Nuggets,
I don't feel like being forgiving. I don't feel like hoping for the best and believing in the good. This morning I feel like feeling sorry for myself. I want to be a victim right now. I want to wallow and revel in all the oh-woe-is-me's that are dancing around in my brain. I want to spew hateful, unforgiving words that can never be taken back, and I want to not feel sorry about now they hurt. I want to say all of the things that I don't say, and dive head first in to the muddy water that is clouding up my brain. I want to throw sticks and stones and break bones. And I did.
Damn it, I did.
I screamed and hurled and said all of the unspoken disappointments out loud. I was hateful and cruel, and the Love of our Savior was nowhere in it. There is no ability for me to doctor it up. There is no defense. I unloaded a plethora of destruction at the heart of your Dad this morning. I didn't win anything. I lost.
Why am I telling you this, nuggets? You weren't even awake to hear any of it. You weren't present to witness the hideous components of my sinful, unforgiving heart. You didn't feel my desire for vengeance. You didn't experience the hate my veins were surging with.
I wish I could say that before he left, Love was restored to my wicked heart, but it wasn't. I sent him off to work in that hateful soup of words. I'm sitting here now flickering between good and evil... wanting to nurse the wounds of betrayal and heartbreak that I legitimately feel, and knowing that it serves no purpose but to destroy, both your father and myself.
I can't control your father's actions. I can't make him do the right things. I can't force him to be wise or discerning. I can't compel him to choose love instead of selfishness. I can't. I want to, but I can't. Your dad is amazing. He is gentle and patient. He is quiet and sincere. He is filled with many beautiful, beautiful attributes that I desire in myself. He is also filled with many, many flaws (just like me).
We have a beautiful love, your dad and I. It is something rare, that is valuable and enviable and I completely get how it could create an illusion of what Love is "supposed" to be. I suppose I'm telling you about the ugliness of my heart this morning, because I want you rooted in reality about marriage. It is hard. It hurts like hell. Sometimes you'll be the one doing the hurting, and sometimes you'll be the one hurt. Sometimes both.
Your father hurts me, a lot. I have done my fair share of damage to him. We don't live in an illusion of perfection. We're a mess. We do terrible things. We say terrible things. We are flawed.
I owe your father an apology. And I will do it. It's not about what he did to me, or failed to do. The apology is not about making him "see" or being afraid that he didn't grasp how much he hurt me. I will apologize because my behavior was wicked. I will apologize and seek forgiveness because Love demands mercy and forgiveness from my heart, over and over and over again. Love commands me to respond with gentleness. Love demands that I hope for the best, believe in the best, assume the best, of your father. Love commands me to persevere. It's not about him. It's about me.
Whomever you marry, is going to hurt you like hell. They're going to hurt you in ways you could never have imagined. You will evaluate and re evaluate over and over again what on earth you have gotten yourself in to. You will want vengeance. You will want to make them pay, because in your own hearts, you'll think, stupidly, that it will somehow make them grasp the blow that they've dealt you. It won't. It will only serve to make the wounds bigger... both in yourself and in your spouse.
I hate when I choose not to Love.
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