“God, I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to be a wife that is jealous and paranoid.”

Patrick and I started off our relationship by being very open with each other. We talked honestly about things that we had struggled with, fears we had, and things that we were excited about. We quickly became best friends.  The first few months of our marriage were pure bliss. 

About 9 months into our marriage it felt like something had come between us. This isn’t uncommon in a relationship since it’s rare to show all of ourselves to another person, but because Patrick and I had started off our relationship so open and honest, something felt like it had shifted. I was pregnant with our first child, and I remember wondering if maybe that had something to do with the shift in the relationship I was picking up on. I hated feeling suspicious or distrustful, and I didn’t want to be his accountability buddy, a policeman, or his mom. I just wanted to be his best friend and lover.

I felt the temptation to become a controlling wife. One day I prayed, “God, I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to be a wife that is jealous and paranoid. From now I will never again go looking for something to catch Patrick in. If there is something between us that I need to know about, please show me in your time.”

That is how I tried to live moving forward. There were times that I would call up a close friend and share my heart, or share something I was concerned about, but I tried hard not to ever ‘find’ a reason to distrust him. I wasn’t perfect at this. There were many times that fear would grip me and I would end up spiraling down a path that would lead me to believe that our relationship might not last or to protect myself maybe I should just pack up and leave. And then we would connect again and I was reminded how this man was my soul mate, he was one of the best things that ever happened to me. One of the graces that we had on our relationship was the connection we had. There was an ancient feeling about our union. 

Fast Forward: 2015

“Hey Babe, would you want to move to Nashville?” Patrick asked me.  There was a job opportunity and he was excited about the adventure. I love adventure and was instantly excited about all the possibilities it held. In June of 2016, we moved our family from my hometown of Lancaster, Pa to Franklin, Tn. It was the first time we lived in a place where we didn’t have family, community, or close friends. We moved for a job. Or so we thought. 

Soon after we decided to move, I had a feeling that there was a much bigger reason for the move and I was excited to see what that might be. I remember telling my mom, “I think in 10 years from now we will look back and understand why it was that we were meant to be in Nashville.” There were areas in my life that started showing up that needed attention. I became aware of areas that needed healing. I started asking for wonder. I stopped asking for success. And I started asking for strength. I recognized that I was weak in spirit and mind. 

“I want to be stronger. Help me be a stronger woman.”

I’ve learned that when I ask for help, my Abba is faithful in responding. I’ve also learned that what I am asking for is rarely given in the way I expect or think it will be. Wouldn’t be nice if our prayers would appear as gifts with pretty bows tied around them?  Instead, I find myself in lots of situations that give me the opportunity to practice whatever it is that I am asking for. 

One gift that came from Patrick meeting Christ in January of 2018 was that our marriage became so much stronger! The intimacy we started experiencing felt so new & safe. I watched as he grew in so many ways. I don’t know exactly how to describe how it affected me except that it felt like it opened a portal for healing in my life. It felt safe for me to ask questions again. I started to ask questions about life, religion, & reality that had been too dangerous to ask before. It felt safe to be curious again. I felt my wonder return. 

Patrick and I started speaking the truth to each other. Not just truth that was convenient, but the hard truth.I was met with grace and not shame. I am a verbal processor and he was a safe place for me to open up about my questions, doubts, crazy thoughts, and ideas. It felt like a whole new way of communicating. My curiosity made me feel alive again and the more I felt alive, the more I wanted to keep looking and thinking about things that I hadn’t allowed myself to think about for a long time. This new vulnerability between us made it feel like we were getting to know each other all over again!

It was exciting to see this new side of Patrick. Really, he felt like a completely NEW man in many ways. And he felt safe. As I began healing in my mind, I found strength I didn’t know I had. This started a cycle of leaning into hard things, dealing with them, and allowing a part of myself to die that needed to die & be reborn into someone more true. The more I learned, the more I realized what I didn’t know and wanted to learn more. 

I was watching it happen in Patrick’s life as well. There was so much joy in his life that I hadn’t observed before. It appeared as if a big cloud had lifted. He would say, “The whole world looks different to me!” When I would ask for an explanation, he would admit he didn’t know how to articulate it all - yet. It was even hard for me to articulate the differences I was experiencing in him. He seemed so alive. So awake. And I could sense that he was telling the truth. All the time. 

That was 2018. It was an exhilarating year. It was a year that held a lot of healing for both of us. Each day held so much wonder & we looked forward to discussing what we were learning and discovering. We were dreaming again! Patrick traveled a lot for work that year. I missed him, and yet felt so connected to him. I would have struggled with feeling jealous and fearful but now I felt peaceful and connected to him, even when he was away. I was awakening to who I was apart from him which allowed me to be more whole when I was with him.

During those travel months, Patrick and I learned how to be more creative in the ways we communicated & we started being more vulnerable through text and phone calls. This brought us closer to each other. We were playful, sensual, vulnerable! 

Unhealthy Attachments

Relationships hold up a mirror and expose things about yourself that you weren’t aware of before. One thing that our relationship exposed early on in me was that I looked to Patrick to answer questions I had about my worth and value. They weren’t his questions to answer, but I was asking him to. I was very jealous of his attention to anything other than me, and I was placing meaning onto that attention that wasn’t healthy. I felt this lessening through 2018, but it was an old pattern that was hard for me to break. 

One Sunday in February 2019,  I had a friend speak truth into my life that impacted me deeply. My friend looked at me and said, “MJ, I think you have an unhealthy attachment to Patrick. You are looking to him to meet something that he isn’t made to meet. You can let that go.” I knew it was true. I had never thought about the fact that I could let it go & be ok. But I decided to try. When I would feel something rise in me that let me know I was looking to him to meet some need in my life, I would physically take my hand to my chest and act out like I was removing an attachment, and I would whisper, “I’m letting go, and attaching this to the Divine. The One who CAN help me.” 

The next weekend I walked into a tattoo parlor with a drawing I had wanted to have done for a long time but never felt like it was the right time. Until then. The tattoo was a triangle with the words “It is well” written within the 3 sides. A triangle stood for the Trinity as well as my union with Patrick and the Divine. The words were words of comfort for me. No matter what my circumstances, my soul was held and it was well. Little did I know how often I would need these words over the next couple of months.  

On the last weekend of February we had tickets to a concert in Alabama. We were both excited about a fun date night. The night went differently than we planned. We headed home before the concert even got started. I was so in love with this boy who I could tell was so in love with me. We were so connected. On the way home, through a series of events that I won’t retell here, Patrick confessed that he had been unfaithful to me early in our marriage. 

I remember the feeling but I don’t remember exactly what was said or what happened next. But the feeling - I remember catching my breath in my chest and then feeling a strange sort of calm. It felt like something washed over me. It was completely different than what I would have expected when hearing something like this. 

I was staring into my greatest fear. My number one fear in my life, the fear that gripped me was that I would lose Patrick &  it would be because of me not being enough. It caused jealousy towards anyone who I felt was a threat to our relationship. He had been my god and our marriage had been my idol. I had questions. Lots of them. And yet I felt like I had a wonder woman suit strapped onto me. I felt strong. Hearing this didn’t shatter me as a woman. I wasn’t tempted to take it personally or believe that I hadn’t been enough & that I had caused him to hide it. I felt the strength I was asking for. 

“How would you want to be treated if this was you, Mj?” This wasn’t my first thought, but it came to me soon after. I believe Spirit brought it to me just like Spirit brought me the wonder woman suit I felt. Along with the question, I felt compassion and love.

Patrick was speaking truthfully. I could feel it. I could also feel there was more. My ego wanted to protect me and know it all instantly, but my soul trusted that if there was more for me to know, that I would find out at the right time. Patrick assured me that there was more he wanted to tell me, but that he couldn’t see the path forward at that moment. So we retired for the night.

The Night of the Confession

“Whatever it is that you are carrying, you don’t have to carry it alone anymore”, I said to him. The evening before he had told me there was more but he wasn’t able to share it yet.  He looked at me. His eyes were searching mine. “What if I start and I can’t get through it?” He finally said. I assured him that was completely ok. “I feel like I have a wonder woman suit strapped to me tonight, Babe, let’s do this!” I said. 

And so it began. The night of ‘The Confession’ as we have come to refer to it. Over the next 6 hours, Patrick downloaded the past 15 years of unfaithfulness to me. At times he would pause, not sure he could go on, and we would hold each other and weep. Other times he would hold my arm, stroking the fresh tattoo that was only a week old, our tears dropping over the words, “It is well”. Again, I felt compassion and love. We were being held so tightly by our Creator that night. I felt it. Patrick felt it. Love was literally holding us together. Love is powerful that way. The words that kept coming out of my mouth were, “I am so sorry. I’m so sorry you had to carry this.”  I felt strong. Wait, wasn’t that exactly what I had been asking for? 

At 4 am Saturday morning, Patrick looked at me and spoke the most beautiful words. He said, “Babe, that’s it. There is NOTHING between us anymore.” The celebration that followed was a glorious one! 

Please don’t hear from me that I didn’t feel negative emotion and do not hear from me that my response was something I fabricated myself. There is little in life that I KNOW but I do know that I was being held and carried by my Abba Father. The following months were some of the hardest, darkest months I’ve ever experienced. It was as if the download from the confession was now mine to carry and sort through. I had to face my greatest fears. There were questions, fear, lots of tears, sadness & grief. I grieved that what I thought was true - hadn’t been, that my idol, our marriage, wasn’t what I thought it was, & that my god, the man I loved, had betrayed me. It caused me to start to question reality as I knew it & that was very disorienting. I hurled angry comments at Patrick & he met me with grace. I went through an intense period of deconstruction and if I’m completely honest, I know that I’m not fully out of that phase. I am still healing. We are still healing.

I saw first hand the incredible power of confession! Confession was such a trigger word for me. When I saw confession happen in the church it typically came with so much shame. What you were confessing became this ‘badge’ that you wore and it became your identity. I never saw lines of people waiting to confess things. Confession seemed to come from a place of fear, both in the one confessing and in the witnesses who sat and listened. And yet, Patrick and I found that if we would confess to each other, in as much detail as we knew how about how we were feeling, that it would help us heal. Not only would it help us heal, but it obliterated any power that thing held over our life. Once again, Patrick’s courage in confessing became a portal of healing for me. I was able to face things that I feared and walk through them. I was able to start looking into areas of unbelief & doubt. As we allowed the other to speak out their greatest fears and greatest desires, it not only brought a deeper intimacy since we were getting to see new parts of each other, but it also gave us the opportunity to speak truthfully to one another and hold space for each other. One thing we refused was shame.  That was never an option. And when you can’t use shame to manipulate or control someone, the guards are down.

The prayer I was praying wasn’t answered in the way I thought or wanted yet somehow beautiful things are coming because of it.

The human experience is painful & beautiful. It’s easy for me to forget that it’s HIS story & take offense when things here don’t go my way. Easter is a good perspective check for me. Jesus, as a human, didn’t have things go his way either. But He did come & show us how to live. And He came to fulfill what His Father wanted to show the world through him. Because of this I get to say, “It ALL belongs.” 

Maybe, just maybe there is a purpose for the pain. 

Why I stayed

People have asked me why I stayed. That’s a valid question, and one that I’ve spent some time thinking about. I have a follow up blog post coming with my thoughts on that. If you want to find out when that blog is published, please sign up to our email newsletter below.