Broken Dreams and Beautiful Harmonies, Part 4

A discussion on the downfall of my marriage

This is a continuation of Broken Dreams and Beautiful Harmonies, Part 3.

You can read Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE.

“Of one thing I am perfectly sure, God’s story never ends with ‘ashes’”
-Elisabeth Elliot

Coming to grips with who I really, really was deep down inside was scary.

Shocking, actually. Once the mirror was held up to my own face and I saw what my deepest greed, pride and selfishness had done to the people I love… it brought me to my knees.

An Evy’s Tree campaign we did in 2015. Dreaming big turned into selfishness, greed and pride. It is possible to dream big and work your toushy off, but at what cost?

Here’s the thing about brokenness, it truly changes you if you let it. The problem is often when people are close to being fully broken, they refuse to let go of their pride. You can really only change when you lay all pride down. Without taking the pride out of your life, eventually you put yourself back together again and you become the same person you were before.

I know because I have had moments of brokenness over my life. But this. This was different.

I guess if you don’t learn to relinquish pride you will continue to be broken over and over until you have nothing left. And that’s what happened to me. I didn’t learn my lesson soon enough. Apparently I’m one of those who had to be crushed to pieces before I saw what I was. And when I say crushed, I mean everything was crushed. Everything. My life had been smashed to ruins and ashes. The only thing that was left was dust. Dust that I would pick up and sift through and look for pieces of myself in, hoping to remember who I was.

When that happens, you don’t have room for pride anymore.

When your life is burned to the ground, you don’t have time to point the finger or really care who did what. The blame game stops. At that point it becomes all about rebuilding. You have to truly have come to the end of yourself to look at who you were and know you never want to be that person again. Rebuilding that same person becomes impossible. You must become someone new.

I suppose that is a rebirth.

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
-Galatians 2:20

Rebirth is slow. But it starts with knowing that you are at your end. And that without some sort of help, you can’t get better.

I definitely didn’t change over night. I still have not finished changing. I have so much work to do still. I am not the person I want to be yet. But I’m not ashes anymore either. I do see beauty and glory, and I can’t wait to tell you about it.

Today I’m going to tell you about the part of my story when I was reduced to ashes. This is when I knew I had destroyed myself. This is the point where I saw, and I knew, that if I didn’t start changing, I would lose myself and maybe even my kids.

Ashes. Just ashes. That’s all we had.

This next part you are going to read is hard. And I’ve really struggled writing it because I think most people would rather blame other people than me. It’s also very sad. There is no really great way to say it all. It’s just so sad. But before you read what I am about to tell you, please hear me:

My selfishness, my pride, my greed that started nearly twenty years ago, was my undoing.
My blind spots that I refused to fix eventually caused my crash.
And it was deadly. For all of us.

Here’s the truth friends: You can keep up a facade for a long, long time. I believe I had mine up even before I started dating Brandon. I hid it behind all my good works, my hard work, and even my Christianity. If I had humbled myself, submitted, surrendered, made different choices years and years ago, I would not have gotten here. This destruction is on me. If we as humans are ever going to change and get better we have got take ownership. Radical, extreme ownership. We must. We must stop shaming and blaming others for our mistakes. If we all took extreme ownership for everything, and meant it with a humble heart, I could guarantee the world would be a much kinder place.

So as I begin to dive into part 4, let my story be a lesson to you. If you do not humble yourself in your marriages and in your relationships, if you don’t surrender your pride and your selfishness, please know that ashes are what you are headed for.

But if you surrender… you will find joy. Even in the midst of sorrow. You will find grace. And love. You will find glory.

And if your life is in ashes now…God’s story doesn’t end there. If you can find surrender and humility, ashes are just the beginning. It can end with beauty, and I’ve seen it.

Now let’s dive into to Part 4: