I’m about to get real with y’all. There are no pretty pictures to go along with this post. I normally try to post encouragement, uplifting posts, but not today.
I’m struggling. I have been for a few years, but the past several months…it’s been bad. Treading water, surviving, but never really living. Never thriving. There have been mountain top moments, but a lot of valleys and darkness. I have posted on marriage and parenting and living a Christian life…the areas that I struggle with. This with the hope that I could encourage myself to keep at it and work hard to achieve greatness in these areas. I have failed daily. Always in prayer that He could meet me where I was at and accomplish His plan.
From the beginning my husband has not been a particularly affectionate person. He has always been a workaholic, even before we were married, he was married to his job. I had thought that would change once we were married. It definitely did not. A few months after we were married, Rob was baptized and I felt like things were on the right track for awhile. Then the flood came a few years later, we lost everything and both of us gained a post traumatic stress disorder.
I clung to my faith after the flood, but there was no relief in sight. Extended family drama and the need to find a new church family threw me into a bit of tailspin for awhile. It threw Rob a lot further. After beginning to recover from that I began a little over five years ago to really pray for my husband. I prayed that he would see his need for relationship with God, that he would want to be a spiritual leader, that he would show me and our children the love we so desperately needed from him. I was not patient in this time though. I was seeking out ways to take care of myself to meet my own needs instead of waiting on God or my husband.
Gradually I saw some changes, that was about three years ago. Rob started helping around the house, something that he had never done before. He started spending more quality time with the kids and stopped watching so much TV. But when it came to our relationship there continued to be no connecting. I would try multiple tactics that would fail. Every once in a great while there would be a week or so of what I could tell was him trying, but always short-lived.
One day I confronted him about his relationship with God. He admitted to being angry with Him and not wanting to have a relationship for quite awhile. I got in his face about it and not in a respectful way at all. He later told me that while I went about it in the wrong way it was something he needed to hear. There started to be a some small changes in him again after that, but again, short-lived.
During this time I was going through all the motions of a Christian life, but I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t feeling it. Externally I did everything I was supposed to do. I was reading my Bible, prayer, quiet times, serving at church, worship, what else could there be? Our pastor did a sermon series on internal transformation and I was baffled, why did I still feel so distant from God? I was constantly having to work at this Christian life and it still didn’t feel like the natural thing to do.
At the beginning of summer my depression was all over me in full force. I couldn’t deny how much it hurt anymore. My children were my only reason for waking up every morning. Every. Single. Day. Each one hurt painfully. One night I was certain that our marriage was over, Rob had left, but over the next couple of days, it was “like God flipped a switch,” as he put it. I wish I could say that I was overjoyed and couldn’t be happier, but I found myself angry.
Every time I hear a compliment or an ‘I love you,’ or catch him watching me after almost ten years of being The Invisible Woman, I am angry. Angry at Rob and angry at God. The audacity! That I would feel angry at God? The reason? If it really is like Rob says and God just flipped a switch in him one day so that he now desires to treat me with love, then WHY WHY WHY did He not do that YEARS ago when I first needed it? Why after all this many years of hurt and pain does He decide that NOW is the time? NOW that I feel so much hurt that I can’t seem to see past it? NOW after I had already given up on him? NOW after everything that’s happened? Why was I not worth or worthy of this love before, but I am now for some reason?
I am angry. I don’t want to talk to Him. I feel like God must look at me like I look at my pouting child who is throwing a fit over not getting their way. Maybe I am.
Over the past few weeks/months I see what He’s doing. I’m not blind to it, even through my refusal to talk to Him about it. He is at work. Through the signs that I read every day as I work my new job at Hobby Lobby. Through the people I see, coming in and sharing their testimonies of what God is doing in their lives. Through a co-worker’s story of redemption in her marriage all because of God. Through sermons that seem to be written for me and my children’s faith that is so much greater than mine. I see it, even though most times I think I would rather not.
Here is where I sit, it’s not pretty. This isn’t eloquently written, there is no moral of the story or happy ending, I can’t even see a light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s just what is REALLY going on with me.
