Hanging on to Hope

The two saddest, darkest days of my life have been April 7, 2011 and March 13, 2012. April 7th was the point of no return day in my then 26-year marriage and March 13th was the day when I, in a state of severe depression and anxiety tried to take my own life. Amazingly, unbelievably, in spite of myself, God in His tender mercy and grace brought me through all of that. He brought me, as promised, to the other side. What follows is not so much my story as it is His story of how He has walked with me throughout my journey and what He has taught me along the way.

Forgiveness is a powerful thing. It is much more than saying I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s even easy to just say sorry but admitting our wrong and asking someone for their forgiveness is a whole other matter. There were so many times as Adam and I were going through our reconciliation process and remarriage that he would take me into his arms, look straight into my eyes and ask for my forgiveness. I may be odd but to me that was worth a slew of “I love you’s”. Before we were divorced there were so many times I so wished he would just own up to something, genuinely say he was sorry and we could move on. I think I can count on one hand in the 26 years before we were divorced how many times he actually did that. Since we have been remarried I have lost count how many times he has done so. Before it was so easy to remember and keep track of all kinds of hurts, wounds, etc. Now I find that when he asks for forgiveness I can't even remember what the issue was about. That I know is the Lord, for that is how He responds when we ask his forgiveness. He says in his Word that he remembers our sins no more! Thanks be to God!!!

So why do you think forgiving ourselves is sometimes harder than accepting God's forgiveness? I had worked on that with our counselor for some time. He told me it's like you're in a prison cell and the door is open and Jesus is standing right outside the door with his hand outreached ready to help you out, but you have to walk through the door and out of the cell and take his hand. Through all of 2013 I continued to get better, yet at the same time I had to accept the fact that I now had a new "normal" and it was living with this background anxiety that was always there especially regarding anything financial. It was hard for me to even go to the grocery store and spend money. I hated these anxious feelings but was realizing I had to learn to accept them. I so wanted to be back to "normal" but I had come to accept that God could use me like this as well, that He used "broken pots".

Then in the spring of 2014 I had an amazing breakthrough where forgiveness was concerned. Adam and I had been experiencing a period of intense intimacy like nothing we had experienced in almost 30 years of marriage. We had just experienced an incredible time of intimacy one morning and as soon as it was over I broke into tears. I'm not talking a few tears running down my cheek. I'm talking heaving sobs where you can hardly catch your breath. When I finally calmed down he asked, "OK, so do you want to tell me what that was all about?" I explained to him that I was having two completely opposite feelings so intensely at the same time that I was overwhelmed to the point of just balling my eyes out.The first was being so grateful that Adam and I had found our way back to each other and were now living in a marriage better than what I had ever imagined. Just a few years earlier I was absolutely sure that we would never get back together. I wanted nothing at all to do with him other than what had to do with our sons. Now I found myself sitting next to him at the dinner table amazed at how I was even able to look at him with such love and admiration. Only God could do that. In and of myself I was ready to walk away and yet here we were.

The other feeling was such an incredible sense of remorse for almost ending my life and not being able to see this day. I know I was not in my right mind at that time but I still felt I was solely responsible for my actions. It was at this moment that I was finally able to accept God's forgiveness that I had previously acknowledged in my head but not my heart. I was finally able to forgive myself. I could identify with Matthew West's song "Hello, My Name Is". I had been wearing these names badges called regret, defeat, shame, brokenness, depressed, and now I could take all those off, throw them in the trash and put on my new name badge, Child of the one True King. I had been changed, redeemed, and set free. There's also a great line in a song by David Crowder called "Oh How He Loves", It says "And we are His portion and He is our prize drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes. If His grace is an ocean we’re all sinking". Have you ever been so overwhelmed by God's grace that all you could do is cry tears of gratitude? That's how I felt. Adam and I had made it through the fire and come out on the other side stronger than before, so appreciative of where we were because we knew all that it took the get there.