After my earlier post this week, I had some wonderful talks with many who are navigating through the fight for their own heart. As many have affirmed from their own journey, it’s no easy task. From underlying bitterness and resentment to blaming and even feeling justified, we have several land mines we must walk through each day in our journey towards personal healing and restoration.

Not to go unmentioned, as a few indicated, we must remain passionate to care for our spouse’s heart.  It should be on the forefront of our mind and dedication. However, for this series and the immediate thoughts of today, I’d like to stay focused on our own healing.

Somewhere, sometime, we ultimately must cry out to get healthy and healed and free, for me. (Yes, we hope there is a huge payout for my spouse, my children and my future, but stay with me on this emerging thought). If I’m doing it all just for my spouse, then I’ll stuff down what is really going on and look for the giant band-aid to simply save my marriage and calm things down right now. If I’m doing it all just to save the marriage, I’ll most likely not get real with my spouse or worse, refuse to get real with myself and confront the dysfunction inside of me. I have to want to get healthy for me. I remember saying to Samantha, “If I’m doing this all just to please you, I’m reverting back to codependency and just keeping you happy, rather than going deep into my soul to see repair and restoration which is what you want in the first place anyway right?” While she stood a bit confused, she could see the lights coming on inside of her and inside of me.

It’s common to start the initial journey towards healing to please our spouse and save our family. However, the right recovery protocol will eventually help you find that pretty soon, the motivation must be for me. If it is not, we are going to find ourselves frustrated and unable to dissect our true needs and dysfunction.

It in no way means we must marginalize our spouse, or keep our spouse out of our personal journey. It also in no way justifies that we need to go ‘find ourselves.’ Rather, it goes to the main artery of our motivations to launch out and remain in recovery.