Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

The biggest mistake that I think us victims make is to personalize the betrayal.

"Its my fault! Why did I let this happen? If only... If I would have just..."

Even though by nature (and in large part my chosen profession) I am a problem solver, I quickly became a victim and all the junk that came with it. For months after the affair I had all those thoughts plus some I won't share over and over again, playing like the only country music station in the entire radio dial. "If you don't like this country song, my mind would say, here's another 10 stations all playing the same song just for you."

This lie behind all these thoughts are that your significant other betrayed you because of who you are or something you did. It is a lie. Those are all bold faced lies meant to keep you in a place of anger, hurt, and pain.

The truth is that affairs happen in the entire spectrum of marriage with no regard for money, social status, communication, sex, or a level of "happiness"

With that said you may have played a small part in the betrayal but it still was not your fault. I know that I did.

The analogy I like to use is that my wife got into a car accident. It hurt alot of people and was mostly her and the others fault but I was a contributing factor. I didn't keep the tires on her car properly inflated. I let her drive on really worn brakes. There were also warning signs that she was a wreckless driver that I ignored and a cry for help as well.
But she still chose to get into the car and was at fault for the accident.

Afterwords, I spent WAY too much time blaming myself. Way too much time was wasted trying to accept and place blame. I soon reverted back to my teenage year of being a victim with no control of my life.

That turned out to be the furthest thing from the truth. As the victim, my wife turned to me for guidance along the journey. Our counselor told us that I was the barometer of the relationship. As I healed, Scarlet found it ok to move on the the next phase as well.

If you are stuck in this phase, know that it is just a phase of the aftermath of the affair. But please don't focus on it. When these thoughts come into your head just say 'that's a lie and all lies come from the devil'
Say a prayer "In Jesus Christ's name I command you and this lie to leave. Jesus I invite you to come into my heart where the lie once was and heal me in that place.

Believe me when I say that I did this one a regular basis for a good part of a year and it does work. It is something I still do when I catch the lies sneaking back into my thoughts. The more I ask Jesus to come and truly invite him into my heart the closer I feel to him and the more peace I feel in my life.

Matthew 7:7 "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you."

Matthew 11:29 "... learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls ..."

Which wolf will you feed today?

Here is an Cherokee tale of two wolves:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Its true. See we all have free will. We all get to do whatever we want, think about whatever we want, and make our own little world inside our minds. Sometimes our minds become little prisons that we feel we can't escape.

I'd say for the first 3-4 months after I found about my wife's affair, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I feed myself a plate of misery, hurt, pain, and anger on a daily basis. But then I realized that I had a choice to make.

I was able to picture myself 10 years from now and I saw two Ean's. The first one put on a mask for work, friends, and others, but inside was a wreck. He would turn to other things for any kind of escape. Work, sports, alcohol, movies, books, and probably greed in order to try and drown out the pain from being betrayed.

Or I could not. I could, in fact, choose joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. And that's what I did.

I forgave my wife. And I mean really forgave her. I choose first to forgive. I didn't "feel" like I had forgiven her and I felt, at times, that I shouldn't. There were even times were I had wished I hadn't. But I did. I choose to forgive her and THEN the feeling of forgiveness came to me. I feed the right wolf and keep feeding it and it grew more and the other wolf died.

And let me tell you that other wolf did not go down without a fight. I would have visions of telling my wife off. Telling her all of the things that I wanted to really say. All of the things that were inside my head of how she really hurt me. And when I started those visions, it really seemed like a wolf inside of me growing and taking over. That anger would come and the pain would come and so would the tears.

Don't feed that wolf. When that wolf comes 'round, tell it to go away. The devil will use whatever tricks he can to get you to live a life of anger and hate and focus on the betrayal. But we do have free will. As much as your hurting and full of just 'junk' inside you (believe me I know), you still get to choose which wolf to feed.

I promise you that if you feed the wolf of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith that your life will get better. I have chosen the path that God laid out for me and have not looked back. That wolf still comes around once in a while and entices me with his old tricks, but he knows that he has no power over me. That 'junk' that once filled every second of every day is still there once in a blue moon but it is like a anthill compared to the rocky mountains that it once was.

Matthew 6:21-23 "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness."

Twisted Love of Adultry

We have all experienced pain in our lives. Most of us many many years ago and then again very recently with the discovery or the act of betrayal. But those words that were said, those awful things done to us, many times as children or adolescence, has shaped us. We accepted those messages as our own. We actually believed them, they became a part of our twisted view of ourselves, the world, and God. Some of us vowed to never feel that again.

As a child with no dad, I so longed for a father in my life. And I did have many 'dads'; usually abusive men who came in and out of our lives. My siblings always embraced them quickly. I held back, but I soooooo wanted that Father in my life. So I made a vow. I will never abandon my kids, no matter what. As noble as that may seem on the outside - it just set me up. That vow was to cover the pain in my life and it then put so much pressure and such a high status on my marriage that my marriage now became the most important thing in my life.

And you can't do that. Because my wife is not perfect and any and every failure would break my world view and my vow. Some of you had (or have) a broken heart and vowed to never have that happen again. But by doing so, you are (as our counselor would say) taking your heart offline. By guarding your heart, you are just setting yourself up for failure. You will never experience love with a guarded heart. Of course I am talking about your relationship with other people but the same holds true for God.

36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. (Matthew 22:36-38 NIV)

We were not meant to live a life of shame, embarrassment, ridicule, denial, hatred, anger or any of the other 1000 emotions that come on this journey we are all on. We are meant to life a life of LOVE. Love to God, not just service, not to 'stop sinning' but a life of love, heartfelt love.

Stop and pray right now - pray for love, Gods love to fill you and your life. Pray that you in turn will choose to love God, even in the midst of the worst time of your life. Pray that you will focus on God's love for you when your mind wants to scream at you and tell you to do things that you shouldn't. Pray that you will live in the moment, no longer a slave to the past or worry about what may or may not come in the future. Pray that you will quiet your mind in order to hear God who lives in your heart. And I can tell you from experience that if you can do this, you will feel peace, love, and freedom that you never dreamed of.

Fight, We must Fight!

I hate the modern day notion of God. That God is some weak uncaring being who wants people to go to church and 'turn the other cheek.' Bullshit. Did Jesus turn the other cheek when the Pharasies tried to trap him into saying things that went against certain laws in the Torah? NO! He stood his ground and (verbally) fought them. He would not let them do whatever they want and become a holy mat to be walked on.

John Eldredge, in Way of the Wild Heart, calls the Exodus story one of the saddest in the entire Bible. Lets take a look:

But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You grumbled in your tents and said, "The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, 'The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.'" Then I said to you, "Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you [Notice that God does not say comfort, or guide, or help, you; rather God WILL FIGHT FOR YOU!]

as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place." In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God . . . Then you replied, "We have sinned against the Lord. We will go up and fight, as the Lord our God commanded us." (Deut. 1:26–41 NIV)

Forty years of wondering the wilderness is a great analogy to our lives. God had delivered his people from Egypt in the most dramatic way possible. He opened up a river to let his people escape then crashed down a wall of water on their enemies. But as triumphant of a victory that was, everyone lost heart when they saw what they were up against next. They would not fight for the promised land and they told themselves it was too much. Doesn't this sound familiar "they are stronger and taller than we" We look at our obstacles and we give up. Then look what happened next :"Israel was thereupon sentenced to wander forty years in the wilderness" (Nu. 14:34).

This is life. If you are unwilling to fight, then you will wonder the wilderness, having lost all heart, unable to find your promised land. God did not create a people to just turn the other cheek or as our society has taught us 'be the bigger person' and not do something drastic. And God is not going to just give you happiness and a life of peace and harmony on a silver platter, you are going to have to fight for it.

God gave us a spirit AND an enemy to fight. So go fight. Fight for what is right. Fight for your spouse your family. Why would you have found love and marriage in your spouse if you were not meant to be together? Why would you be blessed with marriage and only to throw it all away?

The devil is out there to ruin lives. I know for a fact that he tried to ruin mine. He thought that if my wife cheated on me that I would just leave and 'be the bigger person'. I knew that everyone would be fine with me leaving her. Even the Bible says its ok to divorce if your spouse is unfaithful.

But deep down I heard the call. I heard the cry to fight for her, for my family, and yes for myself. For if I had given up that day, I would be in a world of chaos, depression, and regret for most of my life.

If you are going through a betrayal, and very soon after the discovery, I know the things flying around in your head. There are some very very dark thoughts there. Thoughts of suicide, murder, revenge, and hate. Then there are thoughts of doing the right thing. As I was thinking about it, I could feel a wellspring of hope inside me. On that car ride home, while mulling over the decision, I turned to her and she saw that hope in me. She smiled, a deep but unsure of smile and I just turned back to driving, myself not sure what to do. I am so glad that I fought that day. It really has made all the difference in the world for me. I

I say use Joan of Arc's words "In God's name we must fight them!" --Joan of Arc

In Your Mind

In your mind. In your mind. So much of this battle that we are all on now lies inside your head. That space right between your ears is where most of the problem lies. That much I have learned from this journey.

See, the enemy wants you to linger on the details, hurt, pain, and junk that comes with a betrayal. But that is not what will help you or what God wants. Live in the moment, not in the past.

Lots of people call you every single day wanting you to sign up for long distance or buy a vacation package or donate money to the big police ball, but you don't talk to all of them, do you? Of course not. If you gave every telemarketer who called your house every minute that they wanted to talk to you, you would never get anything done. So you screen calls, you put yourself on the do-not-call list, you tell people very quickly that you don't have the time or money, and you hang up on them.

So, if you do that with your phone, then why not those dumb thoughts that come to you? Huh? Do it. Start screening your mind and when 'those' thoughts come to you, HANG UP! Take control and hang up. Think of something else. Anything else. Focus on the good or your breath. My new technique that I am using right now is just to focus on breathing. At work I can get very distracted. But I have a lot of time where I do somewhat meaningless tasks and I can just zone out. So yesterday I started to just focus on breathing. And it kinda works. I get more relaxed and in a better mood. So give it a try, but most important is to screen out things that want in, that you shouldn't let in.

Try this on for size:
In your mind, in your mind
One foot on Jacob's ladder
And one foot in the fire
And it all goes down in your mind

Living at the bottom of the stairs in your life
Never a smile knocking on your door
The air is blue and so are you
Prehistoric monsters on the floor

Last verse of your last song
And God don't hear dead men
The end of the line is in your mind
And you'll be staying in

In your mind, in your mind
Bone for bone and skin for skin
Eye for eye and tooth for tooth
Heart for heart and soul for soul
Somebody said what is true

Lock it up and close it down
The sound of morning like a dove
High beyond the rattle and roar
Look into the face of love

In your mind, in your mind
One foot on Jacob's ladder
And one foot in the fire
And it all goes down in your mind

In your mind, in your mind
Sunday words are back again
And you'll eat your fun of the middleman's pie
But just a piece you understand
You'll get the rest up in the sky

Praise and glory, wounded angel
Shuffling round the room
Eternity is down the hall
And you sit there bending spoons
In your mind, in your mind
Father, son and holy ghost
Sacrificial drops the pain
On a silver planet cross
Sanctification on a chain

They say redemption draws knives
Storms of silence from above
Stop your ears close your eyes
Try to find the face of love

In your mind, in your mind
One foot on Jacob's ladder
And one foot in the fire
And it all goes down in your mind

If you like it here is a you tube version of the song:

In your mind. In your mind. So much of this battle that we are all on now lies inside your head. That space right between your ears is where most of the problem lies. That much I have learned from this journey.

See, the enemy wants you to linger on the details, hurt, pain, and junk that comes with a betrayal. But that is not what will help you. Yes, you do need to deal with the stuff, but most of the time those thoughts come and you just need to not think about it. You can't spend the next few years reliving the past. Live in the moment, find joy and blessing and God in the here and now.

See, lots of people call you on the phone every single day wanting you to sign up for long distance or buy a vacation package or donate money to the big police ball, but you don't talk to all of them, do you? Of course not. If you gave every telemarketer who called your house every minute that they wanted to talk to you, you would never get anything done. So you screen calls, you put yourself on the do-not-call list, you tell people very quickly that you don't have the time or money, and you hang up on them.

So, if you do that with your phone, then why not those dumb thoughts that come to you? Huh? Do it. Start screening your mind and when 'those' thoughts come to you, HANG UP! Take control and hang up. Think of something else. Anything else. Focus on the good or your breathe.

My new technique that I am using right now is just to focus on breathing. At work I can get very distracted. But I have alot of time where I do somewhat meaningless tasks and I can just zone out. So yesterday I started to just focus on breathing. And so far it kinda works. I get more relaxed and in a better mood. Its easy too; deep breath in and out. So give it a try, but most important is to screen out things that want in, that you shouldn't let in.

I found this last week and I think it fits perfectly:

In your mind, in your mind
One foot on Jacob's ladder
And one foot in the fire
And it all goes down in your mind

Living at the bottom of the stairs in your life
Never a smile knocking on your door
The air is blue and so are you
Prehistoric monsters on the floor

Last verse of your last song
And God don't hear dead men
The end of the line is in your mind
And you'll be staying in

In your mind, in your mind
Bone for bone and skin for skin
Eye for eye and tooth for tooth
Heart for heart and soul for soul
Somebody said what is true

Lock it up and close it down
The sound of morning like a dove
High beyond the rattle and roar
Look into the face of love

In your mind, in your mind
One foot on Jacob's ladder
And one foot in the fire
And it all goes down in your mind

In your mind, in your mind
Sunday words are back again
And you'll eat your fun of the middleman's pie
But just a piece you understand
You'll get the rest up in the sky

Praise and glory, wounded angel
Shuffling round the room
Eternity is down the hall
And you sit there bending spoons
In your mind, in your mind
Father, son and holy ghost
Sacrificial drops the pain
On a silver planet cross
Sanctification on a chain

They say redemption draws knives
Storms of silence from above
Stop your ears close your eyes
Try to find the face of love

In your mind, in your mind
One foot on Jacob's ladder
And one foot in the fire
And it all goes down in your mind

If you like it here is a you tube version of the song:

Sorry for being MIA

Things in my world have been a bit hectic lately. I posted here about my trouble with my best friend, and to remedy that we decided a weekend away together would be the answer. However my car decided to completely die while I was 5 hours from home, and anyone I knew for that matter.

Anyway, I rented this car, which I fell in love with. I totally want one now. And we only had one car for two weeks. This is what I learned. When my husband is home with me in the morning and evening every single day, I am insanely happy. SO HAPPY. I was giddy. I knew it was just a quick stint of him changing his shift around to accommodate our lack of car, but it felt so wonderful to be with him. I told him I would live in a shoebox forever as long as I could have him.

And now we finally got our car back and here comes the insane loneliness. With the loneliness comes depression and the depression brings back the memories of the Big Bad. I have to say, though, that I amaze myself at how well I'm able to fight off the attacks of those memories. And I know that the schedule my husband is working will only last through the holidays and soon he will be home more. Not as much as he was during out time without the second car, but more than right now.

Its so hard to be married and healthy and remain connected. To talk to each other and to force yourself to say what is in your head. I remember being very deliberate in the beginning of our recovery, to say exactly how I was feeling and thinking. I needed him to know what what in my head and I needed to not feel like I was ever hiding anything from him ever again.

During these low moments, I find myself almost reverting back to the old style of communication. The withholding and ignoring of my feelings. I have to fight that. We all do. We need to be open, gentle and loving in our communication.

Recently I read a post on my parenting board that disheartened me. These are women I've known online for nearly 5 years. We are on a private board together and most of us have met others IRL at some point through the years. So reading this post made me very sad. The post was from one woman asking how hard it was to be single because she and her husband weren't getting along anymore. She just didn't love him. It sounds like they fought quite a bit and they had gone through counseling for some time. When I posted about the Big Bad when it happened I remember her commenting that counseling was helping her and her husband tremendously. So I was surprised at her post.

But that wasn't entirely what saddened me. What made me sad was how many of our small group posted back that they felt the exact same way. So many. All I could do was post about how I'd discovered a love for my husband I never thought was possible...I wanted to give them hope. I want to give all people in lost marriages hope. Because if I can fall in love with my husband 10 years after I married him, then they can rediscovered what they first loved about each other.

Children, jobs, life and the thirst for adventure pulls us away from each other. We need to find adventure in each other, make time for ourselves outside of our children and to not have our job define our life. We need to pay attention to each other, hear each other, look into each other's eyes and say what is in our hearts. And you have to work-HARD. Its hard work, and you're tired. But you have to do it.

And I guess that's all I have for tonight. I'll try to post more frequently. I'm sure I will since my darling husband will be working quite a bit. Lots of time for random thinking to be done.

Chicken Fried Thoughts

A friend asked me today how do I deal with the thoughts of my wife and the Other. Hmm.. it had been a while since I have had those thoughts but here's a stab at it.

First I have to say that I thought about it every.single.day for 4 to 6 months. Those first few months I would obsess over all kinds of details. Images that I either read about or that my wife told me about would play like broken tapes over and over. There were days that all I could do was to hold out till the car ride home just to stop from crying all day at work. Then there were nights were I cried all night long. Most of the crying was triggered or all about those thoughts.

But I had a wonderful sage, in our therapist. He definitely helped me through most of the big nagging thoughts that I was having a hard time with. His advice was that most of my issues were in the form of those obsessive thoughts but had a lie under them.

For instance, the fact that my wife and the other had constant contact with each other really bothered me. I knew that they emailed, IMed, texted, and talked many many times all day long. I went back to one month of her cell phone bill and found that she had text messaged him over 550 times in one month. I would obsess over that. I would text my wife and then check my cell phone every minute until she would text back. Of course, immediately I would think of all the contacts that my wife and the other had and want to cry. Then my mind would only go in a downward spiral from there.

'Why doesn't she text me as much as she did to him? Was their relationship stronger/better/bigger than ours? Was he better at communicating than me? Did he do a better job of loving her? Maybe he really was better than me, better at most things and better at loving my wife than I could?

So, I tried at first to just fight those thoughts. I tried very hard not to think about them. In order to distract myself I would think of other things totally unrelated. This is very hard to do 2 months out from D-day (discovery day). And it doesn't work. Believe me when I tell you that I tried. It really only helped me to put off the eventual breakdown of crying, sobbing, and wailing that came when the downward spiral had run its course inside my head.

My sage had the only real technique that really worked. Behind most of these nagging type thoughts, was a lie. And that was always the case with me. If you go back to my inner thoughts above you can almost see the progression that leads to the lie. My insecurity was screaming out 'Am I really a good, lovable, person, better than the other? The lie that my flesh was wresting with was that if I was a 'good' person than the affair would not have happened. But that's not true. I certainly had culpability in the affair, but ultimately it was my wife's choice and not mine. And the amount of text messages that I got or didn't get from my wife after the affair was not an indication of our relationship. (for her the reverse is actually true, as she found herself rid of the obsessive thoughts of her other, she was able to focus on life and work and not being trapped in a sick world lived inside her head)

The other thing that helped me was journaling. In my case I used poetry instead of a true journal, but the same principal applies. I had so many thoughts/feelings/emotions/junk in my head it really did help to take out a notebook and jot some thoughts down. In the first three months after D-day I wrote over 50 poems. Not all good or even made sense, but they all helped in some way to get out a thought or feeling.

In hindsight, I still do have some thoughts. But the 'some' I have is like a trickle of rain for a few moments compared to the day long hurricane that came shortly after the discovery. Since I know that there is a lie behind them all (and have the emotional stability to boot) I can take the time to weed through each one, knowing that just because there is a random thought there, doesn't mean anything at all. I deal with the lie, fry it up in a poem, and move on.