All The Different Reasons...

It's really hard to end a relationship.  It is even harder to end a marriage.

There are a million questions that people ask when they learn that you've been living in a world they aren't comfortable with.  I get it.  I never understood why people stayed in abusive relationships until I was actually in one.  I think it's normal to not understand why a person would stay in a relationship they aren't happy in, and even more so an abusive one.  I'm not sure that I will ever entirely understand why I stayed (though I am learning a ton), but I do know there is most likely never just one reason.  It is an intricate web of someones upbringing, values, beliefs, and most importantly, fears.  For me, I didn't have a lot of experience with marriage, let alone divorce, and my brain ran wild for four years while I tried to figure out what to do.  There were a million fears and reasons to stay, and honestly, not enough to go.  After all, in my brain, the reasons to leave were selfish ones; I wasn't happy, I wasn't safe, I, I, I...

Everyone's reasons are different, but here were a few of mine:

1. What would people think?!  
We met at church...  I married that perfect guy.  He was loving and attentive, kind and giving.  What would everyone think when I walked?  There was the small group of people who were "in the know" but what about all the other people?  What about the ones that didn't know, or the ones that would judge me?  What would I tell people and how would they react?

2.  We had a baby.
In the beginning, I stayed because I truly thought that things could get better.  At the point that I finally began to realize that I couldn't fix it, I got pregnant.  This was the greatest gift God has ever given me, but it launched me into round two.  I thought that my daughter deserved the perfect family - the family that I didn't have - and if you have a kid you know this to be truth; I would do anything for my daughter - even if it killed me.  
 
3.  I wasn't trying hard enough.  
This is going to sound crazy....  I've never not succeeded at something I set out to accomplish.  Part of this is because I set realistic goals for myself (some people would disagree with this), but part of this is because I work really really hard.  I was convinced I could fix it.  I thought if I could only pray harder, love deeper, work more, be skinnier, eat better, be prettier and more active, that he would love me like he use to.  

4.  Who would want me?  
This was a really serious thing for me.  I think it's a really serious thing for a lot of people.  If you know me, you know I don't generally judge other people, but I judge myself - hard.  I have ridiculous standards for myself, and I live up to them.  The idea of someone wanting me the way I was didn't seem possible.  Half of this was because I had been in a relationship that truly made me feel unworthy of being loved the way I thought love should be.  The other half was because my own insecurities came out when someone consistently reminded me of all my faults.  I was in my 30's with a young child, I was broken from my Dad dying and I live in Colorado where everyone loves activity but I haven't been able to hike since I was 13 because of my knees.  If I wasn't even worthy of being loved by my husband, why would someone else ever love me?  This was my opinion of myself. 

A couple amazing things had to happen in order for me to pull my head above water and see things clearly.  

In terms of worrying about what people would think, I had to realize that I never use to care about this, and starting to was insane.  What people think about your choices is none of your business, because it's not actually their business to have an opinion.  You don't know someone else's walk, so you have no place to have an opinion on it.  This is really a lesson more people should learn.  The people who knew me, knew how unhappy I was.  Like I said in my last post, people I didn't realize knew, knew, and even if they didn't, my happiness mattered and no one has any right to tell you what happy is.

Wanting to be happy was a struggle for me, because I weigh others happiness above my own.  Who was I to crush my daughters perfect family portrait?  This was really hard for me and probably the largest factor, but do you want to know something?  Her family portrait wasn't perfect.  It was broken before she was even born, and there was nothing I could do to fix that.  As much as I wanted that picture, it wasn't real for us, and as I became more and more lost, what my daughter deserved became less and less present.  She deserved a strong and happy mom to show her what being a valued woman looks like.  She deserved every ounce of me and she wasn't getting it.  It took some big words for me to learn this.  It took someone sitting me down and saying "You have two options.  Either your daughter will grow up to resent her father because of how he treats you, or she will grow up to think it is love, and she will go find it."  Talk about a wake up call.  Every little girl deserves to love her Daddy with all of her being and I believe this because even two years after my own Dads death, I still cherish every part of our relationship.  He was my best friend and I wanted to that for our daughter.  Bigger than that, I would never forgive myself if our daughter found the kind of love I was living in.  Hearing this gave me my first shove in the right direction.

In order to keep walking in that direction, I had to realize that I had tried with every ounce of my being, and there was nothing more I could do.  I couldn't change myself to fix my marriage.  If you know me, you know that all of these theories on loving harder or being skinnier were entirely insane.  I actually couldn't do a single one of those things more than I already do, and changing the way I did them wasn't going to fix it either - Lord knows I tried.  Regardless, for years, I believed these things.  I truly believed that if I was an entirely different person and loved deeper and prayed harder, things would change.  Enter Insight:  The same smart person who spoke truth into my life about my daughter said this "You can pray all you want, but God gave us free will, and unless someone wants to change, they won't."  That threw my world upside down.  I've never stopped praying, but my prayers changed and my faith grew.  

And finally... This leads me to my very final awakening, of which I can take no credit.  Amazing people came into my life, and I started to pay attention when they told me that I was worthy.  This is a hard thing to believe when you've been told the opposite for so long, but honestly, I wouldn't be where I am today without the amazing people in my life paying attention, noticing something was wrong, and going after my heart and renewing my confidence.  These people changed the way I saw myself and insisted that just because one person didn't value me didn't mean that no one would.  The only reason I even believed them was because they valued me, and I felt that.  It's amazing what a little love and support will do for someone.  

I'm on the other side of these things now, and while every day is a struggle, every day is amazing and beautiful because LIFE is amazing and beautiful.  Trust me on this.  There is light at the end of the tunnel and every journey helps us grow.  

A friend send me this the other morning.  It felt like someone wrapping themselves around me and saying, "Where you have been doesn't make you less, it makes you more."  I hope it means the same or more to you...