My Spouse Left Me – Please Help! 2 Comments - Cindy Wright – April 21, 2014 I don’t think there is any pain that can compare to loving someone so deeply that you would die for him or her, and yet he or she has decided that the feeling is not mutual and has made the decision to up and leave you. That’s the pain that is shared with us, through this ministry, over and over again. The spouse left behind is absolutely devastated! How much we grieve for those who are experiencing this deep, deep grief and the confusion of rejection. Sadly, I can say that I understand… at least to a large degree. No one’s experience is the same, so no pain can be completely understood. But sadly, so very, very sadly, I know a huge part of that pain. How I wish I didn’t! No one should suffer that type of cutting, searing hurt. I have to say here that my husband Steve has not left me. We are doing fine in our relationship. Thank you Jesus! But a year ago today we received the horrible news that one of our sons has decided he doesn’t want to be a part of our lives anymore. I won’t tell you his name, even if you guessed it, I wouldn’t do so. That’s not what this blog is about. But after a year of grieving silently, I feel that God is telling me that I need to share the pain and some things that I have learned since that horrible day since we received the email that has changed our lives forever. I’m doing this, not for my purpose —Lord knows I don’t want to share this, but hopefully, it will help others who are left behind devastated, questioning what happened —those who are wondering how to go on. I’ve been there and sadly, I am (my husband and I are) still walking this painful journey. A year ago today (my mom’s birthday —a day that is hard for me anyway because still I miss my mom, even though it was many years ago that she died), we were sent an email that said: “We (my son and his precious wife, both of whom we love with all our hearts) feel we don’t have anything that really holds us together with you other than blood or familial status. And to pretend otherwise feels dishonest and doesn’t meet anyone’s needs. … We have decided not to interact indefinitely (phone calls, emails, visits, etc).” I can tell you honestly, if we had been stabbed with a knife, we would not have been more surprised or more hurt. We both were stunned, in shock, and disbelief that the deep, deep love we have for our son and his wife is not mutually shared. I’m reminded of something that someone once wrote that applies to the marital relationship, as well as any relationship where love is involved. What holds people together “is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.” I/we honestly thought that even though our son and his wife are no longer living for Christ, and even though our political views, and other lifestyle choices are different, we have tried to find other “threads” —other little commonalities and unconditional acts of love to “sew” us together in whatever way it is possible. I’m not talking about being too involved in their lives, or “in their faces” where we preach, or teach, or spend too much time with them where they could say we were invasive… but just little things… little reminders that we are here for them and we love them. Obviously, this wasn’t enough. Obviously it wasn’t perceived or received in the way that we thought it was or that it should be. We’re SO sad that they don’t feel the love for us that we feel for them, even a little. So, what did we do when we received the email, which cut off our relationship? We sank to our knees and cried. And for a year now, we have been grieving and crying. There are many layers of complications that come with this cut in our relationship that I can’t explain here, but I CAN say that it has been a difficult year —beyond description. And our hearts are still heavy. We ARE thankful though, that God has shown us, through many different means, that we need to get up and do what we can to get back into living, as we were created to do. We are to still be prayerful, and we know that it’s okay to grieve at times (God understands our heart’s human frailty), but we need to be intentional in looking around us to minister to the hurting (as we have and continue to do, especially through Marriage Missions). We also know that we are to find splashes of joy, and to rest in His unending love. God knows all too well what it’s like to love those who reject His love, reject Him —those who live their lives out of fellowship with Him, and want nothing to do with Him. He knows our pain, and as we lean into Him, He ministers to us. So, that’s what we have been and are doing. We’ve started to stand again and “run the race set out before us.” It’s not a life we have chosen, but it’s the life we have been given. And that’s the same for any of you that experience rejection from a loved one. You and we aren’t able to control all the variables in life. We are handed many things that we don’t want, but it’s what we do with it that makes the difference. Some of these painful experiences take us down, way down. When a loved one rejects us, it’s difficult to get up afterward. It’s difficult to think that there can be any reason to ever laugh again, to enjoy life again, to believe that we can survive such devastation. But please don’t allow yourself to stay down. I understand the temptation, but please fight it. Work along with God, to pull yourself up. The Bible says in Philippians 4:13-14, “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth into those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus!” So in other words, Press on… don’t allow yourself to stay down. I’m reminded of Eric Liddell (the man who won an Olympic race and was featured in the movie, “Chariots of Fire”). In an earlier race, Eric was a strong favorite to win the 440-yard dash at the 1923 Triangular International. However, 15 yards after the start, he laid sprawled across the track infield —the victim of an intentional tripping incident. At that point he had a decision to make, to give up or to finish the race. Eric decided to pick himself up and resume his race. With the finish line drawing near, Eric Liddell drew upon his upmost reserves. In the end, he crossed the tape 3 yards ahead of his nearest competitor… the man who tripped him. Now of course, not all endings are as glorious as this one. But the biggest point isn’t whether Eric won or not, but rather what he did when he was faced with defeat —the loss of a dream that he worked so very hard at —one that appeared to be sabotaged. He could have laid there and cried and screamed “foul” —which he would have been justified in doing. But instead, he reached within and grabbed onto the courage to “finish the race” … and thankfully, he did it well. That’s what I’m suggesting. Ask God to show you how to proceed from “this day forward” “reaching forth” so you are able to “press on” in life… looking for what God wants to do in your life now and in the future. You and God can build a future together —a “new normal” —not one that you would have chosen, but one that is best for all concerned, including you. I want to share with you something that has helped us recently. I came across an interview where Arlene Pellicane was interviewing one of my favorite women speakers, Carol Kent. There is a Podcast of this interview that I highly recommend you listen to (because Carol gives additional details that I can’t give here). You can find it at: arlenepellicane/2014/01/carol-kent-on-becoming-a-happy-wife/ Below is the portion of the interview that I CAN share —that, which helped us to “get back up” and live our lives, as we should. Life may never be the same, but life can still be good, because God is good. Let me say first that Carol’s experience is different than ours, and ours is different than yours, I’m sure. Ours is with a son and his wife, yours may be with a spouse. But woven through all of our experiences is a commonality. We are handed something in life, which we didn’t expect and never wanted. And there is great grief in that —ESPECIALLY if rejection is mixed in with it all. But it comes down to the fact that we are given two choices when we face those points of crisis. We either shrink back for the rest of our lives as emotional cripples… doing us and everyone else around us no good, or we find a way to once again stand up, put one foot in front of the other, take one breath in and one breath out at a time, and look for ways to re-engage in life, especially in ministry. Steve and I choose the latter because that is what we believe God would have us do and that is what is best over-all. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. Our hearts have always been and will always be open for our son and his wife, but we have to release them and release the pain as best we can, looking for ways to live as we should, given the circumstances. With that said, the following is transcribed from this podcast with Arlene Pellicane, who is interviewing Carol Kent on “Becoming a Happy Wife.” Please glean through it (and then listen to the podcast to see if there is more you can learn from it) and adapt the advice you can use. Even if it is a spouse who has rejected you… and if that is the case, please let me express my deep sorrow… but even so, the principle here is that it’s okay to grieve, but don’t let it paralyze you permanently. See what else God can show you through the following advice that you can adapt to your situation. Partway into the podcast, Carol Kent was asked: Q: “Why do you think it was important for you to get through hardships for [your husband] Gene’s sake —not just your sake, but in terms of being in a marriage?” In Carol’s response, she talked about the trials they went through when their only son was arrested for first-degree marriage, and how difficult it was on so many levels. Then she said, in response to the question posed: A: …”What this did to our marriage, and to Gene, is that instantly when you face a trial of gigantic magnitude little things become big things… “We found ourselves overwhelmed” by all that was going on… “Gene and I found that sometimes over the little tiny things we would be nit-picking at each other…” I want to pause here to say that for you, it may be that little things become big things, or that big things piled upon the biggest thing makes the mountain of life look too over-whelming to continue or to get through to any type of “brighter” end on the other side. But just like with Carol and Gene and with Steve and I and with others who have had to face horrible mountains of pain, we need to look at the bigger picture, and put perspective on it all. Carol goes on to say: “And then one time we paused and we would both say, ‘you know this isn’t the real issue, is it?’ We both realized that we had to make a choice. We could allow this big thing that happened in our life —our child’s arrest for 1st degree murder —to destroy us so that we were just not able to function. Or we could choose to instantly recognize that everything that went wrong seemed to be exaggerated; but it was really the BIG thing in our lives that we needed to come together for or we just wouldn’t be able to make it. “And so we started to recognize that more quickly… And then somebody would just say, ‘Hey, that’s not the big issue, is it?’ And we’d realize the little thing we were facing was so tiny compared with the HUGE thing we were dealing with that we’d get over it faster. But we did need to pause long enough to recognize that it was the big thing that made everything little so exaggerated. “I think many times people just start fighting and then they simply just can’t make it. They say, ‘our marriage is falling apart.’ Often when you have a gigantic crisis in a family you will see a marriage falling apart because it becomes so hard to just go on communicating without letting your emotions come into it.” Q: “So how did you start fighting that in terms of finding that joy, being able to smile as a wife, and I know that was a long process, but for someone looking in to say, ‘Wow! How did you get that way?’” A: “I think we both give each other permission to have sad days, because we both DO have them…” She said that sometimes she will “have that overwhelming sense that, that life is never going to be ours again; that life for our son, living with his family, and raising his stepdaughters is not going to be again. And so we give each other permission to grieve…” There is great loss in a lot of different things Gene and his son used to be able to do together, but it won’t be again. Carol said, “I see that loss in Gene’s eyes, and we both have acknowledged that even though we have a joy and a happiness in our hearts that can only be explained in a supernatural dimension in the light of our circumstances, that it is okay to give ourselves permission to have some grieving days, as well, because otherwise it just becomes a Pollyanna, plastic smile that you slap on and say, ‘hey, God is good, heaven is tomorrow and everything’s going to be okay…’ We sometimes forget that we live in a fallen world where bad things happen even to Christian people.” Q: “How does someone access that supernatural joy? They’re hearing that as a wife and they they’re thinking, I don’t get that; I don’t know how to get that. I don’t know how to get that supernatural joy.” A: “I think that joy is a process… you begin by having a communication with God on a daily basis and so sometimes that splash of joy comes in the form of a scripture verse that pops off the page when you read it in the morning. And one of those splashes of joy for me has been, Isaiah 43:19 where it says, ‘See, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.‘ “I realize that we don’t have the life we wanted, but we DO have a life that is filled with purpose and meaning and even joy because of what God has allowed us to do with this horrible thing that’s happened. We have the choice of using it as a platform upon which we can give hope to others and that brings us a LOT of joy. “So, start communicating with God’s Word and then every day be intentional about looking for those splashes of joy. You know, it might come from comment from a child or a grandchild’s comment that is off the wall and it makes you laugh out loud …Write it down and rejoice with it; have fun with it…” “Just remembering those little comments from children brings you joy. “And then I tell people, another way to keep the joy, to find the happiness is to be sure to stay involved with people. Because when you go through a difficult place, often you want to quit answering the door, the telephone; responding to text messages, or emails; and you just sort of want to cocoon, and not be available to people. And that really is the time that you most need to be with at least one other person —who understands what’s happening in your life, someone you can talk to, and someone you don’t have to fear will tell what’s going on in your personal life to other people —someone you can trust. “There’s a lot of joy that comes. You don’t have to have a huge network right away. You need one person, and that will give you joy.” Q: “Sometimes we don’t give ourselves permission to be happy because we think, ‘How can I be happy when my child is going through such a hard time, or you know, something else? So talk a little bit about that —how it is important for each person, because we’ll always have someone in our life that’s hurting. So how do we make that decision of saying, ‘hey this happiness, this joy, this is a choice and a skill I have to not be guilty about, but people need joyful people around them? They don’t need more sad people around them.” A: “One of the things that Gene and I try to do every day is to be very aware of someone within our circle of friends, or influence, or just people we’re with on a somewhat day-to-day basis, even though we’re in a traveling ministry, who needs help from something we can do —somebody who is going through a hard time. We are very intentional about doing one tangible act of kindness for that person because it is a way that we can touch their lives with just a sparkle of joy, a sparkle of encouragement in the middle of their difficult time. I think when we share what we have with others, whether it’s a sack of groceries for a single mom who’s struggling —you just leave it on the doorstep with a note saying, ‘We’re praying for you’ or so, it brings joy…” “…When we are actively engaged in doing something tangible for others, I think it takes away whatever that guilt thing the enemy wants to put on us, or almost being embarrassed because we’re happy when someone else is going through great difficulty. I try to use that as a trigger to shoot up arrow prayers for people…” Carol elaborates more at this point in the interview. What I want to say to you is what I have been and am saying to myself. It’s times like these that we have to lean upon the Lord to “make our paths straight.” As we’re told in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” And in doing that, God shows me what I am to do next. Sometimes when I am sad, I remember Elisabeth Elliot’s example of how to “do the next thing. She was a woman who was married to Jim Elliot, a missionary who was killed, along with 4 other missionaries, by the Auca Indians in Ecuador a number of years ago. I heard her speak a number of times. She had an infant baby to care for (the other widowed missionary wives also had small children) and she was over-whelmed with grief. But she said that she asked the Lord how she could do what needed to be done. How could she care for her baby and herself and so many things on the mission field when she didn’t feel she had the strength? She said that God reminded her of scriptures she had memorized before and strengthened her with them. And then He brought the thoughts to her mind, “I was in your past, I am here in your present… I will be here in your future. I will take care of you. Do not be dismayed, God will take care of you.” Elisabeth said those thoughts that God gave her, strengthened her to do what she needed to do in that present moment. Eventually, she said that she became overwhelmed again with all that needed to be done and she was alone to do them. She said, “You can imagine how tempted I was to just plunk myself down at times and say, ‘There’s no way I can do this.’ I wanted to sink into despair and helplessness!” But then she said the Lord kept reminding her of an old Saxon legend that said, “Do the next thing.” She also continually remembered a verse that God gave to her before she went to Ecuador with her husband. It is Isaiah 50:7, “Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint and I know I will not be put to shame.” She said that when she was tempted to give up, she “set” her “face like flint” and determined to do what needed to be done, knowing the Lord would help her. She would not worry about tomorrow; she would just do that thing, and afterward, would look and work to do the next thing. It helped her not to look at everything that needed to be done at once, but took one small bite at a time, and before she knew it, all that needed to be bitten off and done, was. This has inspired me many times when I’m overwhelmed by life’s problems. If Elisabeth could do what she needed to do, I can do what I need to do. We’re told in Hebrews 12, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scoring its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” I wish I could comfort you in your grief and lighten the load you are carrying and help you to walk the path you are now forced to travel, but I can’t. What I can do is pray for you, is to tell you that I have a shred of understanding, and that I cry with you, and encourage you to look and keep looking to God and to lean upon His strength and guidance. I want to close with something that Carol Kent wrote in her book, When I Lay My Isaac Down: Unshakable Faith in Unthinkable Circumstances. But first I want to share the titles of a few books she has written since she has started the struggle to find a “new normal.” They are ones I will be picking up to read, as well, Between a Rock and a Grace Place: Divine Surprises in the Tight Spots of Life, A New Kind of Normal: Hope-Filled Choices When Life Turns Upside Down and her newest book, Unquenchable: Grow a Wildfire Faith that Will Endure Anything. You might consider getting them, if you can. But here’s something to consider that Carol wrote, concerning the difficult journey she and Gene have been traveling, sometimes crawling through. Along the way: “We have been surprised to discover that in the midst of this ‘adjusted life plan’ we are slowly experiencing an unexpected sense of purpose… Our ‘new normal’ certainly isn’t want we would have chosen; but it’s what we have to work with, so we embrace it.” That is my prayer for you, as it is for us, as we walk this journey. Run TO God —not away from God. Put every effort into embracing the day, embracing God, and embracing faith. Faith is simply, [the acronym] “Forsaking All I Trust Him.” Trust in God’s love for you, even during the dark times, when it makes no sense. Please keep in mind (as Carol Kent wrote): “The faith that gets us through unthinkable circumstances begins with being flat-out needy and allowing God’s love to wrap us up, hold us close, and dry our tears. One day we discover that our cries are being transformed into life-giving, healthy tears that are rebirthing faith, hope, and joy. And life doesn’t get better than that!” At least on this side of heaven, it doesn’t.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 03:50:18 +0000
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