The truth is ugly sometimes

The Truth is Ugly Sometimes


It's been a minute since I blogged and I have changed.  I have changed and yet I am the same.  I see the past differently now.  I was in survival mode.  Here is the Readers Digest version.  In the last seven years, one of my sons was shot, one of my sons overdosed on heroin and my Pastor/ex husband confessed to having at least 6 affairs (in my count there are many more), I lost my son, church family, husband and job all within roughly a year and half.    During the last 5 years I have been a caregiver (short stints) for my stepmother who passed away from cancer three years ago and my Step Dad (alzheimers/Lewy Bodies Dementia).  I hate the word step, sounds so cheap and does not represent the depth of love I had for each of them, they  had each been in my life for close to forty years.  I have been gently pulling away the layers for the last five years.  Pushing through the trauma and trying to recover.  Leaning on my faith and at the same time at war with it.  I have been healing little by little but still have so far to go.  I could just ignore it, stuff it, stay busy and think I have overcome.  I could say all the right spiritual things, all the right counseling things, it comes very naturally to me but that would be inauthentic.  The truth is that I am still really messed up, still angry, still confused and still shocked.  Yes, all this time and I am still shocked.

So that is the short version of my trauma story, but today I want to write about the reality of my life.  The shocking truth I am beginning to see about me, myself and I. 

Let me preface this by saying, I am not a victim.  I don't want pity.  I want awareness and the ability to communicate my struggle in a vulnerable authentic way that can help others navigate through their pain.  I will not let this pain be wasted, I am a student of it and want to be a master of the pain not the other way around.  I just feel that maybe, hopefully my honesty can somehow redeem my pain so that it gives hope to others. 

That pain still cycles around in my head even though I thought I was over it.  Even though I know it was the best thing for me, I am left with questions and doubt.  How could I have not seen what was happening?  When is it right to stop believing the best?  What did I do to my children by living in this house built of lies.  My unforgiveness ravages my heart,  it is rarely directed outward but always inward.  My brain loops through all the signs I missed, all the comments and accusations.  It rest miserably on comments from my oldest boy who literally told me what a horrible person my ex was.  I chose to believe the ex over my child.  My Justin, who told me that my husband, his stepfather was a cheater and a liar.  He told me and I believed he was just a jealous teenager.  It caused a rift, that I never had the opportunity to repair. 
It is the greatest regret of my life. 

So now I am coming a bit out of the trauma fog, feelings and memories are stronger and memories string themselves together and begin to make sense to me.  That is the hard part, the sudden revelations of betrayal.  Betrayal of myself with my ignorant Pollyanna view.  Betrayal of myself when doubt and confusion rang out and I allowed myself to be gas-lighted, convinced that I was the crazy one.  I was the nonspiritual one.  Let that sink in....the wife that was believing the best and living in hope while the ex was leading a church and preying on it's vulnerable women.  That is what happens, he chose me because I was vulnerable and weak.  I idolized him and that fed his ego but I grew stronger as I grew in the Lord.  I learned about idols and traded my worship of him in for worshiping God.  He wanted a partner that would make him look good but not excel past him or call him on his sin.  As time went by I didn't need him enough, I didn't idolize him enough so he had to find other vulnerable women that he could try to rescue and therefore feed his ego.  It is so easy to see now.  The pattern, the pushing away and pulling me back. The years of deception, he claimed he didn't cheat for two years when my children were babies.

I was immersed in a pattern of lies and doubt for twenty three years.  You don't just shake that off.  I was a strong faith driven woman and yet this man had the ability to trap me with his lies and convince me that there was nothing going on.  I loved the Lord, gave of myself to the ministry and yet still was blinded to the truth.  How odd it seems to me that I could have lived in the light of Jesus and still been in the dark of deception.  Where was God my defender?  Is it that somehow all of this is making me a better person?  I wish that I could see behind the curtain, that I could understand why?  I want to scream sometimes just as Jesus did, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"

I know all the right things...There is no scripture to share with me that I haven't thought of.  Yet, the thorn in my flesh bleeds daily.  The pain sits quietly in the background.  The disappointment cloaks my mind in doubt of the creators love.  I do the right things and I say the right things but my heart is armored up and locked down.  I am unsure if I can ever love fully again, ever trust again.  I live in a low level panic of "when is the next shoe going to drop".  When will the rug be pulled out from under me.

Don't get me wrong, I love big when I feel safe.  I have made new friends, new relationships and I love them.  However, feeling safe is not easy anymore.  Feeling safe is work, it is tedious and exhausting because the reality is that we are never safe.  All I can do is trust God and that does not come that easily, when it comes to my heart.  I know perfect love cast out fear But I can't seem to figure out how to cast it out.  I want the Lord to cast it out, I want the Lord to untangle the web of memories, emotions, soul damage and unhealthy thought patterns.   I really do,  but the grip I have is so tight I don't seem to be capable of letting go. I am trapped in this dark, angry place and it is ugly, my anger is ugly and I am scared.

I wrote the above part almost three months ago.  I had to quit because it lead me into a deep dark place.  A desert place in my faith where I wandered for far too long.  That desert place that I honestly had never felt before.  I felt disconnected from my God, I felt that he had left me.  My faith was challenged and my heart was hard.  The darkness fell as hopelessness over my mind.  The battle in my mind raged and my identity was challenged.  I was deeply depressed, overcome with fear and doubt about everything in my life, including God.  It was perhaps one of the toughest mind places I have ever been, I was tormenting myself with circular thinking and fearful thoughts.  Punishing myself for being depressed, which is not at all helpful.  As always the darkness eventually gave way to light.

Who am I now? That is the question to ask when you find your way out of the desert place.  For so long I knew exactly who I was, but that had all been stripped away.  The tattered pieces of that life were no longer surrounding me and I found myself at a loss.  A great grieving came over me for the life that I had lost.  Why did it come so long after I left, I am not sure.  Maybe it was because so much was suddenly changing around me.  I suppose that could have been the trigger.  It also could have been the fact that Covid 19 halted my busy life and all I had for a while were my thoughts.  My mind fed on memories and the defeat of it all.  The darkness clouded out the love of God, the feelings of injustice raged in my heart and I forgot who I was.  I was not a Pastor's wife, that had never been who I was.  That had been my job, and I loved it.  Being a Pastor and a Pastor's wife was a honor for me but it was not who I was. 

I was a woman who loved God and loved others, I am a woman who loves God and others.  This darkness, this desert place did not kill me or convince me to give up on God instead what the enemy meant for my destruction became a springboard for me to level up in my relationship with God.  To once again feel the gratitude that God loves me no matter my attitude or awful anger towards Him.  My identity is solid, unchanging, beautiful and glorious for it is not me but Christ who lives in me. 


Whatever the cause, it has passed.  I did what I have always told others to do.  I reached out to others for help, I got counseling and I prayed.  I prayed authentic awful truth to my God who gently applied the balm of Gilead to my wounds.  I fell once again in love with Jesus as I realized He had not deserted me to the darkness, He had been teaching me in that darkness that being away from Him was intolerable.  He was showing me my own darkness and allowing me to feel how wretched my heart had gotten.  Yet, he was also revealing to me that even the ugliest thoughts,feelings, emotions and actions I had where not enough to drive Him away. 
I sit here weeping as I write, remembering how I first fell in love with Jesus and realizing I am once again in that place of awe and revelation. 
Nothing I can do will change who I am in Christ, my religion and judgement didn't help the cause of Christ it restrained it.  This new place is a continuing place on my journey to total freedom.  Not token freedom but true freedom.

This is a new place for me, that is true but I know exactly who I am.  I am excited about this new season, filled with hope for what's to come.  I have been through hell and I have come out different but I believe with all my heart I have come out more like Jesus,  though to the outer world it may not look like their definition or expectation.  In my heart I know it is true,  I can see Him laughing at me and calling me into deeper waters to ride waves of joy and laughter and in my heart I run to swim with him because once again I trust Him.  My judgement of myself is over, grace is my choice.  The old ways of rules and earning  love, they have passed away and I am once again a new creation.  I pray I can stay in this sweet spot, this love fest with the Lord for a long time.  However, I also know hard things come but I have learned how to walk through the desert I will not set up camp there again.  I pray to continue living and moving from glory to glory with less and less entanglement of this world.  Love myself and love others, that is my goal and in Christ I can do that.  Honestly that is enough.  I hope this fills your heart and can help guide you through a desert time to a higher level of grace and freedom.  For there is not freedom without grace.  

With much hope and love,

Debbie