Time heals all wounds?

Originally published as a note on Facebook at 10/01/2014

Time heals all wounds, right?  Isn’t that how the saying goes?  I beg to differ.  Time does nothing special … it just keeps moving.  I’ve been reviewing my past relationships, my life in general, and it has been filled with pain, tears, smiles, laughter, hope and even peace.  As I type, I am listening to Adele singing “Someone Like You” … when she sings “nothing compares, no worries or cares, regrets and mistakes, they are memories made” I am filled with a very odd calm.

It took the breakdown of my marriage to Scott for it to sink in just how truly sad I had been.  I knew, in my heart, that things in our marriage were not going right, but I refused to see it.  There was no violence, no anger and there was no lack of love, which seems really difficult to understand because “all you need is love” … but, in retrospect, it wasn’t the right “kind” of love that is vital to marriage.  It took months of therapy for me to recognize and admit that Scott and I were never truly married to each other.  We had signed a contract, started a family, but were never truly married.  In trying to fit the mold of who I thought I was supposed to be, I diverged so sharply from my own path that I lost sight of, well, of me.  I left God, He never left me.

When Scott finally told me that he thought we needed marriage counseling, I think I knew he had already made the decision to leave … and again, I refused to see it.  Shortly after we started therapy, it became painfully obvious that he intended for this to be separation counseling, to help me cope with the transition.  It was an incredibly thoughtful and sweet gesture, in retrospect.  Neither of us wanted our son to be hurt in this process.  Divorce is hard on everyone, but unless incredible care is given, no one suffers more than the children involved.

During this journey that began in late March, 2014, I have allowed myself to fully experience every emotion that hits me.  I’ve learned that this is the only way to be able to move past whatever the event is and begin the healing process.  My therapist continually makes it clear that she sees such grace in me.  At first I didn’t know what she meant by this, but I do understand it now … it’s not being graceful (I can trip over a leaf on the ground) … it is, however, about being able to forgive and continue to love people who have hurt you.

I’ve been married twice … it’s just a fact.  In both marriages, there was a great deal of pain, different kinds of pain, but pain none the less … I thought both marriages, ultimately, ended due to an affair.  But, honestly, both marriages ended because we didn’t know how to get past the pain of not feeling loved.  Forgiveness seems to come easily, though not always quickly, for me.  God has blessed me in amazing ways, and this is one of them.  While I’ve forgiven both of these men, and feel compassion for them, the lessons learned through each experience has taught me that I need to focus on what I DO want in my life, not what I DO NOT want in my life.

I started this writing by indicating that it isn’t time that heals all wounds … and, for me, this is very true.  It took God putting me in a galvanized trash can, closing the lid, saying “hold on child” and giving me a push down this hill for me to climb out of that trash can, look up and say “I’m listening now” … The lesson that I’ve learned, and I hope to never have to learn again, is that God heals all wounds.  That I need to stay true to my path, my truth, and not try to conform or be molded into what I’m not.