So many times, I had a great moment, a great hour, a great day with my spouse, and I deceived myself greatly by thinking this meant something that it didn’t. Because after OUR great moment, he went right back to OW and created ‘great moments’ with her.

You see, he was after great moments to please HIS FLESH. If that meant easing his guilt and shame by having those great moments with us as a family, then in the moment, that is what he did. If it meant having great moments with ow to appease the lusts of the flesh or his rebellion, that is what he did.

I had to take responsibility for confusing those great moments with the only great moments that mattered because my brain was programmed to think great moments =happiness!

Now, I fully understand. Great moments are when God is involved. If that means a spouse on his knees repenting before God, bringing a heart change, seeing themselves humbly and without blaming others, that great moment is what leads to lots of other great moments!

Often my great moments, which were really great misleading deceptions because I thought they meant something very different, led me to have great outbursts, great anger, great disappointments, and great pity parties. And when I look back on it now, seeing my husband was still lost because he was still unrepentant, I see that these great moments were really built up in my brain as a great moment for ME, but nothing more. All because I saw him loving me, or paying attention to me, or acting kind, and I saw a glimpse of the man I loved again. I was the one that took that train and ran away with it.

You CAN enjoy those moments, but they must be done with wisdom.

I learned to appreciate the NOW without attaching my own strings, my own expectations. Did I remove ALL expectations? Absolutely not. I still expected his heart to change. I still expected repentance. I still expected God to keep His Word, and that our family would be healed and made whole. BUT I surrendered that expectation and put the when into God’s hands. And this was NOT easy, not even close to easy.

It’s normal and natural for us to want them to feel what we are feeling during those great moments. We are ALL in, and we want them to be as well. But they are not. They may have dipped their toes in temporarily, and we thought it was something different. We have to see those toes dipped in for what it is and appreciate what they were able to offer, what they are CAPABLE of offering, because they are STILL snared in the grip of darkness. But you are not. Do not let yourself get caught up thinking they are on the same page as you, and then getting horribly hurt and upset with them when it turns out they never were and they never intended for you to think that. They were just in the moment, giving you what they were able to.

I know a lot of lost spouses won’t even have those great moments because they know it misleads the Stander. They won’t talk, look, or be around them at all because in the past, if they did any act of any kindness, the Stander took that and ran way ahead, and they had to, again, be the bad guy and hurt them all over again by saying “No, this didn’t mean what you think.”

It can be super disheartening for us to be told what we can’t expect. That is not what we are being told. We plant a seed, but we expect that seed will produce a harvest in the RIGHT season. We don’t expect to eat a harvest the next day. That is what God is asking of you. Use wisdom when you plant seeds and know that these seeds must be carefully nurtured and tended so they CAN produce a harvest. I know I would rip those seeds right out of the ground out of my hurt and frustrations because I expected a quicker result.
Again……..my impatience. My lack of understanding. And my lack of realizing the place my spouse was in with God, which, again, was my failure of putting God’s relationship as the main importance.
Let your great moments with your spouse be just that, great moments. Cherish them, hold onto them, and expect that one day, if you don’t grow weary, they will produce a great harvest of more than just great moments! But a great lifetime with your spouse!
Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger

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