Day One: Healing Through Divorce

Healing from divorce is weird. It’s ugly and messy and scary and I genuinely don’t want any part of it ever again. I’m literally starting my journey today, and if you’re just starting your journey or you’ve been on your journey for a while, we can still do this together, one day at a time. Sometimes it’s one hour at a time. But let’s start at the beginning for a little background. It’s a bumpy ride and I’ll make it as short as possible so we can get to the healing part. I’ll come back through and touch on more details through the healing journey, I’m sure. Buckle up, it’s about to be a wild ride…

To make an incredibly long story short, I met my husband Corey when we were 16. I knew instantly he was my soulmate. Because everyone meets their soulmate at 16, right? We were together for 5 years. We had our beautiful daughter in January of 2009, one week after my 20th birthday. By summer of 2010, he decided that wasn’t the life for him. We were engaged at this point, but he decided he didn’t want a wife, or a family for that matter. So he fell off the face of the planet for 7 years. In those 7 years, he married and had daughter #2, divorced and went on to have daughter #3 (my bonus daughter). I also married in 2015, had my son, Levi, in 2016, and was getting divorce #1 by 2017. That’s another story itself. I’m sure I’ll touch on that at some point. Corey and I found each other again after 7 years and we were officially dating again sometime in 2018 once my divorce was final. I fell and I fell HARD. He was the dad I never thought he’d be. He was the man I never thought he’d be. We were married in April of 2019.

We just celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary last month. We were SOLID. Or so I thought. I found out one week later he had been going behind my back with one of my “friends” and they decided they had feelings for each other. She cut off all contact when I found out. He went off the deep end a bit and ended up leaving for about 5 days. So what did I do? I prayed. Constantly. I fasted. I rebuked the devil. I covered my husband and our marriage in prayer and pled the blood of Jesus over us. He asked to come home and agreed to go to marriage counseling. That lasted for all of 3 weeks before he started talking to her again. I found out over the weekend. Just 3 days ago. He left Friday night to “help a friend” and just didn’t come home. I had my bonus daughter here with me also, so my girls and I packed his stuff  yesterday after he text me to tell me he was moving out (can’t even tell me to my face), and put it in the front yard for him. We looked like a white trash house for about 30 minutes before he came to get his stuff. I was fine all weekend until he drove away. He handed me his house key, gathered up his stuff, and drove away. Drove out of my life, leaving me with our girls, one of which didn’t even come from my body. That’s when the waterworks started. Then I got mad. And I stayed mad. Staying mad helped me sleep last night. I only woke up once and immediately checked my phone to see if he had text me. Spoiler alert: he didn’t…

Today is a different story though. Like I said, healing is weird. Today, I’m not angry. Today, I’m broken.

I broke down getting my oil changed this morning. Corey always took care of the cars. I could depend on him for that. I should STILL be able to depend on him for that, but now I can’t. So I’m sitting in line waiting for them to direct me forward onto the ramp just absolutely ugly crying. I couldn’t stop. I probably looked insane. Which is okay, it’s part of the process.

I made pizza tonight for dinner. I went to take it out of the oven, burnt my hand, dropped the pizza and now I have sauce and cheese and pepperoni all over my oven. Que the ugly crying again! Why? Because he always made the pizza. I could depend on him for that. Now I can’t. And now I also have a huge mess to clean up.

But here is what I learned from day one: healing is a process. You’ll be triggered by oil changes and pizza. You’ll go from taking it one hour at a time to one minute at a time. You’ll go back and forth in your emotions. You’ll be afraid of the unknown. But let’s remember that fear is from the enemy. God doesn’t give you a spirit of fear.

I’m angry because he did this to me AGAIN. I’m angry because I let him. I’m angry because he’s playing the victim and blaming me. I’m angry he gave me a sense of security (as false as it was) and ripped it away. I’m angry because even still, I love him. I’m sad and broken because I love him and he’s gone. I absolutely wouldn’t take him back, but I’m still sad and broken. I’m mourning what I thought we had and the future we had planned. I’m mourning the death of our marriage and the future we’ll never get to have because he broke his promise of forever to me. I no longer have that sense of security. Not that it was true security. It was all false. My entire marriage was a lie.

That’s a hard pill to swallow… To know I poured out so much of myself for the last 6 years of my life for it all to be fake. For him to lie. For him to cheat. For him to choose someone else when I should have been his ONLY option. To know all of these horrible things he’s done behind my back and to still love him the way I do. The fact that letting him walk away/walking away myself is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

I decided to start this to see my journey play out. I’m doing it for my own healing. I’m doing it so that if any of my kids go through this later in life, I can remind them of my journey, how I survived and got to the other side and prove to them that they will too. And you’ll survive too. One day at a time. Or maybe one hour or one minute at a time.

This may be the end of yet another marriage for me, but it’s yet another new beginning for me and my kids. I heard someone say “let her have him and let God have you” and it hit hard. So that’s what I’m doing. As painful as it is and as broken as I am right now, I’m grateful that God closed this door for me. Until He opens the next one, I’ll praise Him in the hallway.