Category: Personal Reflections

The Gift of Christian Community in Betrayal Trauma

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In church on Sunday, the sermon topic was biblical community. One question has stayed with me: Can I follow Jesus the way He intended me to without letting other followers into my life?

I tried to live without that community for many years. I believed in God, and I knew I had accepted Jesus’ gift of salvation, but I wasn’t living in community. I thought I was protecting myself from being hurt by other believers the way I had been before.

I’ve also been thinking about community in relation to my own healing from betrayal. When someone you trusted betrays you, it can make the world feel unsafe. Not only did my husband betray our marriage covenant, but my former longtime best friend betrayed me too. She was the “other person.” Since discovery, I have wondered what is true, who is safe, and whether I can let anyone close again. It can feel easier to pull back and try to carry the pain by myself. But that isn’t the way God wants me to follow Jesus.

Acts 2:42 says the early believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. Their fellowship wasn’t just sitting together for a few hours and then going home. They shared life. They noticed when someone had a need and stepped in to help (Acts 2:44–45). They were learning to follow Jesus together.

I found that kind of community when I joined Unseen Beauty, a support group for betrayed wives. Before then, I had not found anyone who understood the pain of betrayal and could sit with me in it. I didn’t have to explain every layer of the experience before I felt understood. Their presence helped me feel less alone. Their faith helped remind me that my story and my healing were still in God’s hands.

I need people who help me grow, too. Proverbs 27:17 says that one person sharpens another. For me, that can look like encouragement, honest questions, prayer, or someone reminding me of what is true when fear or shame is speaking loudly. It also means being willing to receive help. I don’t have to pretend I’m fine. I need people who will keep pointing me toward Jesus, even when things are hard. I have found that kind of encouragement in Unseen Beauty.

Sometimes we need people to help us carry what feels too heavy. Galatians 6:2 tells us to bear one another’s burdens. Betrayal can leave me carrying grief, confusion, fear, and exhaustion. Sometimes a friend’s help is simply listening without trying to fix everything. Sometimes it’s a text, a meal, a prayer, or remembering to ask how I’m doing after a difficult conversation or appointment. Letting someone care for me doesn’t mean I’m weak or that I lack faith. God often cares for us through the people He puts in our lives.

I also know that not every group or Christian friendship is automatically safe. We still need wisdom. Trust takes time. Someone who cares about me should not pressure me to minimize the harm, rush forgiveness, trust before trust has been rebuilt, or make a decision before I’m ready. Grace and truth both matter. I need people who can make room for honesty, respect my boundaries, and point me toward Christ.

Another thing I thought about from Sunday’s sermon is that the care we receive can help us care for someone else. Acts 2 describes the believers gathering and sharing life together, and says the Lord added to their number (Acts 2:46–47). Jesus said people would know His disciples by their love for one another (John 13:35). The care I’ve received through Unseen Beauty has helped me see how I might be there for another woman – to listen, encourage her, and help her find wise support as she walks through betrayal and considers healthy boundaries. Romans 12:5 says that though we are many, we are one body in Christ, and we belong to one another.

I’m grateful I don’t have to follow Jesus alone. I can ask myself, Who knows me well enough to help me keep following Him? And who might God be inviting me to know more deeply, so I can walk with her too?

Community hasn’t erased the betrayal or made healing happen overnight. But God has used faithful women in my life to remind me of what is true, help carry what feels too heavy, and walk beside me as I take the next step. I am very grateful for that!

When I Didn’t Hold Firm

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Yesterday morning, I didn’t hold firm to one of my boundaries. I felt myself becoming very triggered, and instead of walking away, I stayed in the conversation. I knew I was becoming overwhelmed, but I kept talking and trying to work through something when I was already too flooded to work through it well. I let myself spiral into an emotional place I haven’t been in almost a year, and honestly, it is a place I never want to see again.

When I finally started to come back to normal, I felt ashamed. I had failed to keep a promise I made to myself. I don’t like saying that I failed, but that is what happened. I had hoped that after everything I have learned and all the work I have done, I would respond differently. I wanted to recognize what was happening, pause, hold my boundary, and walk away before I fell that far. But I didn’t, and I was disappointed in myself.

I think part of what hurt so much afterward was knowing that I had let myself down. These boundaries are important to me. I didn’t make them casually. I put them in place because I know what happens to me when a difficult conversation goes too far and I become overwhelmed. I know how quickly fear and hurt can take over, and I know how difficult it can be to climb back out of that emotional pit once I am there. I had made a promise to myself that I would step away before I reached that place again, and this time I didn’t keep that promise.

So I went back and read my boundary statement. I needed to remind myself why I had written it in the first place. I am a child of God. I am beloved and valuable. I am free and responsible to choose what I will participate in. My boundaries help me live in that truth.

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” I don’t think that means I should build walls around myself or avoid anything difficult, but I do think there is wisdom in recognizing that I have a responsibility to guard what I continue participating in. For me, sometimes guarding my heart means recognizing when a conversation is no longer productive and stepping away.

Holding my boundaries is part of being good to myself. They are not about punishing my husband or controlling his behavior. They are about recognizing what is mine to choose. I can decide when a conversation is no longer healthy for me. I can decide when I need to stop talking and walk away. I can choose not to keep participating in something that is pulling me farther and farther away from being grounded in truth.

I wish I had done that. I wish I had recognized sooner how overwhelmed I was becoming and stepped away. I wish I had kept the promise I made to myself. I don’t want to brush past that or tell myself it didn’t matter, because it did. There is something here for me to learn. I need to recognize the warning signs sooner. I need to listen when I know I am becoming flooded. And when I know I need to step away, I need to actually step away.

But I also don’t want to take this failure and turn it into shame. I can be disappointed in the choice I made without condemning myself for making it. Romans 8:1 says, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” That doesn’t mean I pretend I did everything right. It doesn’t mean there aren’t things I need to own or do differently. It means my failure does not change who I am in Christ.

Hebrews 4:16 tells me that I can approach God’s throne of grace with confidence so that I can receive mercy and find grace when I need it. And I needed it yesterday morning.

I am so thankful that God is near to me even when I mess up. I don’t have to come to God only when I have responded perfectly. I can come to Him when I am disappointed in myself, when I wish I had done better, and when I know I need His help to make a different choice next time. His grace doesn’t excuse what happened. His grace gives me somewhere to go with it.

I am reminded about something I say to my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson when he is learning something new. Sometimes he gets frustrated when he can’t do something the first time. I look at him and say in an encouraging voice, “Try again.”

I don’t say it because it doesn’t matter that he didn’t get it right. I say it because I know he is learning. I know that not getting something the first time doesn’t mean he can’t learn how to do it. He may need another attempt. Maybe several more attempts. So I encourage him to try again.

I think I need to give myself some of that same grace.

I failed to hold my boundary. I don’t like that, and I want to learn from it. But I get to try again.

And I’m sure there will be a next time. There will probably be another difficult conversation, another trigger, another moment when fear or hurt starts rising inside of me. I cannot promise myself that I will never feel that way again. What I can do is keep learning to recognize it sooner and make a different choice when it happens.

Maybe next time I will recognize what is happening a little sooner. Maybe next time I will stop the conversation before I am completely overwhelmed. Maybe next time I will keep the promise I made to myself.

Lamentations 3:22–23 says that because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, His compassions never fail, and His mercies are new every morning. Those verses have always been especially meaningful to me because Great Is Thy Faithfulness is my favorite hymn. I have loved that hymn for years, but today the truth behind it feels a little more personal.

God’s faithfulness is not dependent on mine.

I failed to keep a promise I made to myself, but God did not fail me. His mercy was still there when I finally climbed out of that emotional pit. His grace was still there when I was disappointed in myself. His faithfulness did not change because I had a bad morning.

Maybe that is part of what “try again” means for me. It isn’t me promising that I will get everything right next time. It is knowing that because God is faithful, I can get back up and keep growing.

I want to be good to myself by keeping the boundaries I have set and I never want to see that emotional pit again. I know how dark it feels down there, and I don’t want to willingly keep walking toward a place that I know is harmful to me.

One bad morning doesn’t erase the progress I have made, but I also don’t want to waste what happened by refusing to learn from it. I failed to hold my boundary. I let myself down, and I don’t like that. But God was still near. His grace was still available. His faithfulness never changed.

Tomorrow His mercies will be new again. And when the next opportunity comes, I can remember what I so often tell my grandson.

Try again.

More Than Words

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In the early 90s, it seemed like every guy who could get his hands on a guitar learned how to play More Than Words by Extreme to impress a girl. My husband was one of those guys. We were early in our dating relationship when he picked up his guitar and played and sang it to me. I was young and in love, and of course I thought it was romantic. I mean, what girl wouldn’t want the guy she was falling in love with to pick up a guitar and sing a love song to her?

I’ve thought about that song several times lately, and the irony of it isn’t lost on me now. Because I have been waiting for for a long time for more than words.

Words do matter to me. I want to hear “I love you.” I want an apology when someone hurts me. I want someone to tell me they understand. I want to hear that things are going to be different. And for a long time, I think words gave me hope. Maybe sometimes they gave me enough hope that I didn’t look very closely at what came after them. I heard a lot of “I’m sorry.” I heard a lot of “I won’t do it again” I heard promises that things were going to change. I wanted to believe those words and sometimes I did. But eventually words that aren’t followed by change start to lose their meaning.

I didn’t understand that when I was a young woman listening to him play his guitar. I probably thought love was something you proved with big romantic gestures. Flowers. Love songs. Saying the right things. Maybe that is part of love. Those things can be meaningful. But thirty-plus years of marriage have taught me that love is usually proven in much less romantic ways.

It is keeping your word when nobody is reminding you. It is paying attention when someone tells you they are hurting. It is changing behavior when you realize what you are doing is causing harm. It is keeping commitments. It is telling the truth when the truth is uncomfortable. It is respecting a boundary even when you don’t like it. It is doing the work you said you were going to do without someone having to ask whether you did it. It is consistency.

Maybe that’s what I mean when I say I need more than words. I don’t need more promises. I don’t need to hear that this time is going to be different. I don’t need another apology followed by another explanation of why the same thing happened again. I don’t need to be convinced that he means it this time. I don’t expect perfection. I expect learning and learning should eventually show changed behavior.

I know this is a season where there are going to be mistakes. Learning a different way of living and responding after years of doing things one way isn’t going to happen overnight. Grace leaves room for mistakes. But grace doesn’t mean pretending that repeated patterns are growth. If something happens and he recognizes that it hurt me, I need him to learn from it. If he understands something today that he didn’t understand yesterday, eventually that understanding should change the way he responds tomorrow. If he apologizes for a behavior, eventually I should see less of that behavior. Not because I reminded him. Not because I explained it one more time. Not because I managed his recovery well enough to get him there. Because he learned.

And learning should eventually produce fruit. John the Baptist said, “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8). I keep coming back to that. Repentance isn’t just saying words about what happened. It isn’t feeling terrible about it. It isn’t promising not to do it again. Those things may be part of repentance, but eventually repentance becomes visible. There should be fruit.

Maybe right now some of that fruit is still small. Maybe it looks like catching an old behavior sooner. Taking responsibility without being asked. Respecting a boundary the first time. Following through on something he said he would do. Choosing honesty when hiding would be easier. Recognizing my pain without immediately defending himself against it. I don’t need promises that fruit is coming. I need time to watch what grows.

Because after more than thirty years of words, they don’t make me feel safe anymore. Words can’t rebuild trust by themselves. Words can’t convince me that something has changed. Only the fruit that follows them can do that.

It is strange to think about that young woman sitting there listening to the man she loved play More Than Words on his guitar. She couldn’t possibly have known what the next thirty years would hold. She didn’t know how much those words would eventually mean to her, although not the way the writer of the song intended.

I don’t need someone to sing me a love song anymore. I need a love that becomes visible in ordinary, consistent faithfulness. Maybe that is what I have been asking for all along.

–Aimee
September 1, 2026

I Thought I Would Be More Excited

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I thought I would be more excited. They are finally building our house. After five years of talking about this, planning for it, waiting, changing plans, waiting some more, dealing with financing and permits and all the other things that had to happen to get us here, there is finally equipment sitting outside. The builders have staked out the house. They are clearing the ground. The permit is approved. It is actually happening. Everybody is excited… except I’m not.

This journey started five years ago, in August 2021, when our son put his house up for sale and moved back home. We had this idea that we would find enough land where we could all build and live near each other. In January 2022, we found the property. We bought it on February 22, 2022. My husband and our son actually signed the closing papers at 2:22 p.m. on 2/22/22. It was one of those funny little details that made the whole thing feel even more special. At that point, I thought I knew what we were building.

I didn’t know anything about my husband’s addiction or the betrayal in our marriage. I wouldn’t begin to learn about any of that until September 8, 2023. When we bought this property, I was planning a future based on the marriage I believed I had. I had no idea how much my understanding of my marriage, my husband, myself, and our future was going to change. But the plan for the property kept moving forward.

Our son and daughter-in-law finally moved into their house in July 2025. We put our house up for sale and moved in with them that October so we could move forward with building ours. Even that move happened during a very uncertain time in our marriage. I originally moved into a separate bedroom. I said I was going to stay there for 30 days because I needed the space. I made it two weeks before I moved back into the bedroom with him.

I think about that differently now. I knew I needed space, but I didn’t trust myself enough to keep taking the space I needed. I wanted things to be better. I wanted to move forward. I wanted our marriage to heal. And I think sometimes wanting those things so badly has made me move forward before I was actually ready. Now, almost a year later, I am asking for space again. This time I am trying to trust myself enough not to rush out of it just because my husband wants to move forward or because I wish I was ready. I am learning that wanting something to be better doesn’t mean it is better. Wanting to be ready doesn’t mean I am ready. And wanting there to be fruit doesn’t make the fruit appear.

And right in the middle of all of that, after this really long wait, they are finally building our house. I have waited five years for this. I have spent countless hours thinking about this house, drawing plans, changing plans, making decisions, figuring out how we were going to pay for it, selling our old house, moving in with our kids, dealing with permits and contractors and all the little things that had to happen before somebody could finally put a piece of equipment in the dirt and start building. Now they are doing it, and I look outside and don’t feel excited.

I’m glad they’re building it. I want the house. I’m thankful that we finally got the permit and that things are moving forward. But there is this huge question mark hanging over all of it. What is my life going to look like in that house? Am I even going to live there? Is it ever really going to be my home? Those are horrible questions to have running through my head while everyone else is celebrating breaking ground, but they are honest questions because I don’t know what is going to happen with my marriage.

I want this new house to represent something new for us. I want it to be a place where we start a different chapter of our marriage. I want the relationship we have inside those walls to be different from the relationship we had before. But a new house can’t create a new marriage. New walls don’t create safety. A new bedroom doesn’t create intimacy. A new kitchen doesn’t create connection. A new address doesn’t change old patterns. There has to actually be something new.

And right now, that is where I am struggling. I don’t expect perfection, but I do expect learning. I expect repentance to eventually produce fruit. Matthew 3:8 says, “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” I can’t make that fruit appear just because the house is being built. I can’t convince myself that everything is going to be okay because I desperately want it to be okay. And I can’t build the kind of marriage I want by myself.

The builders can build the house. They have blueprints. They have measurements. They know where the walls go and where the doors and windows belong. They can look at the plans and know what they are building toward. I wish I had a blueprint like that for the rest of my life. I wish somebody could show me what happens next. I wish I knew whether RD is going to do the work necessary to build something different with me. I wish I knew whether the changes will last. I wish I knew whether we will eventually move into that house together and whether it will feel safe and peaceful and really become our home.

I don’t know. Maybe that is why I can’t feel the excitement everyone expects me to feel. For five years, the question was whether we would ever get this house built. Now that the house is finally being built, the question has become whether the life I imagined living there is going to exist. I thought breaking ground would feel like arriving somewhere. Instead, I still feel like I am standing in the unknown.

But maybe I don’t have to know yet. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells me to trust in the Lord with all my heart and not lean on my own understanding. I have gone back to those words many times in my life when I couldn’t see what God was doing. Trusting God has never meant that I suddenly understood everything or that I liked what was happening. Sometimes it has simply meant admitting that I don’t know what happens next and trusting that He does.

So I’ll watch the builders build the house based on the blueprints I made and trust God with the parts of my life for which I don’t have a blueprint. I don’t know whether this marriage will become what I hope it can become. I don’t know what my life will look like when those walls are finished. I don’t even know whether that house will become the home I imagined when we bought this land on February 22, 2022.

I wish I knew. I wish I could look at all that equipment outside and just be excited that after five years, this is finally happening. Maybe someday I will find that excitement, but for today, I am giving myself permission to just be still.

-Aimee
August 29, 2026

How Bright Is the Room?

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Yesterday, I attended a webinar called Sobriety, Safety, and Healing After Betrayal with Dr. Jake Porter. There was so much good information shared, but one idea really stayed with me.

Dr. Porter compared sobriety to a light switch. It’s either on or off. But safety is more like a dimmer switch. The light switch can be on, but if the dimmer is all the way down at zero, there still isn’t any light. This explains how my husband can be sober but I can still be searching for emotional safety.

That made me think about how I communicate what I’m feeling. It is okay to say, “I don’t feel safe,” but it may be more helpful to say, “I feel less safe than I did yesterday,” or, “I feel safer than I did last week.”

When I think about safety on a scale from zero to ten, I can see how the number can move up and down during the healing process, and probably throughout the rest of life. Something my husband does may move me toward feeling safer, while something else may move me back down again. Feeling safer doesn’t mean trust has been completely restored, and feeling less safe doesn’t mean every bit of progress has been lost.

I’ve also been thinking about how a marriage is a lot like a house. A house has different rooms, and in this house every room has its own light switch and dimmer. In the same way, there are different rooms within a marriage. I may feel a seven in one room and only a two in another. I may feel fairly safe with my husband in one area while still feeling very unsafe with him in another. I want to be very clear that I am not speaking about physical safety. That should always be at a 10.

Looking at safety this way is also helping me understand where I need boundaries. If the safety in one room is at a seven, I may not need as many boundaries there. But if another room is at a two, then I need to look carefully at what boundaries I need in that area.

When my husband and I were talking about this, he pointed out that the boundary scale almost works in the opposite direction from the safety scale. If my safety is at a two, I may need a level eight boundary. If my safety is at a nine, I may need only a level one boundary. The less safe I feel in a particular room, the stronger my boundaries may need to be there.

Those boundaries are not meant to punish my husband or control him. They help protect me in the places where safety and trust have not yet been rebuilt. As safety grows through rigorous honesty, transparency, vulnerability, humility, and changed behavior, some of those boundaries may be able to change too.

Communicating where I am in each room can give my husband a more honest picture of how his choices are affecting my sense of safety. I’m not responsible for managing how he feels about the number, and I don’t have to tell him how to fix it. I am giving him an honest picture of where the light is growing brighter and where the room is still dark.

There was a lot of good information in the webinar, but the part about the dimmer switch really stuck with me. It helped me see that safety is not something I either have or don’t have. It can move up and down a little at a time. Maybe it is because I’m an electrician’s wife, but thinking about safety this way gives me a clearer way to understand and express what I am feeling, both to myself and to my husband.

-Aimee
September 17, 2026

Stop Chasing the Gerbil

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I recently read a story about a woman whose son got a gerbil. One day the gerbil got out of its cage, and every time someone in the family saw it running through the house, complete chaos broke out. Everyone would drop whatever they were doing and try to catch the gerbil. They would chase it around the house and under furniture, trying to get it back into its cage, but they could never catch it.

Eventually, the woman just gave up trying. She didn’t stop caring about the gerbil or hope something bad happened to it. She just stopped dropping everything and joining in the chaos every time the gerbil appeared. Then one day, the gerbil came out, walked right up to her, stopped in front of her, and let her pick it up and put it back in the cage, where it apparently lived happily for the rest of its little gerbil life.

I think I have spent a lot of my life chasing the gerbil. When there is a problem, I want to figure it out. When someone I love doesn’t know what to do, I want to help them figure out what to do. When something doesn’t make sense, I want to understand it. When someone doesn’t understand me, I explain. When something has been forgotten, I remind. When someone is upset, I want to help make it better. Those aren’t necessarily bad things. In a lot of areas of my life, those qualities have served me really well.

But I am starting to realize that somewhere along the way, especially in my marriage and throughout this healing process, helping turned into carrying. Supporting turned into managing. Loving sometimes turned into taking responsibility for things that were never actually mine to be responsible for.

Every time a gerbil ran across the room, I chased it. Why did he do that? What does he need to understand? How can I explain this differently so he finally gets it? What should he do differently next time? What is he missing in his recovery? Did he remember the appointment? Does he understand why this hurt me? What does he need to do to repair this? What does he need to do now?

I have spent so much time trying to figure things out for him. Sometimes he even asks me to. “What should I do?” has become a question I am realizing I don’t have to answer. He can figure it out. That’s easy to write it, but it doesn’t feel simple at all.

Galatians 6:2 tells us to “bear one another’s burdens,” but just a few verses later Galatians 6:5 says, “each will have to bear his own load.” I am starting to learn the difference. There are burdens we are supposed to help one another carry. That’s part of loving people. But that doesn’t mean I am supposed to pick up someone else’s load and carry it for them.

My husband’s recovery is his load. His choices are his load. Remembering his commitments is his load. Looking at his own calendar is his load. Finding information that is available to him is his load. Figuring out what to do when he doesn’t know what to do is his load. His relationship with God is his load. His fear, disappointment, frustration, loneliness and uncertainty are things I can care about deeply without believing it is my responsibility to make them go away.

I think that is where not chasing the gerbil gets hard for me. It isn’t just about deciding I am not going to fix things for him anymore. I have to be willing to live with what happens when I don’t.

If I don’t remind him, what if he forgets? If I don’t explain it again, what if he never understands? If I don’t tell him what he should do, what if he does the wrong thing? If I stop trying to move recovery forward, what if he doesn’t move forward? If I stop trying to make our marriage healthier, what if he doesn’t do his part?

And maybe the question underneath all of those questions is the one that scares me the most. What if I stop chasing the gerbil and nothing happens? What if I stop doing the things I have been doing and he doesn’t pick up his load? What if he doesn’t grow? What if he doesn’t seek God? What if he doesn’t do the work? What if our marriage doesn’t become what I desperately want it to become?

That’s scary because chasing the gerbil gives me the feeling that at least I am doing something. Even when it is exhausting me, I can convince myself that maybe if I explain it one more time, find the right resource, ask the right question, point out the right pattern or tell him what I need, something will finally click.

But maybe part of my healing is accepting that I cannot make it click. I can’t do his recovery for him. I can’t make him understand something he isn’t willing or ready to understand. I can’t make him remember. I can’t make him stop and think before he reacts. I can’t make him seek God. I can’t make him learn from his mistakes. And I can’t make him become a safe husband by explaining to him how to become one. I can only pay attention to what he chooses to do with the information and opportunities he already has.

That doesn’t mean I am giving up on him. It doesn’t mean I am giving up on my marriage. It doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens. I think for a long time I would have confused stepping back with not loving someone enough. Now I am starting to see that there is a difference between loving someone and taking responsibility for them.

I can care that he is confused without solving his confusion. I can care that he is anxious without immediately reassuring him. I can know that he is hurting without making it my responsibility to stop the hurt. I can want him to grow without teaching him how to grow. I can want our marriage to heal without taking responsibility for making it heal.

And maybe the hardest part is that I have to let his choices give me information. If I stop reminding him, I get to see whether he learns to remember. If I stop telling him what he should do, I get to see what he chooses to do. If I stop explaining the same thing over and over, I get to see whether he seeks understanding somewhere besides me. If I stop moving the relationship forward, I get to see whether he does the work that makes moving forward possible. That feels incredibly vulnerable because I may not like what I learn.

But there is another part of this that I am just beginning to understand. When I am constantly stepping in, explaining, reminding, fixing, researching, teaching and trying to keep everything moving forward, I may not only be doing work that belongs to my husband. I may also be getting in the middle of work that belongs to God.

Maybe my husband needs to feel confused sometimes. Maybe he needs to sit with not knowing what to do. Maybe he needs to experience the consequences of forgetting something instead of having me remind him. Maybe he needs to wrestle with God instead of coming to me for the answer. Maybe some of the discomfort I have been trying so hard to relieve is the very discomfort God can use to teach him something.

I don’t know what God is doing in my husband. I don’t know what choices he will make. And I don’t know what will happen in our marriage if I stop trying to keep everything moving in the direction I desperately want it to go. That is where this becomes about more than not chasing a gerbil. It becomes about trusting God with the outcome.

Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” I have always thought about that verse during the times when I couldn’t figure something out. But maybe there is another kind of trust God is asking from me now. Maybe it isn’t just, God, I can’t figure this out, so I am going to trust You. Maybe sometimes it is, God, I probably could keep trying to figure this out, but I am beginning to understand that this isn’t mine to figure out.

My responsibility before God is for my own choices, my own words, my own obedience, my own healing and my own heart. I can tell the truth without making someone understand it. I can have a boundary without making someone like it. I can walk away from an unhealthy interaction without convincing the other person that it was unhealthy. I can let another adult wrestle with a problem without jumping in and solving it. And I can leave room for God to work in places where I have been frantically trying to do the work myself. I think that may be the hardest part. I have to stop chasing the gerbil without knowing what happens next.

Maybe my husband picks up his load. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he grows in ways I have prayed for. Maybe there are things I learn that are painful. I don’t know yet. But I am beginning to understand that loving my husband does not require me to control the outcome. Trusting God does not mean believing He will make everything turn out the way I want it to. It means trusting Him enough to obey Him with what belongs to me and surrender what doesn’t. Maybe it isn’t giving up at all. Maybe it’s finally realizing that I don’t have to chase every gerbil that gets loose.

Some things were never mine to catch.

Faithfulness Isn’t Always Feeling Better

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Sometimes faithfulness looks like hurting and choosing not to make the hurt worse.

Yesterday sucked. There really isn’t a better way to say it. It was one of those days that took me right back to what life used to feel like before recovery started. The selfishness, the harshness, the excuses. Some of those old behaviors showed up again, and I hate how quickly they can bring back old pain. I think that’s one of the hardest parts of healing from betrayal. Something can happen today, but the pain isn’t only about today. It reminds me of all the other times, all the other hurt, all the years when this was normal and I didn’t understand why things felt the way they did. I hate that after everything we have been through and all the work that has been done, we can have a day that feels so much like the old days.

We had strong thunderstorms yesterday, so I couldn’t spend time outside like I wanted to. Normally I can go out to the flower field and find something that needs done. I can pull weeds, cut flowers, plant something, move something. There is always something to do out there. But yesterday I couldn’t do that, so I ended up driving an hour one way to an Amish store alone and then sitting inside watching TV. At one point he came in and asked me what was wrong and if something had happened. I was pretty mad about that. How could he not know what was wrong? He said he knew about us, but he thought maybe something else had happened. No. Nothing else happened. This was enough.

I was sad. I was angry. And I wanted the pain to stop. I thought about drinking. I’ve used alcohol before to numb what I didn’t want to feel, and for a little while it works. But the problem is still there when the alcohol wears off, and usually I’ve just added something else to feel bad about. So yesterday I didn’t drink. I prayed. A lot. Eventually I went to bed pretty early. I didn’t sleep very well. I kept waking up throughout the night, and this morning I don’t feel rested. I’m still sad. The problem isn’t fixed. The pain didn’t disappear because I prayed instead of drinking.

But maybe that’s the point I’m beginning to understand. Faithfulness doesn’t always make me feel better immediately. Sometimes faithfulness is being hurt and choosing not to make the hurt worse. Psalm 62:8 says, “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” Yesterday I had a choice about where I was going to pour out everything I was feeling. I could try to numb it, or I could take it to God. So I took it to God. Not nicely. Not with some perfectly worded prayer. I was hurt. I was angry. I was disappointed. And I told Him.

I couldn’t control the choices my husband was making. I couldn’t control whether he slipped back into old behaviors. But I could choose whether I went back to mine. His sliding backward does not mean I have to slide backward with him. I think that is something I really need to remember.

I don’t know what happens from here. I don’t know if yesterday was one really bad day or if there is something more that needs to be dealt with. That isn’t mine to figure out this morning. This morning I am tired. I’m still sad. I’m still hurt. But I didn’t make the hurt worse.

Maybe faithfulness today simply means I take this pain back to God again. Maybe it means I tell Him, “This still hurts. I still hate this. I don’t want to be here again. Help me trust You with today.”

Because sometimes choosing God doesn’t immediately change how I feel. Sometimes faithfulness is waking up the next morning still hurting and choosing Him again.

-Aimee
August 12, 2026

I Stopped Searching for the Exit

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I’ve been working through chapter 3 of Women of the Word, and one sentence really stuck with me. Jen Wilkin describes several ways we commonly approach the Bible, and as I read through them, I realized I had spent years asking the wrong question.

Almost every time I opened my Bible or Bible App, I was asking, “How can this help me?”

To be fair, there are seasons when that is exactly where I am. When life is falling apart, I do need God’s comfort. David, Elijah and even Jesus all sought comfort from God. Jesus said his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Then Jesus prayed and asked God to take “this cup” from him and then followed with “not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:38-39).

There is nothing wrong with bringing our pain to God. But somewhere along the way, I began to realize that Scripture wasn’t inviting me to make myself (or anyone else) the center of every verse. It was inviting me to know the One who is at the center of every verse.

All I used to want was for God to calm the storm. I wanted answers. I wanted healing. I wanted certainty about the future of my marriage. But in the middle of all of those wants, something started to change. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but I stopped searching for the exit. I started looking for God. Instead of asking, “God, how do I escape this?” I started asking, “God, who are You in the middle of this?”

The best thing is that the more I’m getting to know God, the less desperate I am becoming for escape. I’m not consumed with asking Him why anymore. I’m no longer consumed with escaping the pain. I’m not sitting and sulking in my pain. I have shifted my focus from me to God. When I read Paul’s letters now, I notice something I used to miss. Some of the most joy-filled words in Scripture were written from a prison cell. His circumstances didn’t determine his peace because his peace wasn’t rooted in his circumstances. It was rooted in Christ.

I’m still learning. There are still times when I open my Bible looking for answers about me. But more and more, I’m learning to ask “Who is God?”

Along this road I have discovered something I didn’t expect. The more I get to know God, the more everything else begins to make sense.

Not because I have all the answers, but because I am really getting to know the One who does.

-Aimee

Choosing Light … Again

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There are some entries that are easy to write because I can clearly see what God has been teaching me. Then there are entries like this one. The ones where I almost don’t want to write because I wish the story had gone differently.

This weekend I hit a breaking point. Not the kind where everything falls apart all at once. It was quieter than that. It was disappointment on top of disappointment until I didn’t want to carry it anymore. One of the deepest lies God has been exposing in my heart over the last several months is the lie that I’m not enough. Not enough to be chosen. Not enough to be pursued. Not enough to stop having to prove my worth. This weekend I realized another lie had been quietly growing right beside it: I’m optional.

I don’t want to be someone’s option. I want to be someone’s choice. I want to know what it feels like to be chosen over and over again.

Saturday felt like little sparks of connection that kept going out before they ever became a fire. Every time I thought we were connecting, it disappeared just as quickly. By the end of the day, my heart was exhausted. Instead of taking that pain to Jesus like I’ve been learning to do, I reached for something that would numb it.

For a little while, I drifted.

I let go of the anchor that had been holding me steady and reached for something else to quiet the pain.

I’m not proud of that. But I want to be honest about my own journey. Healing isn’t a straight line. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s incredibly messy… and this weekend was messy.

What surprised me is what God did in the middle of that mess.

Somewhere in the middle of all of it, walls came down. Conversations became more honest than they’ve been in a long time. I finally found words for the ache I’ve been carrying. The ache of feeling unseen. The ache of wondering if I will ever truly be chosen. For the first time in a long time, I think my husband didn’t just hear my words. I think he heard my heart.

There wasn’t one big dramatic moment. Instead, it was soft and slow. We missed church because we overslept, then spent the afternoon building our new chicken coop together. At one point I was kneeling on the ground stapling chicken wire while he stood above me fastening the sides. I reached up and flirted with him in a way I haven’t in a long time. He looked down and asked if he was in my way. I smiled and said, “No.” He smiled back, and we went back to work.

Later that evening we made a frozen pizza and sat on our bed having a little picnic while we talked. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about those moments, and maybe that’s exactly what made them so meaningful. They felt normal. They felt like friendship again. They felt like the kind of connection I’ve been missing. I felt seen, and maybe for the first time in a long time, he understood why this journey has been so painful.

Today I find myself holding two things at the same time: hope and caution. Part of me wonders if this was just another flicker that will fade away. Another part of me wonders if this is the small spark that God will gently breathe into a steady fire. The truth is, I don’t know, and I don’t have to know today. Real change isn’t measured by one conversation or one good day. Real change produces fruit over time.

So instead of trying to predict the future, I’m choosing something else.

I’m choosing light.

Again.

I’m choosing to bring my failures into the light instead of hiding them. I’m choosing to thank God for the good moments without demanding they become guarantees. I’m choosing to anchor my hope in Jesus instead of another person’s ability to love me perfectly.

One of the reasons I started Rooted & Anchored was because I didn’t want to pretend that following Jesus means having everything together. It doesn’t. Sometimes following Jesus means admitting that I let go of the anchor. It means admitting that I drifted and tried to quiet my pain in a way that could never truly heal it.

But letting go of the anchor does not mean I can’t reach for it again. The good news is that Jesus never lets go of me. He is still inviting me back. Still reminding me who I am. Still replacing lies with truth. Still teaching me that my identity isn’t found in whether someone else chooses me. It is found in the One who already has.

So today, that’s what I’m doing. I’m reaching for the anchor again. I’m choosing light again. And tomorrow, if I need to, I’ll choose it again.

– Aimee
July 20, 2026

The Road Called Freedom

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I recently finished Session Five, Worthless, in Jennie Allen’s The Lie You Don’t Know You Believe. She ended the teaching with one simple sentence that I have not been able to stop thinking about: You free changes the world. I have been thinking about those words a lot.

Looking back over my life, I have realized that I learned how to survive at a very young age. My parents divorced when I was 5. My birth mother was not consistently present in my life. I lost my grandma, who was the one constant in my childhood, when I was twelve years old. At fifteen, my life was completely uprooted when we moved across the country. At eighteen, I became pregnant, and my son’s biological father walked away. Later came years of raising children with Cystic Fibrosis, hospital rooms, fear, grief, losing Melanie, fighting for Rosie’s life, losing Rosie, and eventually discovering my husband’s betrayal.

I do not say any of that because I want people to feel sorry for me. I say it because when I look back, I can see that survival became my default way of living. I learned how to keep going, how to handle the next crisis, and how to push down what I was feeling long enough to figure out what needed to be done. I learned how to function while hurting. Somewhere along the way, survival stopped being something I did during hard seasons. It became the way I lived.

Then came September 8, 2023. When my husband’s addiction and infidelity was disclosed, every bit of my energy went into surviving again. Every day became about making it to the next day. I spent countless hours trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to understand why, trying to decide whether our marriage could survive, and trying to quiet the lies that suddenly seemed louder than the truth. I carried fear, grief, anger, confusion, and exhaustion all at the same time. I was doing what I had always done. I was surviving.

But eventually, survival was not enough anymore. One day, I drank so much tequila trying to escape the pain that I passed out. I couldn’t deal with the pain anymore, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I tried to numb it. I wanted relief, even if it was only temporary. Looking back, I see that day as a wake-up call. Escaping was not healing, and numbing was not freedom. I had reached the end of myself.

I had spent most of my life asking, “How do I survive this?” God began teaching me to ask a different question: What would it look like to be free? At first, I thought I was looking for freedom. What I know now is that I was looking for Jesus, and He was leading me toward freedom.

Over the last year and a half, God has been taking me down a different road. It is not a road where all the pain disappeared, every question was answered, or my marriage was instantly restored. It is a road where He has been slowly removing the chains I did not even realize I was carrying. He has been showing me the lies I believed about myself: that I had to earn my worth, that I had to perform, that I had to be useful, that if I didn’t measure up I didn’t matter, and that my value could be determined by someone else’s choices.

Instead, He has been teaching me who I really am. I am His beloved daughter. I am loved before I accomplish anything and before I get everything right. I am loved because of who He is, not because of what I do.

One of the other things that stood out to me in the session was the idea that a relationship can be better than it was before because the people in it have gone through conflict and worked it out. That really hit me when I thought about my marriage.

For years, I thought my husband and I were going through conflict. The truth is, we went around it. We moved on. We got quiet. We let time pass. But we didn’t really deal with what was underneath it. You can’t work through what’s been hidden.

Now, for the first time in our marriage, we are learning to tell the truth, face what is real, and work through conflict instead of simply going around it. It’s slow. It’s painful. It’s painfully slow. But it is different. We are not just going through conflict anymore. We are trying to work it out.

I don’t know exactly what the final outcome of our marriage will be, but I do know that God is doing a different work in us. Maybe that’s what redemption looks like. Not instant change, pretending the damage didn’t happen, or rushing back to the way things were, but faithful perseverance. One difficult conversation, one truth told, one surrendered heart, and one step of obedience at a time.

The other thought that has stayed with me is this: People who are still chained spend all their energy trying to survive, but free people have something left to give. That sentence stopped me because I have spent so much of my life using all of my energy to survive.

When you are chained by grief, fear, shame, striving, control, or lies, there’s not much left for anything else. Every day becomes about getting through the day. As I have allowed Jesus to set me free, I have noticed something changing. I am beginning to have room again. Room to notice other people, encourage someone else, dream, serve from love instead of striving, tell the truth about what I have walked through, and let God use my story.

I believe God can use the circumstances of my life and the things I have walked through to help someone else walk through them. But I can’t help another person find freedom if I am still completely chained to the pain. That doesn’t mean I have to be perfectly healed before God can use me. It does mean I have to keep allowing Him to lead me out of captivity. I have to keep surrendering what I can’t carry, letting Him expose the lies, and follow Him.

Second Corinthians 1:3–4 says that God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the comfort we have received from Him. God does not waste our pain. He frees us so we can point others toward freedom. He heals us so we can point people to the Healer.

I’m walking on the road called freedom now. I still have days when the old lies whisper, moments when fear feels familiar, and places where God is uncovering wounds I didn’t know were there. I still have a long way to go, but I don’t want to go back to the road called survival. Survival helped me endure things I had to walk through, but it was never meant to become my permanent home.

Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Jesus did not set me free so that I could keep living as though I were chained. He did not bring me this far so I could return to the old road. He is teaching me how to live differently; not merely surviving, pretending, numbing, or striving to earn my worth, but rooted in Him, anchored in His truth, and walking toward freedom.

Maybe the free really do change the world, not because they are strong survivors, but because they know the One who broke their chains.

-Aimee
July 16, 2026