The Blame Game - YOU supply the batteries!

(Please note: Hi-lited passages are links to the appropriate sites or Scriptures referenced.)

For a long time during the divorce, I struggled intensely with depression and fear that would just come and go, so much so that I felt like I would throw up from "motion sickness". I was up and down, up and down, up and down. The depression was not due so much to losing a great love with a former partner, because that love had been gone for years, destroyed by addiction. The depression was due moreso to the fact that not only had I lost everything I had dreamed of having since I was a little girl (the fairy-tale happily-ever-after) but then I had also lost the cardboard house and flimsy walls of protection that I had built for myself within a lost marriage. That just added insult to injury! I thought that even if the marriage was over, I should at least be allowed to keep my cardboard box and keep SOME semblance of being "like everybody else" with my picket fence and my "happy face."
With divorce papers signed, I had to finally admit that the "work of my life" for the last 6 years - trying to hold everything together by a thread - had failed. I had to admit that "my way" of doing it just wasn't going to cut it this time. The game was over. The time bomb had finally blown up and now I had no idea what I would do without my self-created world around me to give me protection.
It was pretty insulting, really. I thought I had done a pretty good job of building little sand walls to keep the house running "smoothly", keep the bills paid, keep the outside world from knowing all of the "dirty little secrets." I didn't understand why those walls couldn't just stay in place. I had very craftily, very methodically built them.
I thought that if I just successfully convinced myself that FP really meant it this time when he said he'd go to counseling and that he was "getting help," that surely he would have to go....eventually....right? Or, if I just prayed harder, God would deliver him. If I just "had more faith," God would "answer" my prayers, If I just wasn't so tired he would want to be home more and not off doing "other stuff." If I was just a better wife, he wouldn't need other distractions to fill his emptiness. If I had just lost that post-pregnancy weight faster and "looked cute" all the time, he wouldn't need to look at other women. If I just kept the house cleaner and the kids quieter, he would want to spend more time with us. If I was better at communicating, he wouldn't "have" to lie all the time. If I... If I... If I.....
Sound familiar?
I must have bought and read every book on the market during my marriage to "improve myself" and to control my marriage. Every women's conference on marriage, I was at the sign-up table. Every women's bible study on marriage, I was in the front row taking notes. Each time I heard something new, then this was "the trick" that would finally "help him" and make everything okay.
Oh, LORD - THANK YOU for DELIVERING me from this endless, exhausting, going-nowhere gerbil wheel that I was running on!!!! And Lord, please don't EVER let me get back on it again - whatever you have to do to block my path Lord - change ME Lord so that I never try to change someone else again and never take responsibility on myself for THEIR actions again!

Even after the unknown extent of FP's addiction finally blew up and the crap hit the fan, I STILL blamed myself for "not seeing all the red flags." I knew that he had "problems" and wasn't home much and spent the night away and money was missing, but surely that didn't mean _____, did it? Then, when I found out all the secrets that I had "missed," I beat myself up for being so stupid and "naieve" - so even that was my fault too.
And it didn't help that FP was there to constantly remind me that yes, it really WAS my fault. He was quick to remind me that I should have gotten him help sooner, I should have gone to counseling one more time, I should have believed him that 4th and last time he said he would quit, I should believe him that it "wasn't really adultery" because he loved me, not them, I should have believed him that the money wasn't really "stolen" because he was going to pay it back all along! I was also told that forgiveness meant forgetting and how could I really call myself a Christian if I couldn't just forget what had happened? And, being the co-dependent that I was, I believed all of it.
In her book Co-Dependent No More (which I HIGHLY recommend), Melodie Beattie writes:
[Co-dependent partners of addicts or abusers] are controlling because everything around and inside them is out of control. Always, the dam of their lives...threatened to burst and spew harmful consequences on everyone. And nobody seemed to notice or care...[they are] people who thought they were going crazy because they had believed so many lies they didn't know what reality was...[they] felt responsible for so much because the people around them felt responsible for so little; they were just taking up the slack...[The codependents - those involved with addicts] hurt as much or more [than the addict] because they have gone through the pain without the anesthetizing effects of alcohol or other drugs, or the other "high" states achieved by people with compulsive disorders...The chemically (or otherwise) dependent addict/partner numbs the feelings while the non-abuser is doubled over in pain...they are this way sober, because they went through what they did [surviving life with the addict] sober."
When you read the above, does it sound familiar? Are you nodding your head?
Satan wants you to think you are alone in feeling this way - that your circumstances are isolated and "no one understands". Sadly, as I've found, there are far too many who DO understand. There are far too many who leave their house with their "happy face" on, hoping the world doesn't see what is really hidden behind it all. Satan also wants you to think, like he tricked me into believing for a while, that those years we partners spent doing everything we could "to hold it all together" were in vain and no good, lost forever, wasted. As one counselor put it "You think you had a failed marriage and now a failed divorce". "Failure, failure failure" Satan is chanting, dancing circles around us.

But this is not what Our Father is singing to us - He is singing a different song -
He says DO NOT grow weary while doing what is good and right, for in time we WILL reap a harvest for doing what is right (Gal 6:9). He assures us that His eyes are everywhere, keeping watch over what is evil AND what is good (Prov 15:3). We are not failures - we are victorious because we are women of FAITH -"...for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God" (1 John 5:4-5). We survived the hell we lived in because we had faith - faith that it would get better, faith that the addict would change, faith that we could "make" it work - Now that you are freed, let God take that enormous amount of faith that you have to have had to survive life with an addict and let Your Father turn it back to faith in HIM and HIS strength, for HIS glory!

Those years were NOT wasted - NOTHING is "wasted" with God! Those years are years that you spent making choices about whether to fish or cut bait, whether to hang in or jump ship. And God will reward your faithfulness. He will restore to you what has been stolen from you from the "lost" time Satan wants to tell you is lost forever - That time is NOT Lost (Joel 2:24-26)!

God WILL restore that stolen time to you AND rebuild what has been torn down; and not only will He rebuild it, but it will be far better than that cardboard box you tried to build- HIS city He re-builds for you will be gorgeous, covered in jewels, unbelievable! (Is 54:10-17).
He says to you, "Daughter", now it is time to "rise up", to "shake off the dust" from the explosion, to "put on garments of splendor" and that He WILL redeem you who were "sold for nothing" (Is 52:1-3). He is the restorer, the rebuilder and He wants to restore what was stolen from you! (Is 61).
Not only will he restore and rebuild, but He will use what the Enemy tried to hurt you with for greater good (Gen 50:18-20), for HIS glory, and to defeat the Enemy!

What has happened to you, through you, in you during ALL of this - this is YOUR TESTIMONY. And how does God say that we can overcome the Enemy? By the blood of the Lamb AND by the word of OUR testimony (Rev 12:10-11). So why do you think Satan is trying so hard to make you feel like a failure? Because he knows how powerful your testimony is! Don't hide behind "shame" or "failure" -
You ARE victorious and you WILL be used by God to glorify His name, for "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: 'Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.' "(1 Cor 1:27-31)
Yes, Lord - take all of this death and bring resurrection life into it and make it Yours - For YOUR Glory - Amen!