The day my soul shattered

I saw my heart. It was falling. There was nothing I could do to stop it. It felt like an eternity. The earth stop moving. Time was frozen in place. I was grasping trying to catch it, trying to hold onto it. It was so fragile. I was powerless.  I braced for the impact. In slow motion I watched as it hit the hard tile stone.

I knew what this impact was going to do. I watched my happiness flash before my eyes. All the laughter, all the joy, all the moments that had defined my carefree loving spirit, they were all in jeopardy. Every hug, every kiss, every embrace, every night filled with laughter; all the joy I had known was in peril...

The impact resulted in thousands of shattered pieces. I looked at the destruction in horror! Forget how I was going to fix this! How could the Lord repair this? There was no fixing it. There was nothing left to piece back together.  It was beyond repair. Only a miracle could reconstruct my dead and shattered heart. I lied there weeping, broken, dead.

I tried wrapping my head around my new reality. 

 My heart was gone. 

Why was I still breathing?

"God how is it I'm still standing here?

My heart is shattered?

I'm looking at it. There it is, in a thousand pieces across the floor!"

I WAS breathing. It was such a confusing feeling. I knew I was supposed to be looking down at my dead body, and yet my physical heart continued to beat. My soul was dead, and yet still encased in both my physical body and in this world. I was supposed to stay. I was no longer here. Part of me lost and completely absolutely broken.

I went numb. I could not move. I could barely breathe. 

It all made sense. All the struggles, all the pain, all my longings for my marriage. I had my answers, I knew why I had felt so unhappy. I understood all the warnings, and the promptings that something was wrong, and had been very wrong for years. Even with these warnings and my struggles they were not enough to take away the devastation of the state of my heart.

-Disclosure-

My joy died that day.

Just as the Provo tabernacle burnt down to the ground and how the saints all mourned and grieved the devastation, and wondered how anything good could come out of the ashes, I looked at my heart and wondered if I would ever feel joy again.

I look at my feelings and I see how much pain and agony I was in that day. It seems so long ago. I remember the day. I remember where I was, what room I was in, the weather outside. I remember the time of day. I remember the minute. Traumas like this don't leave the mind very easily. They are not healed quickly.

Cody and I went to counseling. Nothing worked. He'd get into sobriety. He would go just long enough in between relapses that I would start trusting again, only to repeat the process. My heart never did crash again like the first time. But every relapse and confession felt a little more raw. There was no heart to heal, yet I still felt each sting. Why was that? As my heart was gone, I never did engage my heart in trusting him with it again.

After a little over two years time we enrolled in a recovery program and found ourselves sitting in a meeting with other couples devastated by sex/lust addiction.

I was shown the trauma women go through when their loved ones are engaged in sexual addiction. I learned that it was okay for me to hurt. It was okay for me to feel my pain. I had been through a 

Real. Significant. Trauma.

And now I heard for the first time that it was okay to feel angry. And Oh was I angry. I had never felt anger in this manner. I emulated a mist of darkness five feet in every direction and I was the pit of rage in the middle.

I walked around the city in this absolute black, angered, enraged place. I was captive. I could not break out. I started attending 12 steps. I was prompted that it was time to forgive.

I did not feel ready. I had been betrayed too many times. I struggled to accept this forgiveness. But, my soul longed for peace. As was contrary to my nature my whole being begged me to not remain angry and to come back into truth with myself. I needed to honor the congruency of the soul I am. Slowly I turned my heart to the Lord. He was able to soften the pain, and the rage. I was able to see my husband through His loving eyes. 

He showed me a window into heaven and I saw all of my husband's immeasurable worth and the unconditional love the Lord has for him. This helped and my feelings of intense hurt and anger evolved to the feelings of pain and acceptance. I was still pained but no longer raging or seething. 

Before my heart shattered, my interactions with others were jovial, fun, carefree, and playful. Now I was stoic, calm, and guarded. I mourned the loss of my joy and my happiness.

Slowly, I met other women who were going through the pain of living with an addict and the things they did to justify their addictions. It all looked different for each of us, but we all knew the crazy-making that addiction created in our marriages.

Being in recovery for woman struggling through betrayal trauma did wonders to my eyes. I was able to see my part. I saw where I had come into the marriage already defeated. I was trying to validate my worth through a loving marriage. I saw marriage as a crowning achievement. Something to be sought after with all my might.

However eternity with a man who blamed me as the source of all his resentment, and constantly being shown all my weaknesses to keep him justified in not engaging in recovery was now no longer a possibility, regardless of my eternal marriage to him. That anger and resentment coming in from him had a detrimental impact on the eternal seal of our marriage, and I knew it.

I went the next year struggling with his resentment and blame so that he did not have to face himself at the end of the day. My recovery kept being shaken, bumped, bruised, and retraumatized.

I was using my tools, and through therapy I was getting stronger. I was growing and taking some large steps towards peace within my heart. As a result I was reaching new levels of health. But my marriage was not. I was progressing. Cody kept his heels dug tightly in the ground.

I went to the Lord to ask him what was to be done. I was told to leave.

It was an incredibly peaceful time. I was held very lovingly and protectively in the Lord's loving almighty hand.

I moved to another state.

And I began to heal. I still had the raw and tender memory of my heart shattering two years earlier, but things weren't as raw and painful.

I saw where my heart had been before it shattered. I started to question what it was that had been destroyed. Wasn't my heart sick and broken for all the years previous. Why was I holding on so hard to the shards of a sick and ravaged heart?

My Savior bent down as I hovered over my shattered heart and my pain. He held me as I crouched guarded on the ground next to the pieces. He did not ask me to move until I was ready. He was just caring and right next to me at my side. Once I was ready I took a great big breath. I turned away from the shards and looked into His eyes, His face, and nodded I was ready to move on.

He helped me to stand, and he pointed me in a new direction. I was shown all that I stood to gain from this new direction. 

I am traveling through a new destination. It has been lined with trials, sharp rocks, and treacherous cliffs, but as I have remembered that  I am in His Hands and His tender care, all of the sudden the trials are lifted. The razor sharp points of the rocks are dulled. The treacherous cliffs become gentle sloping valleys. Surely I have had him ease the load I carry so that I can not feel its weight upon my shoulders.

I have been separated for two months, and with only myself and the Lord to account to I have found healing. And in this healing something amazing started to happen. I started to feel joy returning into my soul. 

It was new. It was different. At first I denied the happiness creeping into my life. I saw the brief moments. I saw my good moods. I saw the joy I found in speaking to my beloved friends also in recovery. I stood back unprepared to call it joy and called my emotion a happy moment. I was okay if I had a moment of happiness. It was okay to feel contentment. I continued to be guarded.

And yet this joy kept creeping in. With each new benchmark I found in my own recovery, my heart healed just a little more. A blessing here another one there.

And just as night falls and is dark and you can not see your way...the sun begins to rise, casting out the darkness, and the worry, the fear, and the pain.

It is a new day. It is different than the last, but it is okay. The sun is a little more glorious from having gone through the dark of the night. It lead to experience.

My joy is new, fine-tuned, loving,  understanding and whole. My heart is better off because it is born of a different substance. My heart no longer feels broken. My heart feels genuine. It is strong and vibrant. Knowing how to avoid these treacherous cliffs, I am able to create safety that I was unable to create before it's fall. I can see the direct Hand of the Lord. He helped contstruct this new heart with me. 

I am now experiencing joy in my every day life. I am looking forward to the small moments when they come. I am serene and contemplative of this joy. I hold it differently. I know the darkness of the night. I treasure the moments of light. I give thanks for them.

My joy is emerging as wondrous as the bitterness was to my pain. And in the opposite I have learned what a prize happiness and joy are. They are a gift from a loving Lord. 

I still feel like I am under construction. But I can see the end product. Life everlasting with my God, and that is exciting. I have new eyes. Everything shines that much brighter and vibrant. I can see clearly. My joy has a new home in my heart. This new, reborn heart, has been healed. I see the pierced hands holding my heart, and I know my heart could not be in a more secure place.

I have experienced a miracle. The Lord is very good with broken hearts. My shattered, devastated, dead heart was no match for His everlasting and eternal atonement. Nor was it too much for His love or His power to heal.