I woke up this morning with all kinds of plans for how I would spend this day. Work, bills, taxes, adoption grants and other tasks all stared back at me from my pile of papers needing to be completed, but all I could think about was sifting through the ashes of these last four years. The fire is out (finally) and there is no more smoke, but there are still ashes everywhere. It's time to clean them up!
Last night we met with our home church group and began a series of cardboard testimonies. Chad went first. He shared some pretty intimate and graphic details of our battle which drew me to look back and see what we have overcome and what we still have yet to tackle. It has taken this long just to be free from attack and come up for air long enough to see if the smoke has cleared. It has. And I can see how God has used all of it for our good, even if we haven't seen the full effects of it just yet.
For years, the focus was on my family which was obviously very dysfunctional. There was no hiding the effects of adultery, divorce, alcoholism, and abuse on our family. We obviously had problems. Chad's family looked normal in light of what we had been through. But what we didn't expect were the problems that arose in his family after Abby's death. It seemed to come out of left field, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20 and now it all makes sense.
Before we were married, Chad and I were very honest with each other about our sexual past. He knew I grew up around pornography and had sex with several partners. I knew that he had also been exposed to porn and had been promiscuis prior to our relationship. But we were both growing so strong in the Lord and we made a total commitment to purity in our relationship, knowing that God brought us together for a purpose and not wanting to do anything to jeopardize it. We were free of our past sexual sins and didn't want it in anyway to marr what God was doing. In fact, we didn't even kiss until our wedding day so there would be no temptation in our physical relationship before marriage.
So it wasn't too surprising a couple of years into our marriage to discover that pornography had made it's way back into our lives. When I caught him for the first time, it was easy to forgive and show him grace. Little did he know that I had also been struggling with pornography and together we agreed to seek out help. We went to a three day conference and learned what we could do to prevent it from ruining our young marriage and we found accountability partners to help encourage us to stay pure. It seemed to be working and we thought we had conquered the beast. It wasn't until years later that it would rear it's ugly head again.
I have learned that you cannot get rid of weeds unless you pull them up by the roots. If we had known then what we know now, that is what we would have done. But we didn't. We had not grown to understand that truth yet. So instead of treating the problem, we had only treated the symptom. The root issues were buried deep inside of us somewhere, hiding and hoping never to be found. It took a hurricane to finally unravel the deep issues of our hearts and bring us to a place where we could be honest with each other and ourselves and begin to truly heal.
In the months that I was pregnant with Abby, I began exploring an area of my life that had long been neglected. I am thankful that when God exposes areas that need healing, he treats us like an onion and only does a layer at a time. I had started to see how my attitudes and behaviors were controlled by deep issues of abandonment and rejection. I also started to see how I was repeating behaviors that were modeled for me by my own parents. I had become horribly abusive to my husband and realized how my need to control him had sabotaged his ministry more than once. I knew I needed to tackle this issue before my daughter was born and I set out on a path in search of healing and restoration.
The beginning of that healing came through a bible study called "Breaking Free" which exposed many lies I had believed about myself and my family. I started tearing down the strongholds in my life for the very first time. "Breaking Free" was followed by "Captivating" and "Believing God." These three bible studies revolutionized my life and my thinking in so many ways I can't even begin to count. I was starting my journey to freedom and I was committed to do whatever it took to achieve freedom.
Be careful what you pray for! I will never forget the words I wrote and taped to my refrigerator during that Bible study. It was something along the lines of, "God I give you permission to do whatever is necessary in my life to break these strongholds once and for all ..." Little did I know what would follow. I may not have ever agreed to it. But I know it was for my good and His glory. It would take the death of my daughter to get my attention and Chad's. And the days, months and years that followed, we would watch as the world we once knew burned all around us.
Right after Abby died, I was as broken as a person could possibly become. I don't think it is possible to be more broken than I was. But God met me tenderly in those fragile early days of grief. At first it seemed every stronghold we had ever faced had been demolished forever by her death. But it was only the beginning. The worst was yet to come.
To say that 2007 was normal for us seems laughable. But for a family who had just lost a child, we were dealing with what was normal for our situation. Our friends and family were almost heroic at the beginning, sending unbelievable amounts of love and support our way as we grieved openly. But as the months went on and people developed expectations for our grief process, things slowly began to change. The numbness of our early grief began to wear off and we became hyper sensitive to comments that seemed harsh and critical when what we needed was comfort.
Friends become strangers and strangers become friends. That is what we heard happens when you lose a child and that is what was happening to us. Everyone from our close friends to our pastor even Chad's family attacked and accused us in the following months and years. The expectations that we would be the people we were before were completely unrealistic. The loss of our daughter was a life changing event. We can never be the people we were before. And we will never be those same people again. As if surgery, a lawsuit, loss of friends, family betrayals, secondary infertility and miscarriage weren't enough, probably the most devastating event in all of this, at least for me, was the betrayal of my husband.
Little did I know that the monster called pornography had crept back into his life again until one day I found a magazine stowed in the rafters of our basement ceiling. It prompted me to check the computer where I found he had been browsing porn sites for months. He lied to my face at least half a dozen times before he finally confessed even though I had the evidence in my hands. I told him I wanted him to pack his bags and leave immediately. I felt so hurt and betrayed by his lies and did not believe anything he said to me. I grabbed our son and got in the van and told him that I expected him to be gone by the time I returned. He dropped to his knees in our driveway and begged to stay. I don't know what changed in me at that moment, but I decided to give him the chance he asked for and made him promise to get counseling. And so we did.
Fast foward three years and we are back where we started, battling the monster again. But this time, we know what we didn't know then. We must go after the root! And finally all of the issues in his family make sense. My family wasn't the only one that was dysfunctional. I never could explain why he and his sister had such extreme sexual issues. They seemed like the perfect, Christian family. But upon further examination and looking at in hindsight what we could not see in foresight, the issues are clear. Now I remember that first year we were married and how his parents gave us an extremely inappropriate (sexual) gift. And how his mom would complain about his dad's sexual desires. I finally told her that I didn't want to talk about her sex life or mine. But I never really put two and two together until now.
Add on the completely emotionless nature of his father and his mother's inability to deal with conflict and matriarchal reign of the family and I can see why I am married to a sexually addicted and extremely passive man. Not to say he is always passive. He could lead an army to victory in battle. In fact, every day he does just that at his job! But when it comes to the women in his life, he takes a beating and lays down for more. I see it clearly now. An abusive sister. A controlling mother. A passive father. Sexual dysfunction. Emotional disconnect. Marriage to a controlling, abusive wife. It was a perfect recipe for the battle we are facing in our marriage today.
It is not entirely his fault, you know. I am sure I have contributed to the problem. I also blame infertility and the clinical nature in which our sexual relationship was treated in our attempt to build a family. However, I know that God has used all of this to bring us, him, to a place where he can finally be free and heal from the wounds and sins of his past. There are no words to express how I feel at the thought of my husband being free and the restoration process he is finally in. I am proud of him for sharing openly with our church family and for seeking the help he needs to conquer the beast of pornography once and for all.
As I continue to sift through the ashes, I am reminded that God made a promise to bring beauty from them. He already has and I know there is more to come. We have to trust that He who began a good work within (us), will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns (Philippians 1:6). We are not finished yet ...
