Thank you for joining me at Unfolding Grace. I am a believer in Jesus Christ, a wife and a mother who writes openly and honestly about my daily life which includes living with a husband who is in the process of overcoming porn addiction & becoming sexually pure. You can see my husband's story at Purifying Grace. Hopefully what I write can help you or someone you know. Feel free to subscribe to my RSS Feed or subscribe via Email. Thanks for visiting!!
Love This Song!
Intentional Living
It is becoming more and more clear to me that to live a life that is healthy and pleasing to God I am going to have to be very intentional about every part of my life. I need to be intentional about reaching out to friends. I need to be intentional about time with the Lord. I need to be intentional about the tone of voice I take with my kids…and on and on it goes…everything.
I went out to dinner last night with the 7 ladies from my therapy group and it was wonderful! A lot of open discussion about where each of us is and where we are with our husbands. It is so wonderful that they are in my life. In other circumstances I would probably never have gotten to know them. Now they will forever be a part of a very significant turning point in my life.
When I got home my husband and I had a REALLY good time just hanging out and sharing our hearts. I have always been very transparent with him and with others. If I do something horrible and embarrassing I tell people because I know it will help me to be more accountable for my actions in the future. For example the other night I was feeling very angry with my husband while loading the dishwasher and in a moment of total, and embarrassing to admit, relapse I threw a sippy cup lid at the wall. I will not get into what I was angry about at the moment but my reaction was so inappropriate. I keep telling people about it and now I have written it here so I will forever remember that moment and what I learned from it.
So back to the really good heart to heart my husband and I had. I was saying that I am very open and willing to share but our marriage had come to a point where I had to drag anything, looking remotely like it had come, from his heart out of him! However last night I was sitting on the floor talking while he walked back and forth doing who knows what. Suddenly he came and sat by me and scooted really close and draped my feet over his legs and hugged me. I felt so loved and cared for! It was wonderful. I am tearing up just thinking about it. I am not sure where it is coming from and part of me is a little afraid that it will not last but I am making myself stay positive and I am so thankful he is fighting this!
He went on to share many things that he is learning or learned while he was at the Bethesda conference. I feel like I have so much to catch up on in this journal writing I do! I want to write about the things that have been happening the last month or so because God is doing major work in both of our lives…or maybe He has been trying to do the work the entire time and we are just now finally allowing Him to do it…that is probably much more likely.
Still regardless of what is happening with my husband I want to be healthy and to have a great unshakeable realtionship with God so that even if this change with my husband (and I really have hope it is real and lasting change!) does not last, I can rest in God’s unchangingness (probably not a word but I like it right now) and be secure in that.
State of Mind
I was not blogging for a while, “things got busy” is the only excuse I can give and I know it is a pretty lame one. I guess in reality I was not intentional about blogging and I have to be, or else it will not happen in this crazy life I live.
So, here it goes. I am in a good state of mind today. I feel good. Things are good with my husband. I was talking to a friend a few days ago and told her that even though I have many good days, in reality my state of mind is still dictated by how my husband is doing. I long for the day when he can be having a horrible day and I can have a good state of mind. I feel like I have come a long way since the beginning of my group therapy and individual counseling. I see so much progress and change in my life. However when I look at the fact that to some extent how I am doing is still dictated by another person I realize I still have a long way to go.
We studied the painting “The Return of the Prodigal Son” by Rembrant last night in group. We were asked what emotions it illicited in us. I felt odd because once again I felt nothing. Although the painting did not stir any real emotion on my part it did lead to a rabbit trail of thinking which went as follows. I know that reading the story of the prodigal son, once again, after I had children, I was able to understand how God could have unconditional love for me. It reminded me of this post going around on facebook and as a forward through emails. It brings tears to my eyes everytime I read it because it reminds me just how amazing it is, this bond of love I have with my children. I am not sure who it is written by but here it is,
I loved you the minute I knew I was pregnant
Then I saw your face and fell in love some more
You were only a minute old but I knew I would die for you
and to this day I still would
When you choose to have a child
you make a conscious decision
to allow your heart to walk around outside your body
I love the first part. It is so true for me! However a little warning flag always goes off in my head when I read the “heart to walk around outside your body” part. I get the heart of that message, however I have learned how important it is for me to be very intentional about things I say or think. If I take it literally I have this feeling that it is not quite right. I personally do not know how I could make it if something ever happened to one of my children. Also it hurts me so much when they hurt. However to be healthy and live the way God desires and to model for my children what it is like to live a healthy non-codependant life. I believe that I need to come to a place where I hurt but am not completely destroyed when they hurt or when something happens to them. I know that some people would say I am reading to much into that last little line but I really believe that I have to be intentional about the things I think, say and do because they come directly from my heart. If I am thinking, saying or doing something faulty then probably somewhere inside is a faulty way of thinking. So in this instance if my children are my heart walking around outside my body what will my response be if something happens to one of them or if they make life choices that are destructive and hurtful? Will I crumble? It also seems like a lot of responsibility to put onto my children.
Thankful
I have not posted for a while and this post will be short. However I am hoping and planning to begin posting at least something little everyday. I am now in the “recovery” portion of the therapy group I am part of and as part of my recovery I am supposed to journal everyday. So we will see, hopefully I will be able to find the time or maybe I should say make the time.
Today I am so thankful that my husband has stepped up and is fighting this thing. I am amazed. I am hopeful. Just a few short months ago I was trying to be hopeful but could not see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not sure why or how it happened but my husband suddenly started to change. He is working so hard. I will not lie. Some days, actually two nights ago to be exact, are absolutely horrible. I cried myself to sleep and woke up with a migraine that would not go away for two days! The positive is that even though he still has implosions, they are happening less and he is now doing what my therapist calls “clean up” after the fact. I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am so thankful for the work that God is doing in both of our lives. I have begun to see more and more my part in contributing to the way we relate in our relationship. I have realized that I am not as above reproach as I often think. 
Our Eyes Take Pictures
When my oldest son was getting older and becoming aware of things around him I quickly realized that somehow I was going to need to impart on all my children the importance of being careful what we see with our eyes. I remember my mom teaching me the song “O Be Careful Little Eyes What You See” when I was little, however I never really realized the importance of that until I was faced with my husbands battle with pornography. My children are not being exposed to pornography and at this age and they are not aware of the many inappropriate billboards along the highway, or magazines at checkout stand or adds on buses and commercials that are flashed in front of them often daily. However that is not the only thing I am protecting their minds from. My husband and I decided that it was important for us to protect their little hearts and minds from things that might cause them an inappropriate level of trauma or stress for their age.
I am going to give you a few examples of things of things we know our children would be aware of and things we do not want them to see at this age. We have had times where we are visiting someone and our children are walking through a room where an adult or even inappropriate preteen tv show or movie is being played. Often even and especially on the news there are very disturbing stories and images. There are also times when we have passed particularly disturbing car accidents that we know they will not know how to process and that will lead to images and pictures being ingrained in their minds that should not be there because at this tender age they will not know how to process them. I have a vivid imagination and I still struggle with fear from memories of scary scenes in movies I watched when I was younger
The bottom line and point I am making is that knowing those things I needed a way to explain to my children that it was important what they allowed themselves to see in very basic terms and on a basic level. One day as we looked at a family photo album I realized how I could word it. I casually asked my children to look at the pictures in the album and asked how they got there. They told me that we took a picture with a camera and then we put them in the book. I explained to them very simply that our eyes work sort of like a camera or video camera and that our brain is like a photo album and a recorder. Whatever we see with our eyes is put in a special place in our brain forever. I then explained that because of that God tells us we need to be VERY careful what we look at because we want to be careful what we are allowing to be put for us to remember forever in our mind. They looked at me and nodded probably not really understanding what I was talking about. However I had accomplished my goal and given myself a frame of reference so that when I told them to look away from something I could then remind them why.
If we have been walking or driving or visiting somewhere and I have seen something inappropriate for my children to look at and I know it is something they will notice I ask them to look away so that their eyes will not ”be taking bad pictures to save in their mind”. They know exactly what I mean by it and they know I mean business and they look away. I have even had my children come to me and tell me that they saw something that was not good and looked away really fast so their mind would not keep “taking a picture of it”.
One very important thing to note is that at this age there are many things that my children are not aware of and I am thankful for their innocence. I do not want them to become aware, so if I do not think they will be aware I do not ask them to look away as it will only draw their attention to whatever it is. I am their mom and I know them well and I believe I am a pretty good judge of what they are and what they are not aware of. Another huge benefit of starting this with them at a young age is that when my children get older and to an appropriate age this way of dealing with “bad images” that we have put into practice now, will be very natural for them. And it will give my husband and I a platform to discuss the importance of looking away at appropriate times; to protect their mind from innapropriate images and movies of a sexual nature and from people dressed in a less than appropriate or provocative manner.
Psalm 101:3 I will set no worthless thing before my eyes, I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not fasten its grip on me.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Mathew 6:22-23 The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
I Love This Song!
I love this song! It is a wonderful, beautiful picture of God’s love for me because I am “a little less than perfect” but He loves me anyway.
Great Article and Website!
This is a GREAT article for wives of sex addicts! I found it through a blog that I have added to my blogroll, Sexual-Sanity.com. I think I have said previously that anytime I find a great clean blog or article I will put it on my blog so that I can remember it and read it when I want to and also so that others who might find my blog can also find many other clean blogs and articles. I have had such a difficult time finding blogs and help especially for wives. I used to think there were not any but I am not thinking that it is just difficult to find them. Please share any helpful blogs, articles or other resources you might come across!
Talking To Our Children About Sex
I am not sure if I have blogged about this but something that I have become aware of through all the things my husband and I are going through is how important it is that WE be the ones to educate our children about the human body and sexual things at an appropriate age. I am talking about a thorough education. When I first heard someone say this my gut instinct was that it was totally inappropriate and that young children should be shielded from anything to do with such an ”adult” topic. I came to realize after ordering and listening to the Simple Truths with Mary Flo Ridley, that my original gut feeling was wrong.
Of course I do not believe that children should be given any information that is inappropriate for their age. However information given in scientific terms, presented mater of factly and at times in conversations when kids ask natural questions, rather than skirting the question because it is embarrassing to me, I should give them a direct answer. For example, I have always had c-sections. So when I have been pregnant and my older children asked how the baby would come out my husband and I breathed collective sighs of relief that I had not given birth naturally so we could tell them easily “well, the doctor makes a small cut in my tummy and pulls the baby out”. What I said was not untrue but it would not have been inappropriate for me to tell them very simply that a baby comes out through the birth canal and then out through an opening between the mommy’s legs called the vagina. I also allowed my children to believe that the baby was in my tummy when in fact the baby is in the uterus.
Thankfully in the last few months my husband and I have been given natural opportunities in conversations to give our children this information and some of the other information we learned from Mary Flo Ridley’s Cds. I must admit that I turned a bright shade of pink when I did impart the information to them. I have always believed that this is an embarrassing or secretive subject meant to be imparted quietly to children in adolescence so it was a new and originally somewhat uncomfortable thing for me to do. I am thankful that I learned from someone before my children were born that it was important to call their privates by their scientific terms. So it was not strange, embarrassing or new for them to hear the word “vagina”.
I can not stress enough that as parents it is important that we take responsibility and be the authority for any information our young and impressionable children recieve. We should not push this critical information off for schools or the church or friends to do. We need to come together with our spouses and decide what we believe and we need to give our children accurate information so they do not recieve faulty or even true information, however harmless or helpful it might appear to be, elsewhere. I repeat we need to be the authority in their lives on these subjects it is our God given responsibility as parents.
Owning Emotions
The friend I met for coffee this morning talked about not owning our spouses emotions and gave me an example of what that looked like in her life. It was a wonderful reminder for me. When I got home this afternoon I was typing away on a post for this blog and my husband was sitting relaxing. Our oldest daughter kept going back and forth from one room to another. It was annoying him for some reason and he told her to stay in one of the rooms. However several more times she went back and forth between rooms. In the past I would have stopped her because I was worried about having to deal with how my husband would react or because I felt I had to enforce her obeying him. I felt embarrassed and that somehow her disobeying reflected on how good of a mother I am. However she always obeys me and is always disobedient and testing him and I realized that when I jump in and make them obey him by giving them a consequence or punishment I am also doing him a diservice because they never learn to obey him, they learn to obey me when I tell them to obey him. In this instance she was not bothering me and I was not the one that had asked her to stay in one room and he was sitting right there and fully capable of handling the situation that he had started by asking her to stay in one room. I realized I had no responsibility in the situation, ignored it and kept working on my post.
My husband looked at me intently like he was waiting for something, I could see him doing it out of the corner of my eye, but I just kept on typing away. Finally he said incredulously and with irritation, “She is not obeying me, are you not going to do something about it!?” I calmly looked at him and asked why he expected me to handle the situation and he said “You always do”. I explained what I had learned through my friend and that I spend a lot of time walking on eggshells stressing out and trying to make conditions just right so he will be in a good mood and so that I do not have to deal with his unpleasant emotions. I told him that I now realized that how he feels about a situation is not my responsibility and in reality is out of my control. He was the one that wanted my daughter to stay in one room and she was not bothering me but I supported him in whatever he felt he needed to do to discipline her so that she would obey him because I DO believe it is important that she obey him. I simply do not feel it is my responsibility to enforce what he wants when he is sitting right there and fully capable.
I Love These Ladies!
I have been meeting with several different ladies. Some from Therapy Group and some from S-Anon and I love meeting with them! It is so helpful for me to be able to get out and process what I am going through with different women who are or have gone through similar things.
I met with one lady for coffee this morning and it was SO nice! We had an all day counseling session yesterday in which we told our “stories” and I was feeling some stress and anxiety from different things we shared and from different feedback we got from our counselor. It was very nice to be able to talk through some of those things with a friend and on top of that she treated me to a coffee for the second time in a few weeks and that was a wonderful treat. I owe her a coffee the next time we meet!
I highly encourage any wife and/or mother to get yourself out there with other people. It is so easy for me to isolate myself genuinely feeling that I cannot leave the kids or my husband, but I feel so much better when I get out with friends and in turn I am a better mother and wife.