I Made The Mistake Of Worshipping You Instead Of God

I want to apologize for the many days you come home and I give you less than a backwards glance and grudging kiss, barely acknowledging the quickly diminishing smile on your face.

I want to apologize for the days you walk in the door after a grueling day of caring for other people’s needs and I unload on you all that has gone wrong during the day, forgetting to even ask about your own.

I’m sorry for sharing every burden of my heart, real and conjured up, and somehow expect you to fix them all with the right look, the proper words I rehearsed for you in my head, the perfectly timed solutions that I have prepared in my own heart for you to do.

I want to apologize to you for the expectations that I tie around your back on any given day that no man should be expected to bear.

I’m sorry for agonizing about what you think of me. You have never even hinted that you weren’t content in who I am, despite my flaws in person and appearance. I’m sorry for filling in the blanks in my own head, assuming you think things you don’t. I’m sorry for all of the times I took offense so easily because love, true love, doesn’t do that.

The fear still clings to me and refuses to let go. Because you see, perfect love casts out fear. If I loved you more — true, honest, sacrificial love, love that has no room for selfish ambition or vain conceit — and worshipped you less, then maybe the fear would dispel.

And that is my greatest regret: I worship you. I love you as I didn’t know I could love another person. You are better than my greatest dream of who you would be. I admire and respect you more greatly than anyone I have ever known. When I see you worship our God, when I hear you speak words of wisdom, grace, and compassion, and when I think of your faithfulness you had to me at one time and to God, I am in wonder again as to how God put us together. As the mother of your children, I am ridiculously proud of you and to be the one who stands beside you until death. I am so very blessed.

Still, I’m so sorry. I have put a weight on you that was never intended to be yours to bear. We have said it often in our home and remind each other of it frequently, but I still somehow missed it all this time in relation to you and me: we worship our way into sin and we have to worship our way out of it. We chose family over everything.

I have made you an idol. I have asked too much of you, forgetting where my true worship needs to be directed. In you, I too often worship the creation more than the Creator. I’m sorry I made you feel I took you for granted.

I ask your forgiveness. All the times I’ve manipulated or thrown a pity party or just a tantrum, protected myself and pushed you away, it was all because I’ve been worshipping you.

I miss laying next to you at night, talking about our children. There’s not a night that goes by that I lay down and don’t think about you. If you’re okay. I ask myself what I did wrong to deserve this hurt. Why I was not good enough. There are so many questions, but I know I will never get an answer.

I pray to God he gives me the strength to let you go. I pray for strength in our children. I pray to have that first kiss again at that one stop sign. To be a family again. Because our family was the best. People envied us. We have always had the most enduring love story. And I don’t know if this is the end.

I’m sorry for the pain, the lies. The one man who is my everything will always be my best friend.