When I Say I Do

Writing means a lot to me. I have been writing as a hobby since I was about 6 years old. I really care about my writing ministering to people. Actually, I care about my everything ministering to people, these days. But that's not really the point :)

The point is that the trials and recovery that I have experienced and am currently experiencing through my marriage and the dissolution of my marriage are something that I want to write about in the hopes that God will use my writing to minister to someone. I don't want to let them pass by me without chronicling them and writing about them. Because I think there is beauty in writing about the human experience, and I think there is beauty in writing about the depths of one's raw feelings. I truly believe that there is beauty in pain. And I see it all the time. Most recently, I see it in the story of Steven Curtis Chapman, and his family - who lost the youngest member of their family, a little girl, in a tragic accident. In the story of Kevin Pierce - an Olympic bound athlete with huge potential and high expectations of success for him... who suffered a tragic head injury and will probably never compete again, but who is smiling as he determines to learn how to fully walk and speak again.

During the first two weeks that I have been living on my own again, the emotion I felt was mostly comprised of soaring joy and gratefulness. At how God graciously rescued me and placed me in the arms of more love from His family than I could ever hope for. At being back in the center of everything He wants for me, all of the blessings He has for me and has already bestowed upon me far past my expectations. But as I have learned of more of my husband's transgressions, my heart has begun to experience the pain of deceit and tasted the bitterness. I'm coming into a phase of being so filled with the pain of everything that I can't even bear to think of his name. I push the thoughts of him and the transgressions out of my mind. I don't want to think about them. And yet I remain composed when I have to communicate with him.

I am still filled with the gratefulness and joy. But I know that this pain is going to be a long process of healing.

There is something that draws me to pain... not in a masochistic way or a sadistic way. But in the way of knowing that it is not something to be shunned and run away from. Because the deepest pain in this life is also often the sources of the greatest beauty. Just like Jesus on the cross. His death sparks uncontrollable emotion in the people who love him. Watching it simply recreated in a movie is too hard to watch without covering my eyes. It is so grievous, just horrible. But there is BEAUTY in it, because he's dying for our SIN. He's saving our lives... saving us from the reality of having to endure the pain of this human life without him, because if he never died, we wouldn't have that gift. It is through HIM that we have a relationship with our Father in Heaven, and without our Father in Heaven, there's no way we would make it through the pain we have to go through down here.

So there is beauty in pain... but only because the most profound example of that is within Jesus Christ and the story of Redemption.

The title of this post is a song by Matthew West called "When I Say I Do." It was written for a couple who entered a contest through KLOVE, a national Christian radio station. They too, have experienced deep beauty through pain. And it reaffirms my spirit within me saying, "I DO still believe in deep, beautiful, abiding love between a man and a woman." Only time will tell... but even as I experience this pain, my spirit says within me, "Maybe I will have that someday."