Land Mines

Today was hard.  One of those days that starts with optimism and hope...maybe healing is around the corner, maybe he's repentant, maybe he IS the person I thought he was, maybe he does care, maybe I CAN forgive...
               and then, just when I think I'm in the clear...
                                                                   another land mine.

I walk through my day, through the responsibilities at work, packing up the remnants of my home of 13 years, celebrating life events with dear friends...trying to hide the wounds from the shrapnel I just plucked from my heart.

An acquaintance, someone who taught my kids in Sunday school, who sat in my Bible studies, who knows my family...asked a friend about me because she noticed she hadn't seen me with him for a while. My friend told her the shell of the story without all of the gory details, and the acquaintance told the friend she had seen him out a couple of times with someone, and didn't know how to tell me.

The explosion that happens in my mind and heart as I hear the story relayed to me, travels to my stomach, to my bowels, to my head and suddenly the room is spinning, I am breathless and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I was told by him that 'nothing happened in town...it was all out of town.' I text him...I ask if he did anything in town, and he confesses he did. Once again, the heart, the stomach, the bowels, the head, the spinning, the shallow breath, the cotton mouth...and the realization...IT. WILL. NEVER. END.

I want it to stop. I want to run. I will get cash from the sale of our house in a few days. I have a car. I can go anywhere...start over...somewhere where no one knows me, knows him, knows the story.  A place where I can go to church without wondering who knows what, who thinks I was to blame, who feels pity, who knew before I did. Somewhere that holds hope and space to re-create my life, somewhere to heal and taste freedom. A place where no one knows this wasn't supposed to happen to me...where no one expects me to be 'Karen..Bible study teacher, worship leader, business owner, mentor, friend, mom'. Where no one is looking for me to be 'super Christian'...able to get over this faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful to hold it together than a locomotive, able to forgive the most heinous acts in a single bound.

My friends remind me that I will NEVER know the truth.  I will never be able to trust that he has told me it all.  I will never know the extent to which he went to deceive me. I will never know how dark and twisted the truth is...and further more they say, I don't need to know.

I will never be able to escape the land mines.

                      AND

I don't know if I can live with that.    


I tell myself I can leave it all behind...a business that does fine without me; the stuff -all of it tainted with memories of OUR life; the kids that don't want to be around me anyway...I'm a reminder of all that is broken...they want the cat; the friends that I fear are growing weary...it's been 7 months...it's time to move on and stop dwelling on it and rehearsing it.
What else is here for me? More memories of restaurants we celebrated anniversaries and birthdays in? More questions of where he met 'them'...what they did? I long to be somewhere where every turn doesn't hold a ghost, a shadow, a reminder that my marriage was a farce...a facade...a lie.


The ground underneath me feels like I'm walking on jello. I want off the roller coaster. I didn't sign up for a life long ticket on this ride. I don't HAVE to stay. I HAVE a choice. I HAVE a voice. I HAVE the option to exit the ride. And tonight, I'm going to live in the tension of that...of not having to decide tonight whether there is enough beauty in the ashes worth staying for.