I think you all get the general idea that I never stopped loving Mike. I chose to put my feelings for him on the back burner, to try and stuff them away because I was determined to give my heart and soul to my husband. For years I wondered why Mike and I didn't work out and what it would have been like if it did. Would he love me the way my heart was begging to be loved? Would our marriage have been happy and full of life and love? But like I said, I put it all away because I wanted to be emotionally faithful to my husband. At the time I felt that he deserved that from me. Of course now looking back I know he didn't, but that's a whole other topic! So back to the happy stuff for now!
All of you know that last summer I found out that my husband of 10 years had been cheating on me in some form or another for 10 years. I knew of one that happened the week before we got pregnant with Riley and I had made the decision to stay with him and try to make it work. Long, long story short and lots of blog posts later, our marriage did not survive and there were many more affairs than the one he told me about. It's amazing how God chooses to work in mysterious ways. Obviously I was devastated and sickened by the news of my ex-husband. Things had gone downhill a lot since the news of the first affair about 6 years ago. Those of you that know me can testify to the fact that I gave my marriage everything I had. To the point that there was nothing left of me when he moved out. I knew who I had been as a wife, I knew who I was as a mom, as a friend, as a preschool teacher...as everything but my true self. I had given so much of myself and my happiness and the things I loved to Mike to try to make him happy, to try to make our life better, etc., that I had nothing left. It was terrifying.
Then one day I decided to see if Mike Roe was on facebook. This is something entirely out of character for me! Lo and behold, he was! For weeks I debated about contacting him or not. I was terrified, I was confused, I was hurting, I was lonely, I was angry. I was a bunch of things. But I finally got enough courage and I emailed him. I waited a long time but finally got a response back and he gave me his phone number in case I wanted to text. Again, completely out of character for me, I did! So at first we began texting. One of his first questions was how my husband was. So I told him that he was no longer and I told him why. We began talking about that. He was in total shock that someone would cheat on me, I was in total shock that he thought I was worthy of not being cheated on. (See, your mind plays some pretty cruel jokes on you when you've gone through something like I have.) We went back and forth for a couple days just texting. He confessed that he still loved me, all these years later. I confessed that I still loved him too but I also wasn't in a very good place with men and what I was going through. But Mike was there to listen to all the things I needed to say as I sorted through my heart's mess. It's funny how we hadn't talked in person or even through email or a phone in so many years, yet I was immediately comfortable with him. It was like years hadn't passed and I was at ease around him. He understood what I was feeling and he asked me a lot of hard questions that I needed to sort through in order to figure out what my heart wanted and what direction I was going. He was there for me, and even though he loved me, he was there to be my friend, to help with the hurt, to listen to the pain and to make me laugh in the midst of it all. I had a lot of fears though..."what if we were in love with the memory of what we had but the reality is that we don't know each other at all?" I was so afraid that I had put him up on this pedastool and the real Mike was a completely different person. I was afraid that we had both blown up the memory of our relationship so badly that the reality wouldn't hold up. I was of course afraid of being hurt again. But there was just something about him, like my heart had finally found home after so many years. As terrified as I was, he was safe. He was comforting and familiar, even though I hadn't really known him since I was 15 and even then it was only for a few months! We exchanged texts for quite a while and I didn't get a chance to save mine before they were deleted, but of course I saved his. Here's some of them....
"Jen, you were the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and I dearly wish I had you in my life."
"Jen, I would take you right now if I could. I have dreamed of that happening! Really. I loved you so much and I'm not sure I ever stopped."
"I hurt not being the one who got to be with you. I never would have cheated on you. I wish to God there was a chance."
(This is when I was still very cautious and very scared about even thinking about a new relationship!)
"Being with you was always just a dream. My heart is racing right now. I wonder if dreams come true?"
"I have loved you most of my life. That will never change. Whenever you are ready, I am here for you."
This next text is his response to me asking him if we were just in love with the memory of each other and what if there was nothing there at all.
"That's something that we would have to get together and figure out. But I know that the feelings I had for you never went away. I know my heart."
"Jen, it has been hard for me to talk to you over the past few days b/c I've thought you were gone from me forever."
"Do you think it's meant to be now?"
"I'm here for you, Jenni. I always will be. I really hope that if there's a chance and it is meant to be, we don't wait too long and then it doesn't work again."
"Jen, there's no need to cry. Everything will come out the way it's supposed to."
"Jen, in all reality, I never tried to find you again because it hurt. Your parents were the ones who split us up the first time. My life would be drastically different if they hadn't because I would have never left you! It is hard to talk to the person that I wanted to share my life with, and didn't get to. I would stop everything in my life for the chance to be with you! Only my kids do I hold in higher regard, and I know you are a good person, that's why I left you alone, but if ever I have the chance to be with you again I would and am taking it!"
"This is really hard but I might never get to say it again...I have always and still believe, that I would change any job or school, leave everything but my kids behind to be with you. You are my dream girl, high school sweetheart and everything else and I have loved you for as long as I can remember. All I would need is for you to ask. And that is all the truth of it."
(I was still unsure...)
"This hurts worse than I thought. I have needed you for so long. I pray it works the way I've dreamed."
"I hope you get it in your mind that I would do all I could to make you happy Jenni. Never forget it. I pray that you give me the chance to love you!"
There were a lot more text, but I think those sum it up pretty well. I was still terrified...terrified of opening my heart again, even more terrified of the judgment I would receive from a lot of people (which I did), terrified for my kids and the amount of change they were already going through...terrified. But he was a friend when I desperately needed one and I was the friend he desperately needed but didn't tell me until I discovered that for myself. So we decided to start slow, get to know each other first and take our friendship a baby step at a time. One of the best parts to me was to spend time with and talk to someone who knew me "pre-destruction" as I called my marriage to Mike Unrau at that time. Mike was safe...he loved me unconditionally and that was something very, very strange to me. I began to let myself out again, actually, I began to rediscover myself again. There's something that happens when you're a wife and mom and most of the time it's a good and natural thing...you lose yourself in your identity as wife and mom. But I let it get out of balance. I co-founded the CSPD Wives Association to try and support Mike, to try and understand why and how this job had led him to affairs. I was desperate to figure it out, to emerge myself in his world as much as I could to try and understand it better, but also to support him. I hated his job, hated what it had made him become, but knew that being a cop was his identity, so rather than fight it I decided to embrace it. I don't regret it by any means, I loved the CSPD wives with all my heart and made friendships there to last a lifetime, which was something I wasn't expecting. But I did the wives association for the wrong reasons...I so desperately wanted Mike to love me more than his job, so I figured if I embraced it maybe that would help. The reality, that I learned later, was that being a cop wasn't what caused Mike to become the person he became, it was his own doing and his own problems that started with the way he was raised, way before I came along. Obviously with Mike and I separating and him losing his job as a cop, I was no longer a CSPD Wife. Literally in one week I went from being a cop's wife and mom to losing everything in my world...my husband, the Wives Association, a lot of friends and basically my whole identity. I was still a mom of course, but I was a single mom. Oddly enough, it was actually a relief. Mike was so uninvolved with the kids anyway that I had felt like a single mom for years. Now I only had to take care of my kids and I and it was surprisingly refreshing. All of this left me stripped and feeling very naked, very alone...unsure of who I was and what this new future would be for the kids and I. I will briefly interrupt this story to say that I was also amazingly surrounded by people who showed me unbelievable love and support and for that I am forever grateful and incredibly blessed. But there was no one around me that had gone through what I was going through. No one who knew the pain of not only being cheated on their entire marriage, but had it publicized within the entire Police Department, desperately trying to protect my kids from the effect of it, fight off the media, go through the intense and long hours of interviews with CSPD about what I knew, and still try, somehow, to not completely crumble and fade away in the midst of the pain and the questions and the confusing turmoil.
But then there was Mike Roe. Both of our lives were amazingly complicated yet together was just pure and simple and wonderful. The truth is that I didn't know this man, I knew who he was 16 (almost 17 now) years ago, but neither one of us was even close to being the same person we were back then. It's incredibly hard to describe my love for him and our relationship. He was the immediate best friend that I had always longed for. I was blessed, I am blessed, to have many women in my life with whom I have fantastic friendship with. But this was different. Immediately I asked God if this is what it was supposed to be like?! Was this the kind of friendship and trust that He created for a husband and wife to have? We were friends first, which is something I will be forever grateful for. His life was pretty complicated as was mine...we both had two kids that were working their way through the loss of a parent in their home. Mine was a lot fresher, but Mike was going through a bad divorce as well, for reasons eerily similar to mine. And even though Mike was the husband and dad, he also knew what it was like to be cheated on and betrayed. He also knew what it was like to be treated the way I had been treated. He knew what it was like to be the one in the marriage that loved the other spouse more than they loved you. He knew the feeling of deep loss and he knew the feelings you get when your marriage fails, regardless of how or why. From the very beginning we both have said and have seen that this moment of us coming back together, 16 years later, was truly written and orchestrated by God. There's so many things that could have only happened at this time. Mike and I had run across each other so many times in the last 15 years but it wasn't the right time. We both believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that God had to mature us and prepare us for each other and even though we missed out on 15 years of each other's lives, we both had to walk our own roads to prepare us for when we could be together. I know that sounds disgustingly like a romantic notion, dreamed up in the head of a 15 year old in love...but it's the truth. I'm not saying that God's will was for us to marry the wrong people and His will was for our spouses to cheat on us, etc. But I do believe that we both chose our own road, made decisions based on what we wanted at the time, not necessarily what was God's perfect plan for us. But God took the broken pieces, He used what we had decided with our own free will, and brought them together and worked it out for His plan and purpose in our lives. It stinks that we both had to go through so much pain, but sometimes our own free will will lead us to that. God took the wreckage and used it to prepare us for what He had in store for our future. I believe this with my whole heart. And if I could do it all again, if we could do it all again, we would. For the incredible miracles that came from our choice to marry the wrong person were Michael, Riley, Daniel and Hayden. And those sweet, amazing little souls make all the pain and betrayal worth it. I would do it all again in a heartbeat if that meant they were created and I know Mike feels the same way.
Obviously, there is so much more. But for tonight I will leave it at that!
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