What Do I Now?

I've made some wrong turns in regards to relationships, some that I've been fortunate enough to correct and some that I can't do absolutely anything about...so what do I do now? I accept my part, forgive myself as well as others and keep moving forward learning from my past mistakes. We have to let go and stop looking back, won't be able to reach for what's ahead and hold onto things of the past at the same time, it's just not possible. When we try to do this life becomes stagnate and when we're in this position we're no good to anyone especially ourselves. When we've been in an unhappy relationship for a long time a part of us wants to believe things are going to be okay but the other part knows it's not. It can be extremely difficult getting out of it, you literally feel stuck as if you're encased in cement; you don't want to stay but you don't want to go either. There's the fear of being alone, if there are children involved, the fear of being a single parent, the fear of never finding someone else and the ultimate fear for a lot of us growing old and dying alone. Fear can be a very powerful thing when you let it. So what do I do now? We have to confront this fear! Just saying that can be frightening for some people! I believe that most of the time wondering is worse than knowing, it's funny how we try to prepare ourselves for the worse case scenario-as if that's going to change anything. We create this movie in our minds based on how we perceive things to be and by the time we're finished making this horror film we don't can't even think straight let alone make a move! We subject ourselves to all of this mental and emotional torment convinced that we're just trying to prepare ourselves for our findings; that somehow if we knew more about what's going on than we can handle things a little better...NOT! No matter how much we try to brace ourselves there's still going to be some level pain. We can't keep avoiding the inevitable if we have suspicions, at some point and time we will need to face the truth. If you're not going to do anything once you've discovered the truth than please don't even bother looking for it! Doing this only makes matters worse for you. Okay let's just put it all out there! You suspect your man is involved with someone else, you confront him but he denies it; there's nothing you can do at this point but put your suspicions in your mental file cabinet until you have proof. Later you find proof- solid proof, so you confront him again, hold it right here-Ask yourself, do I really want the truth? If you get a confession this means you're going to have to do something about this but if he denies it; oh well than this means I don't have to deal with the heart ache. Either way it's not going to be pleasant. You can choose to confront him find out the truth and leave the relationship or put the blinders on hoping that if you pretend nothings wrong then it will all go away. Subconsciously we choose the latter, we could know he's lying but we don't want to face the pain of unfaithfulness, the broken trust, all the deceit and God forbid being without a man! Ladies we've got to stop this! That's how we end up settling for crumbs and men wind up having their cake and eating it too! We must set boundaries and stick to them, a man knows when your willing to settle; he knows when he's going to keep getting over and how does he know this? He can sense the fear of losing him, we reinforce this every time we let him get away with being unfaithful, yeah we may scream, curse and cry or give the silent treat for a while but he knows eventually...she'll come around because she doesn't want to be by herself. How insulting!(but true)Is it not? So now what? I'm so glad you asked! First you have to get strength that can only come from God, contrary to what we may believe we can't do anything without His help. With His help we are able to stop seeing what we wish we had, and start seeing what we really have; we can stop making excuses and lying to ourselves. His truth opens our spiritual eyes to every other truth , I believe when we have His insight we're no longer vulnerable when it comes to wrong relationships. My prayer is that every woman is able to see herself the way that our heavenly Father sees us,(1Corinthians 6:19-20) once this happens we will no longer need to be told "Don't Settle For Crumbs."