Brick By Brick

How good it feels to write again with a light heart.

 In short, things have gotten better.

Much better.

Both of us have come to terms with the fact that we are making a choice,

a choice to fight.

My choice to not believe him when he said he wasn't in love,

his choice to forgive things from the past,

our mutual choice to decide this wouldn't be the end.

Because you see,

it can't end.

In my moments of the whitest-hot anger,

when all I heard ringing in my ears were all the voices saying,

 "you don't deserve this, you should leave,

he says this or he says that,

you need to just give up"

it seemed easy to accept the worldview that says that it's ok to stop wanting your marriage to work,

 that it's ok to no longer pray "God, please keep us together, please restore our love"

and instead pray, "whatever happens happens".

No!

It's not "whatever happens happens."

Don't you see?

It CAN'T be.

 No matter how much you're hurt,

no matter how easily you could imagine yourself with a new life,

no matter what angry words are said,

no matter what everyone around you says,

it's your MARRIAGE.

And everywhere I looked

trying to justify myself if I gave up and stopped hoping for it to work out,

I only found scripture telling me I was wrong.

It's painful when you've blamed the other person the whole time

and then realize that you had faults too.

Me?? Have contributed to this?? No way!

Yes way.

It's painful.

But it's true.

And once I was done licking my wounds,

I realized that I had no justification to quit on my marriage.

God wasn't going to back me up later.

God wasn't going to look at me and say,

"You know, I would have done the same thing. He was being so mean to you! You were such a strong woman to go be on your own and start over like that, and just kick that jerk to the curb!"

I would get no pat on the back from my Father.

In fact,

I don't think I could have ever lived enough good deeds to justify the fact that I, a human,

had help destroy something God had put together.

"Let no man put asunder..."

And I realized, as hurt as I was,

I still love that man.

And I know he still loves me.

And I've seen so many amazing changes over the past few weeks;

I have watched our love shine through the fog,

I have seen a miracle.

We hold hands again,

we help each other around the house,

we find ourselves fighting to make the other coffee in the mornings,

even when we otherwise could have slept in.

He winks at me across the table at dinner,

I watch his stupid movies.

I write love notes in dry erase marker on his side of the sink,

and he makes me dinner on nights I work late unexpectedly.

GOD MAKES ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL.

My faith sometimes stumbles.

I am not a perfect person.

But I am working toward a perfect relationship with the One who has given me everything.

And it is restoring my soul.

Brick

By

Brick.



"Though one may be overpowered,

two can defend themselves.

A CORD OF THREE STRANDS

IS NOT QUICKLY BROKEN."

Ecclesiastes 4:12