By Her View From Home 
Sometimes I’m wrong.
That’s it. That’s the story.
Shocking? It was to me, too! I mean, I knew I could be wrong about facts or an event’s time or someone’s name, but I’ve recently come to the life-altering realization that a whole aspect of my behavior and choices was not only not “the best” but entirely detrimental to myself and my marriage.
For years–years–I felt wronged. I was the injured party. I had every right to my bitterness, resentment, and outright anger. I mourned and was appalled by the hurt heaped upon me. I was being attacked, misunderstood, and perceived as something entirely unfair, for reasons wholly unfounded. And I was tired of it.
I confided in a few new but good friends about it, and they were immediately in my corner. Listeners. Advocates. Advisors. Prayer warriors.
Bolstered by their affirmation, further assured of my status as Innocent Victim, I ventured to loop another dear friend into my difficulty for the sake of commiseration: my mom. But my mom, ever my cheerleader, always an encourager, and there for me literally since birth, only asked me this: “That’s really how you see this?”
*record scratch* What?
In one conversation, I was called to the carpet for my own role in my marital misery. She saw my hurt, sure. She recognized my pain. She didn’t discount what I’d experienced. But lovingly, I was given example after example of how my own words and actions had belittled or brought about harm to the very person I was naming as my source of sorrow. The very person I’d vowed a lifetime to love.
My world was shaken, and I wanted to buck against the barrage, ”You don’t know the whole truth!” or, ”Why’d you wait so long to say anything?!” But rather than rail against and defend this unexpected onslaught of ownership, I felt relief. Like the scales were falling from my eyes, and my eyes needed to adjust to all they were taking in.
For weeks, I’ve had an uncomfortable awareness of the mess I’ve made (or at least the one I’ve helped make worse). My mom could only name the instances she and my dad had witnessed, but naming them opened up so much more evidence of my failings in the moments no one else was privy to. How my tongue and my decisions had devalued and defeated the human being closest to me.
There really has been hurt here. Unforeseen and undeserved. I didn’t fabricate that. But, in our case, I was going to allow it to become an irreparable chasm that it didn’t have to become. My commitment to being wounded and inability to see myself as a contributor to pain was steeping our relationship in a toxicity that was bound to leave scars if left uncorrected. Perhaps it already has. Too soon to tell. (Praise God we have a Savior who is familiar with scars.)
Though I’ve been remorseful and embarrassed, I can’t say enough about how grateful I am to be aware. To have been told truth. To have the opportunity to apologize and learn and correct where I have the power to do so and to trust, not in my husband, but in my Heavenly Father to bring about change and healing in us both.
by HVFH Contributor 
by Candice Smith 
by Stephanie Hanrahan 
