Wow. I officially regret sharing my journey. And isn’t it always the way that the attacks you expect never come but other attacks come from completely unexpected directions with deadly accuracy? Mom suspected the truth about B____ before she even got to those entries and shrugged, saying, “You love you who love.” But it was the entries about my darkest moments, my deepest recesses of despair, that gave my parents the most explosive ammo. Several days of their direst warnings never to share those things with my husband for the ammo it would give him, and to take my blog off the Internet now, and I’m wishing with all my heart I had kept it all to myself.
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I understand they’re reeling in shock right now and letting their fearful thoughts of how a few decisions can utterly wreck my entire life run wild, and I get that this is probably just part of the journey. I understand that at this point all they have are my weaknesses and haven’t yet seen the solid strength and toughness I have gained. Still, I completely own that my belief that I did get confirmation after confirmation that God wanted me to share this journey AND my feelings that I/he made a terrible mistake are currently irreconcilable. I’ll just have to suck it up and trudge through to the time when I see it actually helped matters that I shared with my parents.
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But here’s the thing. Hearing them warn me and admonish me about my choices then and now makes me feel, for the first time in a year and a half, exactly like I did at the time of those journal entries. My parents’ concern that I keep this from my husband stemmed from their fear that one day he might use that against me and turn his family against me and take my kids away. Wow. So no one would love me if they knew the full truth. If they knew just how weak I would always be. Never mind the fact that I am in no way the same person now, after only a year and a half, let alone after more years. Never mind that it is only those dark places that could help others in the same place relate to me, as I try to help and guide. Never mind that the testimony of what God has done in a life never broken or stained can’t compare to the beaming hope found in the testimony of someone who had reached the far reaches of hopelessness, despair, and brokenness only to have God somehow put that life back together even better and brighter than before. Never mind that there are so many broken people in the world who would slap my face as soon as look at me if I was Miss Mary Sunshine, but who may just hear God in my voice, see him in my skin, feel him in my eyes.
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Never mind all that. All that I believe. But boy, did they make me feel damaged again, as damaged as when signs of my despair were still raw and real. I felt damaged, wrong, ashamed, even as my belief was untouched. My belief that my life is a miracle of the first order, my belief that I am not who I was, that God has forgiven and cleansed and justified. Just now, that untarnished belief is buried under the feeling of being a second-class citizen, in the same manner as one who can’t share hopes and plans of family and marriage until she “gets a date first.” I feel like I don’t have the same rights as others to the life I dream of – my mistakes are too great, too dark, too irredeemable. I found I couldn’t look at my reflection in my rearview mirror on the way home, that I couldn’t watch TV or movies that had a hint of romance in it because I didn’t feel worthy of it, that I couldn’t even look God in the face, so to speak, because I felt so wrong.
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But you see, I am not so weak as I once was. I know how to take those thoughts captive and not let them build on themselves. I know what I know, and dammit, I know the truth!
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I know I have every right to the recklessly happy life I dream of and have been working towards for so long. I know my God has made me pure, looks on me in love, speaks of me with bursting pride. He sees no broken toy soldier, but a lovely china doll. I know what they say about my husband is so wrong I don’t even need to consider it. They are projecting their own newfound shame of their unforgivably weak daughter on everyone else in the world. Other people wouldn’t see me in a permanently yellowed light because of this. I know for a fact that God would not start this amazing work in my life, make me wait so long, just for a fair-weather man who would overlook all I’ve overcome to focus on one weak moment. I am so much safer than that.
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Not to mention I couldn’t love like that. My mother often cracks up at what comes out of my mouth because I’m so honest, even about myself, and I don’t hide my flaws or shy away from telling it like it is. That’s because that’s who I am. I couldn’t ever trust a man who didn’t know the worst of me because I would never know if he would love me “if he knew.” How many of us dread those three words in our relationships and as a result never let someone know the full glory of us? And I wouldn’t go years holding back a dirty little secret from someone as close as a husband, to have to be handy with an excuse if he asked about my scars. I can’t sustain that omission for a lifetime.
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And what they don’t know is that their point is moot. I already told B____, after a few weeks together when he was sharing his deepest wounds. I knew he needed to know at that point in the relationship so he could make an informed decision and leave me then before it went any further if he couldn’t be with someone with those kinds of experiences. Do you know what he did? He got up from his chair, came over to me, and kissed my wrist. He looked in my eyes and said he was so sorry I had to go through that. And he didn’t leave. And then later, in a completely separate conversation, he brought it up and said, “You know, when I see that, I don’t think how weak you were. I think what a survivor you are. You go into that same situation day after day, try to do a good job, you don’t quit.” And you wonder why I insist he’s the best. Who else would have done that? Who else would not have hesitated but offered such freely-given compassion from a good, pure heart? Somebody else who knows about wounds. Somebody who understands beauty is sometimes stitched together with jagged thread. Someone with great worth. This is how I know his worth.
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I defy Mom and Dad’s fearful belief. I defy their sense that all I have accomplished and gained is not enough to overcome my past, that in the end I am only worth what I can hide about myself. Despite their shame of me, and the shameful feeling it inspires in me, I stand tall with unbowed neck, knowing I am stronger than the both of them put together. They have always remained strong and hopeful, but I have reached depths they never dreamed of, every bone in my body broken or twisted, and still managed to rise to this point, where I can be just as isolated as I was before but know this time I am not alone and I am tough enough not to break. God’s love and great power will be clearly visible in my life because people will know how bad it can be, how hopeless, and God can still reach down and rescue you. No depth is too far for him to reach, no dark too thick for him to see. I am proof of that.
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So let them be ashamed, let them be alarmed. I will not cower, I will not cave. I will do things my way and my way is God’s way. I will demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive.
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This is by far the most cunning attack of the enemy, to use the honest concern of my dearest family, not to stop at making me feel unlovely and invisible, but damaged goods and ashamed of what I cannot help. But I recognize it for what it is, and I am not done fighting.
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I am Nicole.
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