Dearest Husband, 

The pain of regret that I feel over the past would probably have killed me if it were not for the undeserved forgiveness God has given me along with the grace that has enabled me to change. The day that you left I began to cry out to God to search my heart and show me how on earth I got to where I was…how had I not seen this coming? At that point, I didn’t really care about what you had or hadn’t done; I was desperate to know what I had done to push you so far away. I wanted to see the truth about myself, no matter how ugly it was. The fact that you didn’t feel safe enough to tell me how unhappy you were before you were ready to give up completely and that you no longer even considered me a friend is perhaps what broke me the most. 

God was certainly faithful in answering my prayer, and I began to see that my heart was a fair bit uglier than I would ever have imagined. I know I wrote you several heartfelt apologies in letters and emails, and as genuine as they were, back then, I don’t think I really knew that the problem was bigger than just trying to fix some outward behavior. God definitely knew that, and maybe you knew that too. 

As the blinders came off I began to understand that changing my behavior would ultimately do nothing if my heart was not changed, but I felt utterly helpless to do anything. I was 33 years old. How in the world was I supposed to change who I had become (or perhaps always been)? I knew that this was something only God could do and so the last year has been continued surrender and constant prayer that He would transform my heart. 

Wow…the truth hurts. God crushed my pride and my illusion of control and humbled me in a devastating and fairly dramatic way. It was like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me and everything that mattered to me was just gone. And though it would have been easy for me to do, it seems as though God wouldn’t allow me to sit and feel sorry for myself. I realized that in order to change I needed to fully own and take responsibility for how I had hurt you, dishonored you and ended up alone. Sure, I wasn’t as bad as a lot of other women, but the only standard I cared about was God’s & it was clear that I was way off. No excuses. No blaming others. No putting my behavior down to my personality as a means of justification. I saw it for what it was. I saw myself for who I was. Prideful… Argumentative… Stubborn…

I often thought I knew better than God and I had become Lord of my own life. There was no excuse. It was sin. End of story. To call it anything less than sin was only going to keep me trapped in it. And I wanted out. 

I can see so clearly now that every time I wanted to move house, start a new project, or had some brilliant idea that I never carried through to completion, it was just another way in which I was attempting to fix the unrest and emptiness I felt. I didn’t even realize that I was trying to fill a void that could only be filled by God. I know now like never before that I can be at peace in any situation because I have faced my worst fears, and God has been there with me through all the pain and all the uncertainty, and I am more than ok. I can’t even really describe how this has happened other than to say that God has done something unexplainable and caused me to see and believe that He is trustworthy. I’ve lost so much, and yet I suddenly have the joy, peace, and the meaning I was always looking to find in everything else but Him, and I don’t deserve any of it. It still blows my mind how much He loves us and continues to call us back to Himself. 

 

I have often wondered if perhaps you’d been praying for years that God would change me. It pains me so deeply that it took you leaving for Him to be able to do it, but I am honestly so grateful that He did, and I would not go back to who I was for anything. I never want to be that woman again. Truthfully, it is hard to know how much I have changed, but I have definitely noticed the difference with mum, so at least that is an encouraging start. I find no joy in arguing like I used to, and living with her has been such a blessing as it’s given me the opportunity to treat her with the honor and respect she’s always deserved. We’ve had the most authentic conversations this year, and I just love her even more. 

Losing what mattered most to me revealed many things, but most significantly, it highlighted the shallowness of my relationship with God and how far I was from living a life that honored Him. I really regret the early years of our marriage when we didn’t have a strong church community around us to teach us and truly help us grow in our faith – in fact, I don’t think we ever had one. Our church failed us both while we were there. I don’t know about your experience over the last year, but with the exception of one or two friends, after I moved to the other side of town it was like everyone forgot that I existed. It was an incredibly lonely time. I guess it revealed the shallowness of many friendships that perhaps I had overestimated. Another humbling experience to say the least & something else that made me depend on God all the more. 

My mind often goes back to the conversations you and I had when we first met. Do you remember? We talked about what real faith looked like and how just a belief that God existed didn’t really mean anything, and over time I watched as you came to life…and then I think about how over time we both strayed so far from that. I know that for myself, God has used this past 12 months to really draw me back to Him and to the life He created me for – the life you and I talked about all those years ago. I’ve been praying every day for the last year that He’s doing the same in your life – that you would end up feeling like I did- tired of my own way and feeling completely empty…wanting to change and yet unable to change anything, and then deciding to trust God again. To trust Him enough that you would choose Him again. And that in trusting and choosing God, you would forgive me and choose us again. 

I know that words can’t show you that anything has changed, but words are all that I have, so the rest is up to God to stir something in your heart and for you to respond to Him. 

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