am in the worst moments but really the truth is the only way for me to get out of the low pit of despair is to cry to Jesus and rely solely on him. I read psalms daily, write in my journal every night and I listen to a prayer meditation each night before I go to bed. I hope this will be helpful to you if you are facing hardships in your life. This prayer meditation helped me refocus on who is in control of everything and brings me back to peace in my heart. Sometimes I cried it out along with the prayer saying it myself and sometimes I just listen to the voice and it puts me to sleep but I can’t sleep without it so it must be something that is helping me get through this time.
Here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3O22mqcnPI
Jenny Wren