My friend Cindy Beall, author extraordinaire of Healing Your Marriage When Trust is Broken, is featuring my story on her blog today.

Click here to read her post.

If you haven’t read my marriage restoration story yet, please do. It isn’t ME but it is a big part of what makes up ME. Like I think all of our stories are. It doesn’t (and shouldn’t) define us, but it really does affect

the words we say,

what we do,

and the beliefs we live out on a daily basis.

So live in that today: that although your past is important and it bleeds into the fabric of who you are, it does not make up the stuff of who you are.

Do you agree? How have you seen that played out in your life?

Buy Cindy’s book here.

Why didn’t you tell me?

Didn’t you think how I would feel?

I actually had to sit down in a chair when she came at me. “To be honest, Cass, it had nothing to do with you. We didn’t tell anyone that didn’t actually find out themselves. We just needed time to heal and fix our marriage.”

Several years ago, before this blog, before any speaking engagements, before anything like this at all, I was asked to share my “story” in front of the women at my church.

Like a testimony.

I spent weeks writing and rewriting what I would say. I had a group pray for me. And then with flushed neck I got up in front of 85 women, many of whom had known me for years. I explained to them all I’d cheated on my husband.

It didn’t end there, of course. I talked about grace and miracles and forgiveness and rescue. And while it was not my most eloquent talk ever, it was certainly my most courageous.

At the end, the buzz of female voices reached a pitch that usually make men leave the room. It was then a friend walked up to me.

Why didn’t SHE know?

Why wasn’t SHE told?

SHE felt unimportant because she had not been “in the know.”

Of course I’d hurt others in my reckless crash through life those years ago. I’d hurt friends and sisters and parents and aunts, all of whom thought I was one person but turned out to be someone else.

But I was still healing too.

And my trembling friend, still reeling from my public revelation, made the story I’d struggled to tell through bare and vulnerable heart, somehow about her. Her pain was not about personal loss but about feeling left out.

It might have worked if she’d truly wanted to help me walk through it all years ago, but it had nothing to do with her helping someone in need. It had everything to do with her feeling as if she didn’t know something important.

And it pointed back to her.

My pain and our marriage journey was not about her but she’d made it about her feelings of being excluded

Oh, but I’m not innocent either.

Chad sometimes calls me in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of my struggle to get dinner on, help a nine-year-old write her book report and make sure my little one hasn’t abused the scissors or permanent markers.

“I’m going to have to work late tonight,” he says. “There is just so much going on and I can’t seem to get it all done. Plus I’ve got a raging migraine.”

My first thought isn’t about his stress or his headache.

It’s about ME and how it will affect ME.

I’M going to have to get the kid’s bathed and in bed. I’M going to have to clean up dinner on my own. I’M going to have to do it all by MYSELF without him. Because at that point I’ve reduced him to a tool to help me get my work accomplished. He is no longer a person but a means to an end.

His pain and stress is not about me but I’ve twisted it to focus on my own personal needs.

Selfishness.

It takes effort sometimes to remove myself from the situation that is evidently about someone else and listen, empathize and love. But it is imperative.

I can’t truly love someone if I’m thinking about myself. Any empathy is lost between the words ME and MYSELF and I stop listening as soon as my own problems and feelings of inadequacy lift up and plug up my ears.

But I’m going to try.

I’ll try not to be the friend who says {or thinks}, “What about me?”

Or the wife who says, “Can you be home, not so we can be together but so that you can take out the trash and feed the dog?”

Instead I want to be the one who says,

What can I do to help?

Do you struggle with this? Has anyone ever done this to you?

This is my fourth try on this post.

In fact, I had entire essay written about our upcoming move, but that is when we thought we knew exactly the story would end, what God was speaking to us and when I thought I could package up the story with a seamless length of packing tape. Clear, tight and succinct.

But as it turns out I can’t. I’m still in the middle of this story and I’m still waiting.

I’ve had to write and rewrite this story over and over again. A little like God is writing and rewriting it in my life.

“I’ve never moved before, Lord. Help me.”

These were the words of my nine year old as she sat down to dinner two weeks ago. Verbatim. I’d just finished sharing that we as a family would be moving and describing to her why this all would be such a grand adventure.

Yes, you can stay at your school.

No, we’ll just be moving a couple cities over.

Oh, and you’ll be sharing a room with your sister.

If you’d have asked us ten years ago it was all about moving up and out. Bigger house. More expensive fixtures. Nicer neighborhood. Richer neighbors. Did I mention bigger house? All of that would have been our choice if we would have had the right kind of money.

But now, the house we have lived in for the last 7 and a half years {in a nice neighborhood with expensive fixtures} is slipping through our fingers. How humbling, scary and confusing. Without explaining every last boring detail, this decision began as a financial necessity that isn’t, shall we say, our first choice.

I cried when it became official. Yes. For one day before Thanksgiving. I cried in the morning, as I walked the dog and then again as I fell asleep at night.

The next morning I was done crying.

And now, with our own home on the market and the next home just beyond our neat, little reach, I don’t know how to tie up this story. Or package up this story, I might say.

That is the hard part because I’m living in the in between. It’s a margin where the only thing I can see is nice big pencil doodled question mark.

There are boxes stacked in my hallway and in my dining room. A FOR SALE sign in my front yard that feels like it’s not only dug into the ground but into my own heart. And instead of watching television in the evenings I’m packing up the last eight years of my life into hundreds of $0.67 UHaul boxes.

In the midst of all of this, we’ve noticed our own priorities shifting. I’m caring less about a “pretty” house and more about a community rich with people. I’m worrying less about new-er fixtures, new-er paint and new-er flooring and more about if there are kids on the block. That is the only refreshing thing about this season of my life.

When is the move, my mother asks.

How long until we sleep in the next house, my girls ask.

Will we be near anyone we know, I ask.

I don’t know. I simply don’t know. That is the only way I can answer those questions. With wide-eyed, God-requesting wonder, I do not know.

This essay will not be packed up tidily with clear {ZIP} tape. No way to neatly package it in a box labled, “TOYS” and “GIRLS ROOM.”

FRAGILE.

THIS END UP.

HEAVY.

It just won’t.

We are moving. I’m not sure where or when. And I don’t know what the future holds.

I’ll echo my nine year old in this: “Lord, It’s been a long time since I moved. Help me.”

Some exciting things are coming my way, your way, on this blog.

1. This blog is getting a remodel. I will be moving to WordPress soon and doing a complete redesign. Vicki at Swank Web Style has been working on it for me and I can’t wait. I will still be at www.sarahmarkley.com but it will be a new look, a new platform, but the same old me. I like it that way. I like me.

(Oh, and if ya’ll have any WordPress tips you can send them my way. I will be a newbie)

2. I am going to be writing monthly for a brand new website/blog that I can’t talk about yet, but oh my freak am I excited about it!! Some other bloggers who I’m sure you are familiar with will be also participating in this new endeavor (and to be crazy honest, I can’t believe I’m on the same short list with some of these women). I can’t wait! As soon as I can share, I will.

3. Later in the summer (after I’m up with my new blog design) I am going to be sharing my full story with you all. Some of you know that a little over 6 years ago my marriage completely collapsed, but with all the grace in the world, I made it out the other side. We made it out the other side better than we had ever been in the beginning. I’ve done a lot of horrible things in my life and I’ve hurt a lot of people, but God is gracious and perfect and created beauty from my ashes.

So, stay tuned. I can’t wait to share. I really can’t.

4. Still working on my book which, incidentally, is about #3. I’m a slow writer, if you can believe it. At least a slow writer when I’m a full time mom, a full time wife, a part time Bible study teacher, a part time do-whatever-my-husband-needs-done-for-the-business person. I don’t have a lot of time to devote to writing, but I AM plodding along. I have no news about that but that I’m still working hard.

So this is me excited. This is me happy. And this is me exhausted. I guess that’s how it should be, right?

You are brave.

You can run that extra mile.

Take a drink of water. Breathe in the cool air this morning. Relax your fists and uncurl the toes in your running shoes and go. Finish. Run to your goal. You are braver than you think and the extra mile won’t kill you.

You can raise your children in this world.

Speak the truth into their ears over dinner, before bed and while they sleep. Be the strength in their lives. Fill their hearts with good things, kind words, teach them and discipline them. Then… let go. You can do it. You are braver than you think.

You can tell your story boldly.

Take out the pencil. Open the laptop. And write. Tell. Good things come out of opening your heart and your mouth. You feel alone, but you aren’t and at the same time you have something unique to say. Speak rightly and truly and with chosen words. Tell your story. You are braver than you think.

You are brave.

Two weeks ago Our Creative Community published a three part series I wrote on the Mount Hermon writers conference. Here’s part 2.

PART 2 – STORY

My genre is memoir. So at Mount Hermon this year, I decided to take the non-fiction morning workshop track.

I ended up getting stuck in room full of writers working on eschatology books, how-to’s teaching high school from a Christian worldview, and guides to working through the aftermath of divorce. Not what I had in mind.

I just barely fit into the category of non-fiction because even though memoir is technically non-fiction, it should be written more with fiction elements in mind. Story arc, climax, resolution, character development – all of these are almost as important as anything else.

Story. On the first day of class, our instructor, Kay Marshall Strom, author of over 20 books, told us that my story is not the story. My story is only an illustration of a universal truth.

Whatever story I am going to tell is not only a part of the monumental story of humanity, but it is just a vehicle for truths that God wants to tell through me.

Among other things, Kay writes about international issues in the Sudan, India and Indonesia. She inspired me. She makes me want to be a part of the community who is saying something.

My truths? Hope. Redemption. Restoration. My story? You’ll have to wait for the book.