Dear Freckles: I Miss the Simple Things
This is one audio you won't want to miss!
Hello, everyone!
This week, I have a treat for you. I'm blessed every week to listen to your stories and read your emails. You pour your hearts out to me while seeking God for advice. I mean it when I say, you have blessed me in ways you don't even know. You've given me strength on the hard days and being here for you has given me a renewed sense of purpose.
As I listen to your stories, though they are all different, there's a common theme: Though you want to hope for your loved one's recovery, you are weary of being hurt. There's a fine line between "being there" for them and getting your heart trampled on.
I believe that God put me in this position to let you know that in Him, you can safely put your hope. When our faith in our friend or family member wavers, we can continue to trust God. This is not blind hope but safe hope. It doesn't mean we can close our eyes to the reality of addiction or stop enforcing boundaries when they are broken.
The Christian life was never promised to be easy. But it was promised to be joyful.
Hard, but happy.
When things are tough and life isn't going as we planned, where do we find joy? We rejoice in our hope.
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."
This is why I'm here. To encourage you in your hope. I could tell you all of the awful, terrible things that happened as a result of my husband's addiction and there are times I will, but what I really want is to show you what the love of God can do.
As you know, once a month I've been posting an excerpt from my personal journals in The Grey Diaries to show you my journey from where I was to where I am today. Though the story I've been sharing with you is mine, it is largely also my husband's. I've tried to be respectful of his story as it's not my place to tell it but in order to give you a true picture of how God's love can change a life, he has graciously allowed me to share his letters to me, with you.
I normally post photos from my "real life" in these posts but I won't for this one, I don't want to ruin it!
At the time he wrote this letter, he had just entered treatment. If you caught last month's post in The Grey Diaries you saw my side of the story.
This is his.
The Grey Diaries | His Story
Does your loved one have an addiction? There is reason to hope for recovery from addiction! With God, your hope is safe. Read this true story of a husband willing to fight for his marriage and his recovery, and a wife trusting God to pull him through. Do you need the power of hope in your life? Start here!
Dear Freckles,
The days are going by and there are some, that feel a lot longer than they should be. Some go by very fast but from the beginning of the day, until the day ends, I think of you.
I know that this is a difficult time for you and for our family but I want to encourage you to be strong.
The love inside of you is magnificent.
I could never have imagined you would be the kind of person that you are until difficult times came and you persevered with this light around you that I can only say must be the Holy Spirit. He’s constantly surrounding your heart.
I don’t know the reason why God is making us go through this but I know one thing, the end result is going to be good. Healing is under way for all of the things that made us hurt and made us feel uncomfortable in this moment.
I can feel the stress that you feel sometimes in the tone of your voice. I would like to find the right words to comfort you when you don’t feel good. When you’re sad. Or when you’re feeling the stress of this situation.
Sometimes, I wonder how this got to the point where it is. It all happened so fast. It feels like I looked up and I looked down and suddenly, everything changed.
But here I am. I’m fighting. I’m fighting hard to be the man I need to be, in order to guide this family down a good road to the future.
I love you and I want to make you feel safe. I want to see our kids grow. And I want to see our beautiful family back together so we can go above and beyond everything that we dreamed.
I’ve heard a lot of success stories here. Families who’ve been reunited. People’s lives, completely restored.
And I haven’t even been here two weeks! Although, it feels like two months already and it seems like this is just the beginning of a very long, long road. A road that’s going to need a lot of patience. A lot of love. And more than anything, a lot of faith.
I strongly believe in this, even though there are days that I feel desperate. Where I take a walk in the morning and I see the sunrise and I think, “How many days is it going to be, before I wake up next to you?”. Before I see the baby running around with his bottle of milk in the morning? Or, our son, cuddling, before he asks for his bowl of cereal. Or you, waiting for your morning coffee before you fully wake up, or smile. Yes, it looks like simple things but those are the things that for the last few years of my life, I’ve been used to and so badly miss.
I’m thirsty for the love of God. I feel desperate for it. I want to feel His blessing over our family.
Leah, I know you must be feeling upset and you probably have many reasons why. This is not what you were expecting to be happening this far into our marriage. I know that my mistakes have likely put us in this place. By my relapse and everything else that I did wrong. But I’m going to ask you to trust me in just this one thing: That I will do everything to restore our beautiful family and get us in the place where God wants us to be. And I know He wants us to be in a good place.
I’m not daydreaming. I’m not living an illusion. I just know what I want in my life and what I am going to fight for.
I love you. I love you more than you think that I do.
You are and you have been, the most interesting person I have ever met. And I want you to know that once we get over all of this, that life is going to be different. And the sunrise is going to meet all of us, together.
I love you,
Your Husband
