I spent years of my young life praying my parents would divorce, as it seemed like the only option for any peace in my family. I had witnessed my Dad hurt my Mom and attempt to kill her several times. The last time, he tried to kill us both. I absolutely believe our Guardian Angels protected us! Eventually Dad became seriously ill and the violence stopped.

This year, my husband went on a Life-Giving Wounds retreat, and I am now forever grateful to this ministry. My husband left with a lack of understanding of his pain and his story, but returned to me and our family with the gifts of knowledge of himself and his pain, and a deeper understanding of his story. He was understood on the level of the heart that only something like this ministry can give. He came home with a correction of “oh, it doesn’t affect me” to “it affects everything in my life.”

Rebuilding my trust in God’s goodness has been quite the disaster relief project. Some days it feels like only pebbles are being added to my rebuild; and other times it feels like the whole building collapses down upon me again and it’s time to start all over.

In addition to this invaluable spiritual support, we need to shore up strengths and acquire new skills to heighten and expand our ability to love. Understanding our temperament can help us do this. This is not a theory of fixed personality traits identifying unchanging characteristics that put people in a box. Rather, understanding temperament helps us identify our strong and weak tendencies to react in certain ways in certain situations. 

I was at a crossroads. My heart ached for this love to be true, I wanted so badly to believe it was for me, but I was so scared what that might mean. How silly! My life had changed 180 degrees over those 7 years, so what the heck was I waiting for? What was I scared of? I was scared that God would change his mind, like I thought love did when my parents divorced when I just a baby...