FINDING FORGIVENESS
I was married prior to Micah and went through relational difficulty that required deep forgiveness. This is my story about the power of forgiveness and how God partners with us to help us forgive where it sometimes feels impossible.
FINDING FORGIVENESS
Disclaimer to everything you’re about to read…
None of this is about me or my amazing ability to be forgiving. This is about what the ways I was able to have the power to forgive and love unconditionally thanks to asking for help from God and leaning into what His word says about forgiveness. The strength I write about is not mine, it came from Him.
Backstory:
When I was in college I had a serious boyfriend for almost the entirety of my time in school. We ended up getting engaged right after we graduated and then married two years later.
All in all we were together for a little over six years, married for 1.5 of those years, when he came out to me as gay.
I was out on the Beauty and The Beast Tour and he came to visit me in Boston. It was a Saturday night after a 3-show day, so I was beyond exhausted and looking forward to spending quality time with him after so much time apart.
I got back to our hotel room and immediately headed to shower off the 12 hours of sweat. When I came out of the shower I could tell that there was something very off about him and his energy and then he said he needed to tell me something…
I truly thought he was making a joke at first when he told me, but then I saw the tears in his eyes and knew this was very serious.
I didn’t know what to say…I was still in a towel after coming out of the shower and I immediately felt extremely aware of and uncomfortable with that…like I was in a hotel room with a stranger instead of my husband.
I think, in all honesty, I kind of blacked out after I heard his words and knew he meant them, so I’m not sure what my first real words were back to him, but I do know I didn’t yell or become irrational or mean in the moment, and that was purely because of the Holy Spirit helping me control my emotions and my tongue. In my experience, no human being when the life they knew and the future they planed for is being pulled out from underneath them can stay peaceful with only their own power.
I could see on his face how desperately he didn’t want to hurt me, and I knew he still loved me despite not wanting to be married to me.
As someone who lived much of her young adult life not being honest due to fear of hurting others, but then ending up hurting them much more than if I’d just been honest in the first place, I respected his choice to tell me as soon as he allowed himself to realize it.
He knew it was going to hurt me deeply, but it would’ve been so much worse had he kept it stuffed down and continued our life as it had always been.
We spent most of the night up talking and crying, and then I headed into a day of two shows. I’m not sure how I did two shows of Beauty and The Beast with joy on my face, but it certainly wasn’t my own strength that allowed me to do that.
The days and weeks that followed were hard. I rode a roller coaster of emotions on a daily basis, but the thing I poured my mental energy into was not taking my anger out on Nick no matter how I felt.
I knew that God would eventually heal my heart and help us to create a healthy friendship. I wanted to be able to come through my healing process having never said anything in anger that I didn’t mean.
Even though outwardly I was kind, inside my heart was a lot of bitterness and unforgiveness.
I felt I’d been lied to even though this was never what he was intentionally doing.
I felt that I’d wasted years of my life cultivating a relationship that wasn’t even real.
I felt that I wasn’t enough. Particularly in the realm of attractiveness/looks.
Even though I had been cultivating a relationship with God as an adult for a handful of years at this point, these strongholds on my self image had not yet been revealed to me.
Isn’t it amazing how God helps us work on one thing at a time and just when we need it He reveals to us the next layer of our growth? It’s so COOL how He works.
To cope with my broken heart I dove into a rebound relationship with Micah and threw myself into the show and exploring each new place the tour took us, but I knew these things were temporary distractions for the loneliness and hurt I would have to deal with eventually.
(A recap of Micah’s and my story is on YouTube here, but we just recorded a new video of our story where we go much deeper into our journey that we’ll be sharing soon!)
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
-Isaiah 41:10
The return to reality post tour…
When I got back to NYC I was stepping into a completely different life than I had left behind.
Movers had already taken my things from the old place I had shared with Nick, and moved them into my new place that I was sharing with some dear girlfriends of mine. (Without whom I wold not have made it through this season…love you Whit and Anna)
This was when the reality of what I’d lost started to hit me. I didn’t have the distraction of the show or of spending day in and day out with Micah in a new place every week.
It was just me, my thoughts, and the reality of NYC life. If you’ve never lived in NYC, it’s an AMAZING place, but it can be dang tough and lonely!
This was when I started to experience deep anger and resentment in my heart. I blamed Nick for my loneliness and found myself wishing ill upon him and his new relationship.
I’d never been taught how to go on a journey of truly forgiving someone from the root, so as much as I wanted to forgive, I didn’t know if it was possible.
I lived in surface level forgiveness but knew, because I was wishing negative upon Nick that I hadn’t actually forgiven him.
The Bible has SO MANY verses on forgiveness, so I would read those on repeat and pray for God to please remove the bitterness from my heart.
Day 1…God please take the anger and bitterness from my heart
Day 2…God please take the anger and bitterness from my heart
Day 15….God please take the anger and bitterness from my heart
Day 60…God please take the anger and bitterness from my heart
Day 200…God please take the anger and bitterness from my heart
I prayed this daily for almost an entire year, leaning into the verses I knew to be true and keeping the faith that God would help me in the right timing.
Christmastime came…Nick shared with me that he was taking his new partner home to his family for the holidays and I was PISSED.
That’s actually an understatement…
My bitterness was the highest it had ever been after almost a year of daily prayer. I hoped their visit would go poorly. I hoped Nick’s family would be negative. I hoped that they’d feel ostracized by the family.
I hated these feelings and began desperately praying for God to take them from me. I was pleading for him to heal my damaged heart. The same prayer I had always prayed…
Then suddenly, it felt as if a vacuum came into my heart and sucked out all that bitterness and hatred. In an instant my feelings of ill-will transformed into feelings of hope and desire for Nick and his new partner to prosper.
I broke down in tears of joy as I knew that God had just given me a miracle.
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” - Ephesians 4:32
My work begins…
I was so immensely grateful to God to have a purer heart with which to continue my forgiveness journey.
I knew He had helped me with the hardest part, but that I still needed to sort through the various ways my self-worth had been damaged.
Thankfully it was around this time that Micah and I found healthy community and guidance, through which we were able to connect with a Christian counselor.
Bill, our counselor, was a godsend. He walked me through a process of forgiveness journaling that allowed me to get everything out on paper that I had tried to avoid in wanting to seem like I was all good.
He helped me come to the realization of just how low my self-image had always been, and how yes, what I went through with Nick took it down a few more rungs, but I had never had a healthy view of my worth.
My worth, in my mind, had always come from my ability to perform/succeed combined with how I look and my body.
If I hadn’t had the experience that I had with Nick’s and my broken relationship I would’ve never gotten to a desperate enough place to tear down where I thought my value came from and re-construct it with a right view of my intrinsic value.
That rebuilding journey was AWFUL. Lol. But most hard relational/personal work is that has a worthwhile outcome.
The rewards that came from this work are some of the sweetest fruit in my life thus far because we don’t see things as they are, we see things through the view we have of ourselves.
If we think we’re crap, we have a view and expectation that the world is going to treat us as such. If we know we’re fearfully and wonderfully made and have immense value to share with others, we have a view and expectation that the world is going to treat us as such.
To conclude my story, Nick is now one of my closest, most loyal friends, and Micah and I have a beautiful friendship with him and his husband. Thank you Jesus!
Beginning your own forgiveness/self worth re-building Journey…
Instead of doing a haphazard job of explaining the work I did to forgive past trauma and build my self-image, i’m just going to share the resources I took advantage of.
Build your spiritual foundation whatever that means for you
Counseling- But make sure it’s someone who is actually going to hold you accountable to the homework required outside of sessions vs just coddle you and sit in your garbage with you for an hour every week.
The Process by Bill Hoffman - This book was written by the counselor who helped Micah and I transform ourselves and our relationship. It walks through the forgiveness journaling exercise I utilized in detail.
Battlefield of The Mind by Joyce Meyer - I have recommended this book in another post, but I’m re-reading it now and holy moly it is a powerful resource no matter what you’re working on.
As always, please share with me if you take advantage of any resource I share. I love hearing how each of your lives is progressing and developing.
I am in your corner!
*The links included in the post above is an Amazon affiliate links, which means I'll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you.*
WE THINK YOU’LL ENJOY. . .
