Forgiveness

Today I was listening to Joyce Meyer. I’m not the kind of person who sits around watching evangelists all day; actually I’m addicted to some pretty edgy shows. But anyways, I like Joyce Meyer because she’s bold and honest and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. She’s actually pretty brash and I can respect and relate to her personality. The point of my rambling is because of something she said today.

She was saying that we need to forgive people, I mean really forgive. Then she goes on to say that God will be your avenger. If someone does something wrong to you…….you must forgive…….but also know that God will give them what’s coming to them. This vengeance come only because of your actions, God will only give them what’s coming to them, if you truly forgive and hand the job of judgment over to God.

I’m not a person who lets people in, but when I met my husband it was like something clicked and I felt like I could trust him. We had a whirl wind marriage and 8 out of the last ten years have been like a fairy tale. Yes, we are one of those couples that have GREAT sex 3-4 times a week, flirts with eachother, laugh everyday, have several inside jokes and at times communicate without even talking. Although we have a lot of fun together, we still fight more than we used to because of what he did and my inability to let go and forgive him.

In the last few years he’s done several things to break my trust. This has turned me into a person that I don’t really like. Not only do I struggle with forgiveness but I don’t like who I have become and this has hurt my self esteem. Here are the things I need to forgive my Husband for:

1. Getting fired and taking the sales job:

I knew he did not like his job, but I encouraged him to stick with it because we were only 6 months away from being totally debt free. His job had a great profit sharing program and if he could have toughed it out for 3 more years we would have been very well off financially and he could have quit and gone back to school to do whatever he wanted. Because he hated his work he did a shitty job and got fired two weeks after we had our fourth child. (I lie and tell everyone that he got fired because we did not want to move again, this is the first time I’ve said out loud the real reason he was fired) After getting fired he took a sales job that was commission only because it was fun. He knew nothing about our financial situation; I paid all of the bills. The burden of our $8000 a month budget was all on my shoulders. I stopped paying off the debt and worried about keeping a roof over our head, while trying to be supportive because my husband was happy with his job for the first time in years. On a good month he made $500 to cover bills, while I stayed home with our four children, ran a daycare, had a part time job as a youth pastor, did ChaCha every time the kids would leave me alone, started school at UOP to take out student loans, and eventually got a night job working two nights a week at a gas station. I know I’m painting him as an awful person, but for my part in this never once did I tell him how bad the financial burden was, and I encouraged him to keep the sales job because I liked seeing him happy, I thought I was doing the right thing by being supportive. After 4 months of the crappy job I told him how bad things were and that he needed to find a new job. He reluctantly went back into his previous field of work but was not happy about it. This is when I became bitter and mean about the situation he put us in, my anger grew and grew and for the first time EVER we were fighting all the time.

2. Having an affair and being a lying bastard

I understand because of the fighting and my hatefulness that he felt a need to find support elsewhere, I’m not making excuses; I’m just saying I see now how the choices we made led him to this bad act. I think that I would be able to get over the affair easier if he would have come clean right away but he only confessed to what I knew. At first I found out he was just having an emotional online affair with an ex, then a few days later I found out he had someone at the house while I was working nights, then a week later I found out he will still talking to the Ex after he said he would cut off contact, then I saw him admit to her that he did have a physical affair with someone else in an e-mail. All evidence still leads me to believe that he had an affair with one of his employees but when I had him backed into a corner he confessed but said it was a customer. To this day I still believe he’s lying to me about who it was with. Probably for her protection because I was raised very ghetto and I would kick her ass, then ask God to forgive me for it. None the less, we moved away from there and he is no longer around the little whore so I don’t stress about that anymore. I did however see that my husband is a talented liar and the lies, not the affair is what makes me continue to have a hate in my heart for him. This happened a little over a year ago, and he has done a lot to try to prove to me that he will never lie again, I have access to his e-mail and facebook accounts, he does not work with computers at work so his only access is on our computer, in which I have a keylogger on so I know his every move. He left his job and followed me back to cheapvillle, where I figured I could keep better tabs on him, and if I had to leave I could afford to do it on my own here. He no longer carries a cell phone and says he has no desire to. He got a job where he works the same hours as I, so if we are not at work we spend much more time together than we were. I told him actions speak louder than words and after having him lie so easily and frequently, if he wanted to keep it together, he had to prove it to me with actions. This is the hardest thing to forgive. I want to forgive because I know he’s been good and he’s shown me over the past year that he wants this to work. We have more happy days than sad or angry days and that is a good sign, but there is a part of my heart that is broken, and I do not see him in the same light as before.

3. Getting me pregnant on purpose with our 4^th child.

Again, in the past few years I have seen how selfish my husband can be. In counseling he confessed that he got me pregnant on purpose with our 4^th child because he wanted me to stay at home with the kids. No, I am not married so some jackass that wanted me at home to wait on his every need, he does more cooking and cleaning that I do at times and actually enjoys it. He’s a strange cookie in that department, I know. His reasoning was this: I worked all the time, at a job I hated, I never saw him, I never saw the kids. He figured he was miserable, I was miserable and he saw it as a solution because I was not willing to quit my job. I had my eye on the prize of paying off our debt, he felt our family was falling apart and it was a bad desperate decision on his part. I understand his reasoning and I am completely thankful for our precious daughter, she is one of my many joys in life. He was right, I needed to quit my job and find something that was better for me and for my family, but he was wrong in how he approached the problem. What I am angry for is the manipulation. I see in therapy that he is truly sorry, and this is something he could have easily kept to himself but he wanted to be honest and come clean about it, so I applaud him for that. But still it has made my view of him change and I struggle with trust these days so the confession only added to my hostility.

This brings me full circle to what I heard this morning, forgive. I’ve become someone I don’t like because of my inability to forgive. I’ve never been a jealous possessive person and I hate being this way. I am jealous and I check up on him because I have not forgiven him. The part that really moved me today is when she said, “If you can truly forgive, then have faith that God will be your avenger.” It’s just like Karma. What goes around comes around.

To me that says, when I let go, and truly forgive my husband I can reclaim my life by not being angry and jealous and possessive. If he is truly working on keeping our marriage together we can move forward because of my forgiveness. I can also take comfort in knowing God will look out for me. If darling Hubby ever strays again, God will let me know and God will give him what he deserves. When I think about it, I wasn’t suspicious when I found out he was cheating I just stumbled on it. God was looking out for me, and gave him what was coming to him by showing me what was going on. I have to trust in him, that he will show me if it happens again and things will workout, so I can finally let go and forgive.

Don’t take this as a weakness I firmly believe, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I won’t be fooled twice, and hubby knows that. I have emergency savings so I can leave if he betrays me again and my grandmother opened a savings account and put enough money in it to pay for a divorce if I ever need it. But what this all boils down to is the fact that he’s been working hard to redeem himself and we have hit a wall in the progress of fixing our marriage because I have yet to forgive him. So now, I’m letting go of these things, but I won’t be a fool, God will take care of things if Hubby is not making a true effort and decides to pull any crap like this again.