Marriages Restored

The grief section is a long section of Betrayed and Betrayer. Why? Because grief goes on longer than any of us desire. But ultimately it leads us to a big question. Will I ever trust my heart to you again? It can feel like jumping into the Grand Canyon without a net. 

Choosing to Love Again

{Ben and Ann}

We experienced real pain, soul trauma, with the revelation of the affair. The pain is often the most intense pain to ever be encountered (at least it was for us). You might think it will be more prudent to play it safe, be buds, keep the majority of the benefits of marriage, but not put your heart out there because you never want that soul explosion ripping up your insides again. That seems to be the safer way. 

But safety is an illusion. No matter what, there is always risk; and we put our hearts at great risk when we choose not to love. C.S. Lewis said it this way: "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

Now that's a risk. Not loving again puts our hearts in danger of becoming cold iron. Nothing gets in but nothing comes out either. Comparing it to our physical heart, nothing gets pumped in and nothing shoots back out taking life to our limbs. 

In the early stages of affair recovery loving again can feel impossible. It’s that level of impossibility that makes love regained miraculous. It will take trusting God to choose to love again. It’s almost like we need to trust Love, with a capital L, before we can love again.

Reopening our hearts to love again is scary, even while trusting God. Fresh wounds get exposed and become vulnerable. It may even seem masochistic to choose to love again. Yet, at the end of this journey we have a much greater capacity to give and receive love.

For God to redeem the pain of betrayal there must be a choice to grieve and eventually make a choice to love even more than before. It's the spirit's finest work of alchemy. The Holy Spirit takes the common scrap metal resulting from the affair, and through grieving and choosing to love again transforms the heap into sky illuminating gold.

What thoughts and emotions are stirred when you ponder loving again?