For all our married years, we had done most everything together as a family.  Over half my life to that point consisted of day-to-day memories made with my friend-turned-husband.  When he left, surviving that first year of “firsts” involved so much more than getting through the holidays or significant dates.  Those were tough, of course, but so were regular days that were suddenly completely irregular and normal tasks that didn’t feel “normal” anymore.  Daily routines were disrupted.  A key contributor to my life was absent.  Half my heart and soul was gone.   Willingly.  Just…gone.  

I had woken up alone before.  When my husband was gone on mission trips or to youth camps or seminary courses – things his life as a minister required of him while I stayed home with our children and worked, I would wake without him there beside me.  Sometimes one of the kids would be in his spot.  I knew he was coming home though and soon it would be his head on the pillow on the other side of the king size bed.  He would have called the night before, and the kids and I would have gone to bed having heard him say that he loved and missed us.  

I had woken up alone when he was still home, when he was mid-affair and I knew in my gut but had no proof.  Or after the proof was there and he was home but planning to go and avoiding sleeping beside me.  Still, it was different to wake up without him there that first morning after he left.  I opened my eyes to see our two younger boys sharing their daddy’s side of my bed.  They’d needed to be near me the night before – probably needed some feeling of security.  I was thankful they had slept and looked at peace lying there.  My mind went to our oldest son, who was away at camp.  I wondered how he was doing and how he would handle the difference in our family when he came home.  I was heartbroken for my boys, heartbroken for the baby girl kicking my ribs, and just…heartbroken in general.  I was exhausted from having slept very little due to late-term pregnancy woes on top of a deep ache from watching him walk out the door the night before to the sound of his young boys crying with me in the living room floor.  I didn’t think I would ever forget that awful moment.  I had thought of it all night long with no rest.  It was pure torture to be physically and emotionally exhausted but unable to rest.  Even when I managed short bouts of sleep, it was plagued with bad dreams, or I would wake up with my mind so tangled and busy that it felt as if I hadn’t slept at all.  

I missed seeing his face when I opened my eyes.  I missed the warmth of his body.  I missed him reaching for me.  I missed snuggling into his side.  I missed talking about plans for the day.  I missed the man I’d woken up to for years.  But really that guy was gone before he left, and it was less lonely to wake up alone than for him to be with me in body but emotionally far, far away.   My feelings were a mess of confusion.  I didn’t miss the awful way I felt when he was there-but-checked-out those last months, but I did miss him.  I missed “home.”  I missed us.  I missed the life we’d made together.  I missed the day-to-day routines. 

Bedtime routine changed.   Morning routine changed.  Everything was different even if it superficially seemed the same because I just felt his absence from it.  

This became a regular feeling.  I felt his absence everywhere, in everything.  Memories were everywhere, and they were all tainted.  That’s one thing that made the grief of infidelity worse than death.  The good times, the moments I treasured, the things I thought were just mine…all of those were in question.  Did they ever mean what I thought they did?  If what he said was true and he never loved me, then nothing ever meant to him what it did to me.  Every aspect of life that I willingly gave – everything from the mundane to the intimate – was defiled.  I didn’t have precious memories to grab hold of to help hold me together.  Instead, the memories were often my undoing.  

I tried to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, and I tried to keep them busy with fun activities to distract us all from the sadness of our broken home.  I was alive and I was keeping the kids alive, but I was not living.  I actually have very little recall of those days.  I’ll see the picture proof that something took place, but would otherwise have no memory of it.  I was in survival mode without even knowing it.  

But I did survive.  We did.  Although it was no easy feat.  

I would even say that I am more than a survivor on this side of it.  Not of my own doing but because of God’s great grace and mercy.  He sustained me during those days when I was so completely depleted that I ran on fumes.  He provided friends and family to help.  He provided.  Financially and otherwise, God provided.  He guided me to people who could help with decisions that were outside my realm of knowledge – sometimes requiring them to tell me things that were hard to hear but necessary.  He put in my path people to bless us.  He put in my path people who I might bless.   When my heart was completely overwhelmed, He was the Rock higher than I (Psalm 61:2).  

He has never left me nor forsaken me (Deuteronomy 31:6).  He has gone before me every step of the way, designing things I have yet to fathom.  He was my only hope for so long, and He is my only hope for the future.  He says, “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:19).  

The word “wasteland” grabbed me as I typed the scripture today.  Merriam-Webster describes it this way: “An ugly, often devastated or barely inhabitable place or area.”  What an apt description for life after infidelity.  Ugly, devastating, barely inhabitable.  But God.  He takes that devastating ugliness and breathes new life into it.  In His great hands, surviving eventually becomes THRIVING.  

Dear God, bring your refreshing waters of change.  Do the new thing.  Make the way.  Help me perceive it and bask in it. Gain glory for what was meant to be defeat.  Declare your beauty and majesty amidst all the ugly in this sin-sick world.  Do a new thing in us, in me, and for me.  Amen.