[Couragedearheart]

MBIB,

Free will must be entirely free, not limited. Otherwise it means nothing. There’s no half measures.  It also means that when a person has made the choice to be selfless, to give, to turn the other cheek, to be kind a gracious and gentle when the easier choice would be a selfish one, we are being shown a small measure of what Gods love for us looks like.

And when we choose him, we come without fear, obligation, we aren’t forced we have every choice on earth available to us and we are choosing God.

Like love this is a choosing every day, over and over to do the sometimes joyous and sometimes painfully difficult thing of trying to show love in our actions and intentions.

To prevent murder god would have to limit free will, and a limited free will in any way is no longer truly free. Where would the line be drawn, should God prevent the free will of murders or thieves, or the lady who steals sugar packets?

God has chosen to love and forgive us, and offer again and again and again....while we are free to not chose him at all.

When I look at the wounds my husband is carrying.....it’s hard to believe anyone could ever heal from such a place...yet even through this MLC....I can see the healing that’s already happening......yet healing for him is traumatic for me.....or perhaps it only feels traumatic because I am being forced to tear down any illusions I am carrying about myself and the obligations of others too me.

Does he deserve to heal, or do I deserve to not be hurt? I am a nurse....and I know that often the healing is as painful, and sometimes more so than the initial injury.

I don’t know that this answers any of your questions...but it is the understanding I have from what I have seen and experienced of God.

[Finding Joy]

You have an eloquent way with words Courage!  Well spoken!

[Couragedearheart]

I was looking at quotes from “The Problem of Pain” and stumbled upon this one.


“Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.

If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had.”

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

[Anjae]

I am a nurse....and I know that often the healing is as painful, and sometimes more so than the initial injury.

Yes, but, at least here, people are given medicines for the pain. Pain often hinders healing. The idea that pain is good is puzzling. Body and brain do not work well with pain. Pain is not seen as a good thing here, but as what it is, a terrible thing that reduces the quality of life.

Where pain is importan is that it signals a problem, it is the acute "external" signal that something is going on inside. It is not supposed to be there for long, even if at times it does.

You have a rather odd, MLCer, Couragous. You are already seeing healing in him? Many of us have MLCers deep in Replay/for crisis for many years and no healing in sight. Yet, yours is already healing. What is the difference?

Could it be that yours is not having a full blown MCL, rather is having a bumpy midlife transition?

The idea of emotional/psichological pain as a good thing that leads to something greater is a religious/philosophical one that does not take in consideration the many that are forever permanently damaged by it or die because of it. No greater good comes to them.

And, for most, religious or not, nothing comes from pain other than more pain. The great transformation seems reserved to a selected few.

[Couragedearheart]

Anjae,

Healing means different things to different people. A person may recover from polio and never walk again yet consider themselves healed. Why assume the MLCer is so different. I have seen patients recover from the loss of a leg, yet never complete the remaining part of rehabilitation to learn to walk on a prosthetic, they remain in a wheelchair...yet consider themselves healed. So I think it is with MLC. It would make sense that most heal just enough to stop their own pain...and yet do not commit to the hard work of complete recovery. It is a choice.

If my H never heals to the point of trusting people but could live on his own with a pet and learn to love himself....would he still be broken?
My H was raised from birth to be the caregiver for others, and has done it to the point that it can take concerted effort to make him say he is hurt or uncomfortable or needs anything.  I didn’t see it at first....but over the years the coincidences added up and I pinned him down and questioned him till I got the truth. Any acknowledgement of his own needs over the needs of other gives him loud pervasive shame messages.

Now my H says he needs to be alone. To not have any obligations, he does things independently, he is standing up for himself, he see himself as a person. That is healing from where he started. Would I have even noticed all this if I wasn’t looking for it....no. 

From my own experience, and much of what we know about the affects of severe prolonged child abuse.....the brain shuts off the trauma until it is sufficiently healed/safe enough to deal with it.
Then one day the brain decides, okay, time to process.....and the floodgates open.

Does my MLCer talk to me more than most...maybe? Does his words and actions match hundreds of stories on HS, yes.

Could he be in transition....sure....time will tell....

But I’m curious why we have a delineation that only reconciliation is healing instead of the entire process. Because loving yourself requires trusting yourself and trusting yourself requires demonstrating that you can stand up for yourself and your perceived needs....
It’s a step in the process.

[Anjae]

Yes, healing means different things to different people, but when it comes to a wound (I'm speaking of a physical one) it is medically possible to assert if the wound is, or is not, healed. You're most surely familiar with pressure sores, wounds that hardly ever heal.

On HS when we talk about a healed MLCer we mean someone who is either fully out of MLC (MLC, not Replay) and had went back to be whole, or is close to the end of MLC.

We don't tend to consider a half baked MLCer healed. If the MLCer is half baked, the MLCer is not fully healed.

A MLCer that needs to be alone and have no responsabilities, tends to be what we call Replay. Replay is the most broken part of MLC, we do not see it as healed.

Maybe you are seeing different things, or maybe you are calling different things to what we call Replay, healed, etc.

We don't tend to have LBS saying that their MLCer in Replay is healing/healed, since Replay tends to be big destruction and most MLCers do not work on issues during Replay. Issues are usually dealt with after Replay.

But I’m curious why we have a delineation that only reconciliation is healing instead of the entire process.

We don't and I surely do not have it. What we have is that Replay does not equal healed, or even healing, since that tends to come afterwards.

However, HS is aimed at reconnection/reconciliation/save the marriage, a thing that will not happen for most of us. People like those stories, even if they are rare.

I am all for healed MLCers, but I don't like the fact that someone's healing is done at the expense of hurting others, at times almost literally since the MLCer tries to kill the LBS. I can think of far better ways of dealing with issues and I think MLC can be solved. To me, it is unecessary suffering to all involved. I am including myself and my MLC in the lot.

Perceived needs is different than real needs. MLCers tend to say they need the affair, and so on. They don't. It just causes more damage to all involved. As for stand up for themselves, pre-MLC J was good at it, so was I. It did not prevent MLC for both of us.

And his perceived need of OW1, etc. did not help him one bit. Nothing he has tried worked. It has been 13 years since he left,
There is nothing in his life similar to your husband's life. He just become addicted to MLC lifestyle and incapable of dealing with the growing mess his crisis kept creating.

[Treasur]

I agree that it is unanswerable in the sense of being able to go 'aha, 43'....but as a person of faith, I chewed on it....and tbh faith is inherently about belief in unseen and unknown things isn't it? So any wise person of faith asks themselves these questions sometimes.

Free will, yes. I think God allows rather than enforces. My best sense is that even when we turn left, God is always there quietly whispering that we can still turn right, that it is never too late to do so, that we are worth more, that we matter just bc we are here. That good fruit comes from good seed. That we can choose better.  But he won't force us to listen and he won't step in to save us from our own messy consequences until we decide to try to save ourselves. Then I think he shows up with an encouraging grin and a hand!

I don't know what happened to my xh or where God's hand was in it. Was it a necessary time of destruction for my xh to see and heal his own wounds and live a more healthy authentic life? Or a time of running away from his pain and the opportunity to heal and so creating more damage to eventually deal with? Or with time, both? Or how God balanced my needs against my then h's in our intersected story. Idk. Above my pay grade. I suppose my instinct is that when God is in the room, even in the most awful circumstances, there is more healing than destruction, more grace than confusion, more kindness than resentment. Fruits. So I could be wrong and my xh may be happy as a lamb and more healed than not....but if the damage and hurt caused on ones own path to others is never even acknowledged, something important is missing. Imho.

To be fair though, I am a bit too busy tidying up my own side of the street and focusing on my own seeds and fruit to do anything other than let God do his thing as he sees fit in my xh's life.

And I can't explain any of the awful things that Brain shared. But I do think God shows up in the broken pieces. I think even in these awful times we can see God moving in how people care for each other...in hospitals, and hospices and when the EMT show up. Hard to describe but you feel it when it's there, a kind of deep love that seems to bring out the best in some people at the worst of times.

Hmm, I wonder when God thinks we are 'healed'? Idk. Sounds like healing isn't an either-or but a process....maybe we decide when we are healed 'enough' for the time being? And of course we use metaphor but most of the healing we talk about here - for both LBS and for their ex/spouses or families - is mostly internal isn't it? Less easy to see or measure perhaps than a broken leg or a physical wound. Maybe we judge healed by its fruits....and the direction more than the end point like turning a big ship? Maybe healed is a feeling thing more than a factual absolute thing? But your discussion has made me muse on it for myself....when will I feel healed enough from this experience? Or is it more about no longer feeling broken by it? Idk.

Idk isn't always a comfortable spot but sometimes perhaps it is the most honest one.
Jmo with all its imperfections and human unknowns lol.