Now. And not yet.

Maybe healing doesn’t have to be the far off place we’ll never arrive; maybe healing is the now and not yet.

~Aundi Kolber

Good lord, we want it over, don't we? We want the pain gone. Banished. Never to darken our door again. We want to get on with our lives. To laugh again. To relegate "what happened" to the past and, fingers and toes crossed, something we never ever have to deal with again.

And we're getting there, yes? We're thinking about telling our therapist that we no longer need to come every week. Cause when we get there, we don't have a whole lot to say. And so we complain about random stuff – our jerk of a brother who isn't helping out with our elderly mom, our kids who roll their eyes at us, our office mate who takes credit for our work. But the infidelity? Well, it still stings sometimes. Our hearts beat a little faster when we drive by the street she used to live. But mostly? It's better. 

Or is it?

We think it's better but then he's late getting back from his guys' weekend and he's not answering texts.

We think it's better but then we watch a movie in which a husband cheats and the scenes are graphic and, ugh, sexy. And we wonder, was that what it was like?

We think it's better but then our friends invite us to their 20th wedding anniversary party and they look so happy and we think to ourselves, well, of course they are because their marriage isn't tainted by infidelity. Theirs is a real love story.

And then we think to ourselves, when will this ever be over? When will I ever be done with this pain? 

Now. And not yet.

You are healing. Have already healed in ways that you can scarcely imagine. Wasn't it just a few months ago, maybe years ago, when you couldn't go a day without sobbing. A day? An hour! 

Wasn't it weeks, maybe months ago, when you couldn't imagine staying with your husband for one more day while at the same time being unable to imagine leaving?

You are healing right now. But also...not yet.

Cause the thing with healing is that it's endless. There is no end point at which point the wound is entirely healed. Just as an x-ray will reveal a bone break from so long ago we have to think hard about whether it was our right or our left wrist, the injury of infidelity leaves its mark. 

And I know how disheartening that reality can feel. 

Because we're tired of hurting. 

I know that exhaustion. 

But I'm here, from your future, to tell you what I see. To tell you what I know.

When I look around, I see a family resurrected from ashes. I see a husband who reassembled himself from his broken bits into a man whose heart carries the weight of the pain he caused. 

I see a life that doesn't look exactly like the dream I had but that is nonetheless beautiful. 

I see the man who stood beside me at my mother's death bed. I see the man that stood beside me in my daughter's room in the psych ward. I see the man who wanted to be better. For me. For us. But especially for himself.

I ache when I imagine another's "perfect" marriage and then I remind myself that I know nothing of what happens between others, just as so many know nothing of my own.

I ache when yet another friend tells me that she discovered her husband's affair. It was years ago, it was months ago, it's going on still. And I assure them that I know their pain and that it will not feel like this forever. 

And I ache when I imagine any of my children going through the pain of infidelity because there was nothing in my lifetime of other pains that prepared for the agony of betrayal. And then I remind myself that they are stronger than they know. And that, if they do go through it, they will not feel that pain forever. And that I have taught them that pain is part of life and it's what we do with that pain, how we refuse to let it make us bitter, that keeps our hearts soft and open to all the beauty in our lives. 

You are healing, my secret sisters. Now. 

And not yet.