The Spousal Unit has been back for about two weeks now and we've settled into what I guess is a kind of normal for us. This is truly a set of experiences that I desperately wish there was some kind of road map to follow, left behind by others who have gone before.
Yeah...not so much.
Right now he has no funds except what little I managed to save from our joint account and the money I've put in from my own account every now and then when I can. I've kept him on my insurance so he has relatively inexpensive access to the meds he needs. I've bought him groceries each week.
Part of me feels the things I'm helping him with are unfair. He *censored* up yet it is still affecting me - has never stopped affecting me. I know rehab isn't a vacation, per se, but for those three months the SU didn't have to worry about groceries, bills, et cetera, while I did. I had to coordinate my move into my apartment as well as the closing down of our old apartment. NOT that I'm going to say God wasn't there in that because He was. His generosity along with the love and generosity of His people made these last three months something...good; in a way, even awesome.
But I struggle with the idea that I took care of things then and I'm still doing it now. Part of it, I know, is I have a money button. My dad was never very responsible with it and, for me, having a surplus on hand represents security. I wonder at times if that makes me akin to the parables about those who try to store treasures on earth. They store treasures. I look for a particular number that makes me comfortable. Although, come to think of it, they never stopped storing up treasure and I never found a number that made me comfortable. Ah, irony.
Maybe that's what God has been trying to drum into my head? Not to spend willy-nilly but to be generous with the Spousal Unit as my Abba has been generous with me. It was God who paved the way for the SU to be in rehab in four days from his initial request. It was God who showed his provision for me with all of his people who offered money, love, supplies and time. Now that I have the opportunity to model this for the Spousal Unit, I balk?
To give the Spousal Unit his due, he has set out to do exactly what he said he would: demonstrate a commitment to sobriety. He has attended a meeting each day since his return. He has a sponsor. He starts his new job on Monday. He is respecting my boundaries.
I think part of what makes this difficult for me is that there are so many triggers - some of which I don't even know about until they get set off. Let's take yesterday for example. We went to Walmart. He pulled the truck into a space and I started to get out just as he took his foot off the clutch. The truck jolted forward a couple feet. This is a normal "oops!" moment for anyone else. It's an "Oh no, he's been drinking!" moment for me even though there was no indication of it. It's a trigger. It's past behavior that is now inextricably linked to something bad even though, now, there may be a totally benign explanation.
I do my best to not ask about his meeting attendance or what he does with his sponsor. His recovery, not mine and controlling co-dependence is so unattractive :P. I definitely need not to try and control for my own recovery and mental health (scroll back through previous entries to see how well my attempts to control his drinking worked. Cliff's Notes answer? Not very well). But holy cow, it' shard! I want to know. And I want reassurances. And I want them in a language I can understand. But I also know that to "make" him do or say the things I want him to will not really assuage my fears in the end. They will be done or said because I demanded them and not because they came honestly from him. I have to...HAVE TO...let him say or not say, do or not do, what he will in terms of recovery and relationship repair. And all the time, I have to be working on my own healthier boundaries and expectations.
Separating and attempting reconciliation along with mental health is a ball of laughs, let me tell you.
We've had two date nights so far. He comes over on Saturday afternoons to do his laundry. We hang out on the sofa, watch Cops and cook frozen pizza. It's actually not a huge change from what we used to do but it has been a long time since we've done it. It's nice. We've both said how much we've missed doing things like this. No spending the night yet. I'm not ready and neither is he. I want my apartment to be my safe space a little longer; introduce him gradually into my new world.
To work on forgiveness and grace in such an active manner is painful at times. The SU was a blackout drinker, meaning he has no recollection of a lot of the things he did or said. BUT I DO. Vivid, technicolor memories. That means I also have to work past wanting my pound of flesh (carefully weighed and measured, mind you) for the pain he has caused me over the years.
However, I'm currently reading Timothy Keller's Jesus the King as part of my study. In it, Keller talks about the need to go deeper in a relationship with Jesus past the "I wants" and the attempts to carve out or preserve what we believe our identity should be instead of building it on Jesus. Doing that and letting Jesus go as deep as He needs to in order to be our foundation is risky and painful. Keller illustrates this with the chapters of C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Eustace has been turned into a dragon by his own greed and thoughts.
Just when Eustace thinks there is no hope left, Aslan appears, tells him to undress and jump in a pool of water. Eustace figures out "undress" means to shed his dragon skin and starts trying to do so layer by layer. But as much as he gnaws and tears, each shed layer only reveals another layer underneath.
It's at this point Aslan tells Eustace that "you're going to have to let me go deeper" (i.e. use his claws to divest Eustace of his dragon hide). Eustace is afraid because, hey, claws! (and remember Aslan is not a tame lion, either). But he agrees. In describing it, Eustace says, "The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt." Soon, though, the skin is off, dark and ugly-looking and piled to the side. Eustace is thrown in the pool and realizes he is a boy again.
Keller's point is that Eustace tried to do it little by little and could never have succeeded on his own. He desperately wanted to be a boy again but tried to do it just by taking Aslan's instruction as a suggestion and never asking him how to get the dragon hide off. It was only when he let Aslan take over that the change, the transformation, occurred. We have to - I have to - let Jesus "use his claws", as Keller puts it, and reconfigure the main thing my heart wants. The SU remaining sober is one of my most heartfelt wishes but as has been shown time and again, MY attempts to grant MY wish have ended in failure. I have to let Jesus act as Savior and know that even though He can grant me what I want with a snap of his fingers, I need to let Him go deeper, let him deal with and remove/change the anger and fear that threads through my relationship with the Spousal Unit. Forgive and be forgiven. That's the only way either of us will ever receive true healing.
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
01 June 2014
31 August 2013
Whose will is it anyway?
1 Peter 4:19: So if you are suffering according to God's will, keep on doing what is right, and trust yourself to the God who made you, for he will never fail you."
The SU is gone for the entire Labor Day weekend. He's visiting his father and learning what his dad wants of him as executor of his will. I'm here at home and, honestly, kind of enjoying the time alone.
Had an individual session with our therapist, K, yesterday. Although he and I have made the decision that I don't need to see him regularly since I've made my choices about my marriage and am now working on living them, I can still see him when I feel I need to, and I've been feeling like I need a bit of a tune-up to make sure I'm still reacting and acting as I should.
The one thing I really hate is that he can always make me cry. I give K crap about it and I'm sure that's partially a deflecting mechanism on my part since I don't like to cry in front of people (not that I haven't, you understand, I just don't like to). He says I cry because I need to - because I need to grieve and I need the catharsis. He says I need to grieve the things that are gone - the SU the way he was, what our marriage is not and may not ever be, my aloneness versus having a partner, and so on. I've cried over parts of these things but I've never grieved them as deaths and he says that's what I need to do.
What started it was when we talked about (again) how, even though I am married, I am functionally alone in a lot of important ways because my spouse is selfish and self-centered in his own dysfunctionalism and alcoholism. He asked if I would stay alone if the SU dies. I told him that, yes, I would for quite a long time if not forever. K had a couple of responses to that:
- it would be difficult/a new experience for me to be with someone new who treats me like a priority whereas right now I am not being treated as such.
- and the one that started the tears going was K's understanding of the whole dichotomy that exists between the husband I knew and the one I have now. I said (and K agrees) that the SU has been a very important part of my life, a hero in many respects. He taught me a lot about functional versus dysfunctional behavior early in our marriage when my only previous examples had been my parents (oh boy!). He prayed and waited for me for ten years to get my act together and come back to God. He has been instrumental in my job search, cheering me on, looking at job descriptions that I forward him and saying things like, "No, don't apply for this one. It's beneath you and your abilities." He has supported my slog towards my Master's degree (December 14! Yay!). All that is now mixed with someone whose main characteristics now include selfishness and emotional abandonment. BUT there is still that other side of the SU and the loss of that would be devastating - even more so because the person in question is choosing his own destruction.
I told K how I hate watching alcohol carve itself into my husband and he likened it to watching the progression of a terminal illness. Cue total and complete waterworks because, yeah, that's it in a nutshell. I see more and more physical issues that tell me the SU's body is not able to deal with what he's handing it. I see more and more life draining away each day and watching that is probably the worst experience of my life.
That led to something I don't ever really admit to out loud - that sometimes I think it would be easier if the SU just...did it fast instead of this slow, passive suicide. I do not want him to die by any stretch of the imagination. As I've written about, my absolute hope is for restoration and life for him but, sometimes, the thought that all this would be over is there. K gets it. He likened it to someone with cancer. You know they are in pain and you want them to live, want them to get better, but at the same time, you want them (and yourself) to be free from pain as well. I told him it feels like I am an unwilling witness to an execution. I am made to watch. It is not my choice. And it hurts. So much. Nouwen said that anyone who enters into any degree of discipleship with Christ not only doesn't avoid the world's pain but penetrates into its center and I feel like I'm there.
I have now spent parts of last night and this morning being all teary and crying (thanks, K!). This morning out on the patio, I spent some time with God and looked back over the past few days of my journaling. There were two verses I wrote down - 1 John 5:14-15 and Mark 11:24. When I went to look at the commentary, what it stressed was that there are two things that need to be a part of prayer: (a) ask in faith and (b) always add a particular qualifying statement which is "nevertheless, thy will be done". This is because prayer is petition and asking for God's will is to submit both myself and my requests, wants, hopes, dreams, et cetera to God. It doesn't mean I shouldn't bring all that to God but it does mean that I need to pray for them to be answered according to his will and not mine.
Brennan Manning, the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel (and also an alcoholic) points out that "compassion becomes a tad easier if you are conscientious in taking your own inventory rather than someone else's."
As I read back over the verses and commentary last night, I found myself wondering if, in all my prayers for the SU, I had remembered to turn them over to God and ask that his will be done versus what I wanted to see happen and...I'm not sure. Did I submit or did I just give God a laundry list in the nicest, most respectful way? I certainly believe God wants to see the SU restored and full of true life and that those are good things to pray for. But if I just toss them out there and do not submit myself and what I want to God's will, I don't think I will be open to how God may go about that because I haven't given up how I want the story to end. Just because I'm reasonably sure what I'm praying is what he would want also doesn't mean it's going to go according to my plan - and I might miss something he's doing if I stick to my plan and don't give it up to be part of his. And what appears to be my part in it are the thoughts and actions God keeps leading me back to: Be obedient. Be faithful. Love. Love furiously. Be Jesus. Don't miss now.
AA's Big Book says, "This was our course. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, piety and patience that we would a cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, 'This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God, save me from being angry. Thy will be done'."
The SU is gone for the entire Labor Day weekend. He's visiting his father and learning what his dad wants of him as executor of his will. I'm here at home and, honestly, kind of enjoying the time alone.
Had an individual session with our therapist, K, yesterday. Although he and I have made the decision that I don't need to see him regularly since I've made my choices about my marriage and am now working on living them, I can still see him when I feel I need to, and I've been feeling like I need a bit of a tune-up to make sure I'm still reacting and acting as I should.
The one thing I really hate is that he can always make me cry. I give K crap about it and I'm sure that's partially a deflecting mechanism on my part since I don't like to cry in front of people (not that I haven't, you understand, I just don't like to). He says I cry because I need to - because I need to grieve and I need the catharsis. He says I need to grieve the things that are gone - the SU the way he was, what our marriage is not and may not ever be, my aloneness versus having a partner, and so on. I've cried over parts of these things but I've never grieved them as deaths and he says that's what I need to do.
What started it was when we talked about (again) how, even though I am married, I am functionally alone in a lot of important ways because my spouse is selfish and self-centered in his own dysfunctionalism and alcoholism. He asked if I would stay alone if the SU dies. I told him that, yes, I would for quite a long time if not forever. K had a couple of responses to that:
- it would be difficult/a new experience for me to be with someone new who treats me like a priority whereas right now I am not being treated as such.
- and the one that started the tears going was K's understanding of the whole dichotomy that exists between the husband I knew and the one I have now. I said (and K agrees) that the SU has been a very important part of my life, a hero in many respects. He taught me a lot about functional versus dysfunctional behavior early in our marriage when my only previous examples had been my parents (oh boy!). He prayed and waited for me for ten years to get my act together and come back to God. He has been instrumental in my job search, cheering me on, looking at job descriptions that I forward him and saying things like, "No, don't apply for this one. It's beneath you and your abilities." He has supported my slog towards my Master's degree (December 14! Yay!). All that is now mixed with someone whose main characteristics now include selfishness and emotional abandonment. BUT there is still that other side of the SU and the loss of that would be devastating - even more so because the person in question is choosing his own destruction.
I told K how I hate watching alcohol carve itself into my husband and he likened it to watching the progression of a terminal illness. Cue total and complete waterworks because, yeah, that's it in a nutshell. I see more and more physical issues that tell me the SU's body is not able to deal with what he's handing it. I see more and more life draining away each day and watching that is probably the worst experience of my life.
That led to something I don't ever really admit to out loud - that sometimes I think it would be easier if the SU just...did it fast instead of this slow, passive suicide. I do not want him to die by any stretch of the imagination. As I've written about, my absolute hope is for restoration and life for him but, sometimes, the thought that all this would be over is there. K gets it. He likened it to someone with cancer. You know they are in pain and you want them to live, want them to get better, but at the same time, you want them (and yourself) to be free from pain as well. I told him it feels like I am an unwilling witness to an execution. I am made to watch. It is not my choice. And it hurts. So much. Nouwen said that anyone who enters into any degree of discipleship with Christ not only doesn't avoid the world's pain but penetrates into its center and I feel like I'm there.
I have now spent parts of last night and this morning being all teary and crying (thanks, K!). This morning out on the patio, I spent some time with God and looked back over the past few days of my journaling. There were two verses I wrote down - 1 John 5:14-15 and Mark 11:24. When I went to look at the commentary, what it stressed was that there are two things that need to be a part of prayer: (a) ask in faith and (b) always add a particular qualifying statement which is "nevertheless, thy will be done". This is because prayer is petition and asking for God's will is to submit both myself and my requests, wants, hopes, dreams, et cetera to God. It doesn't mean I shouldn't bring all that to God but it does mean that I need to pray for them to be answered according to his will and not mine.
Brennan Manning, the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel (and also an alcoholic) points out that "compassion becomes a tad easier if you are conscientious in taking your own inventory rather than someone else's."
As I read back over the verses and commentary last night, I found myself wondering if, in all my prayers for the SU, I had remembered to turn them over to God and ask that his will be done versus what I wanted to see happen and...I'm not sure. Did I submit or did I just give God a laundry list in the nicest, most respectful way? I certainly believe God wants to see the SU restored and full of true life and that those are good things to pray for. But if I just toss them out there and do not submit myself and what I want to God's will, I don't think I will be open to how God may go about that because I haven't given up how I want the story to end. Just because I'm reasonably sure what I'm praying is what he would want also doesn't mean it's going to go according to my plan - and I might miss something he's doing if I stick to my plan and don't give it up to be part of his. And what appears to be my part in it are the thoughts and actions God keeps leading me back to: Be obedient. Be faithful. Love. Love furiously. Be Jesus. Don't miss now.
AA's Big Book says, "This was our course. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, piety and patience that we would a cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, 'This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God, save me from being angry. Thy will be done'."
21 August 2013
Moving Beyond Fear, part 1
You know, it's funny. You pray to God about something and you know intellectually that, yes, he will answer that prayer. Occasionally, however, getting that answer is like getting slapped in the face with a fish (Monty Python tm).
My readings and such have kind of revolved around fear - how it interferes and what should be in our lives in place of it. I've been asking God to reveal to me where I still have fear and he definitely slapped me upside the head with it (my God is a tactile God :)).
I am afraid of many things but chief among them is failure. That means failure of works done by my hands (no one else to blame), failure of things I have taken on that I should not have (but they are my responsibility now). I have fear that the Spousal Unit will drink a huge amount today. I have fear of his drinking problem, period. That one continues to stick around like kudzu. I have fear he will never stop drinking or that he will be unable to repair his relationships. And, sometimes, my fear is that I will be left alone in all of this.
The first question God pointed out is to determine if I am living by Christ or by the law. Am I looking to the one who cast out fear or to the law that gives pre-packaged responses of what I "should" do and how I "should" feel and forget the freedom I have in Jesus in whose love there is no room for fear (1 John 4:18). To do that, though, I have to let go of "what if" and just plain "if" because they do nothing except create scenarios for my fear to reside in when Jesus should be my safe place in the midst of this crazy world. He is the only experience truly worthy of being called "life" (Manning) and since he has already set me free, I should choose to remain free through living by faith (Galatians 5:1 and 3:11).
The other thing He pointed out was how I have never really considered the fact that Jesus might be proud of me, that I might make him smile or...happy. What a concept. But if he does delight in us, then why not? If David danced for joy, then why not his descendant? If I can feel joy, then why not the One who created me? Strange concepts to someone who grew up in a very performance-oriented environment to think someone just loves you because they love you...
The next day's reading brought up 2 Cor 5:7 which says that I am to walk by faith and not by sight. This has been a constant theme for me with the SU's alcoholism. I pray a lot about remembering the fact that I am on God's timeline and not mine and that God has specifically told me not to try and create a resolution for the Spousal Unit - that if I keep looking for when he is going to act, I will miss it. In thinking on that, I realized some of my responses to the SU about his drinking are very much responses based in fear. Not that some of my responses and requests aren't reasonable but I do things like try to keep him around me because than I can be "assured" he isn't drinking. In retrospect, that's kinda funny because, seriously, he's snuck alcohol into the house and drank. He's drank copious amounts with me in the next room or right in front of me. By trying to control where he is or what he does, I am not trusting God, my Abba, in this instance. I am trying to influence my surroundings for what really only amounts to a momentary victory in the battle with his alcoholism. And, really, what kind of victory except Pyrrhic? It's all just an illusion meant to make me comfortable.
All this is really coming down to the same question God keeps putting in front of me: do I love God enough to trust him and quit trying to offer him my attempts to be in control? ('Cause I'm sure he's thinking, "Hey, nice thought. But I keep telling you I've got this one. Don't make me get out the fish again.").
"Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else." - Manning
That means (to me) that I have to want God and what God wants. God wants the Spousal Unit to be sober but he doesn't necessarily want me sticking my nose in with my plans because my plans are full of "I want". I ask God a lot to give me direction to work within his plan and not try to graft on my own. Sometimes I think I need to remember that God's part for me in this may just be to sit down, shut up, and keep trying to be Jesus to my husband.
"Do I hear His word spoken to my heart, 'Shalom, be at peace, I understand'." - Manning
Sadly, no. Not all the time. What I have to move past is my acceptance of his understanding to the point I am comfortable with it, past the point of my feeling that if God truly understood, then the SU wouldn't still be drinking. That, though, is my fallacy, my wrong thought, and my error. In this, I unfortunately at times tend to echo Job when God asked Job where he was when God laid the foundations of the earth or if he's ever ordered the morning into being, et cetera. My plans are as ashes. They are a false sense of security that crumbles as soon as the vodka bottle comes out. The God of the universe knows ever so much more than I do and sees ever so much more than I see.
So I'm now asking the God that has revealed these strongholds to tear them down, turn them to dust and to replace them with his wants and remember that I am not in control. Security is in God and not my feeble machinations. He is doing a work. I know it. I see bits and pieces of it. I need to stop being impatient for the whole, bend my knee and submit to him.
It's all still very much a work in progress.
My readings and such have kind of revolved around fear - how it interferes and what should be in our lives in place of it. I've been asking God to reveal to me where I still have fear and he definitely slapped me upside the head with it (my God is a tactile God :)).
I am afraid of many things but chief among them is failure. That means failure of works done by my hands (no one else to blame), failure of things I have taken on that I should not have (but they are my responsibility now). I have fear that the Spousal Unit will drink a huge amount today. I have fear of his drinking problem, period. That one continues to stick around like kudzu. I have fear he will never stop drinking or that he will be unable to repair his relationships. And, sometimes, my fear is that I will be left alone in all of this.
The first question God pointed out is to determine if I am living by Christ or by the law. Am I looking to the one who cast out fear or to the law that gives pre-packaged responses of what I "should" do and how I "should" feel and forget the freedom I have in Jesus in whose love there is no room for fear (1 John 4:18). To do that, though, I have to let go of "what if" and just plain "if" because they do nothing except create scenarios for my fear to reside in when Jesus should be my safe place in the midst of this crazy world. He is the only experience truly worthy of being called "life" (Manning) and since he has already set me free, I should choose to remain free through living by faith (Galatians 5:1 and 3:11).
The other thing He pointed out was how I have never really considered the fact that Jesus might be proud of me, that I might make him smile or...happy. What a concept. But if he does delight in us, then why not? If David danced for joy, then why not his descendant? If I can feel joy, then why not the One who created me? Strange concepts to someone who grew up in a very performance-oriented environment to think someone just loves you because they love you...
The next day's reading brought up 2 Cor 5:7 which says that I am to walk by faith and not by sight. This has been a constant theme for me with the SU's alcoholism. I pray a lot about remembering the fact that I am on God's timeline and not mine and that God has specifically told me not to try and create a resolution for the Spousal Unit - that if I keep looking for when he is going to act, I will miss it. In thinking on that, I realized some of my responses to the SU about his drinking are very much responses based in fear. Not that some of my responses and requests aren't reasonable but I do things like try to keep him around me because than I can be "assured" he isn't drinking. In retrospect, that's kinda funny because, seriously, he's snuck alcohol into the house and drank. He's drank copious amounts with me in the next room or right in front of me. By trying to control where he is or what he does, I am not trusting God, my Abba, in this instance. I am trying to influence my surroundings for what really only amounts to a momentary victory in the battle with his alcoholism. And, really, what kind of victory except Pyrrhic? It's all just an illusion meant to make me comfortable.
All this is really coming down to the same question God keeps putting in front of me: do I love God enough to trust him and quit trying to offer him my attempts to be in control? ('Cause I'm sure he's thinking, "Hey, nice thought. But I keep telling you I've got this one. Don't make me get out the fish again.").
"Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else." - Manning
That means (to me) that I have to want God and what God wants. God wants the Spousal Unit to be sober but he doesn't necessarily want me sticking my nose in with my plans because my plans are full of "I want". I ask God a lot to give me direction to work within his plan and not try to graft on my own. Sometimes I think I need to remember that God's part for me in this may just be to sit down, shut up, and keep trying to be Jesus to my husband.
"Do I hear His word spoken to my heart, 'Shalom, be at peace, I understand'." - Manning
Sadly, no. Not all the time. What I have to move past is my acceptance of his understanding to the point I am comfortable with it, past the point of my feeling that if God truly understood, then the SU wouldn't still be drinking. That, though, is my fallacy, my wrong thought, and my error. In this, I unfortunately at times tend to echo Job when God asked Job where he was when God laid the foundations of the earth or if he's ever ordered the morning into being, et cetera. My plans are as ashes. They are a false sense of security that crumbles as soon as the vodka bottle comes out. The God of the universe knows ever so much more than I do and sees ever so much more than I see.
So I'm now asking the God that has revealed these strongholds to tear them down, turn them to dust and to replace them with his wants and remember that I am not in control. Security is in God and not my feeble machinations. He is doing a work. I know it. I see bits and pieces of it. I need to stop being impatient for the whole, bend my knee and submit to him.
It's all still very much a work in progress.
23 May 2013
Decisions, decisions
As always when I don't blog regularly, there is a lot that has happened in the meantime so let's just consider I said that and move on :).
As far as school, I passed the Spring semester with all A's and will be starting my two Summer classes next week. This is the home stretch - two classes this summer and my Capstone this Fall and I will be DONE with this Master's degree. I'm alternating between "Woohoo!" and "Oh crap, the semester's starting again!". (My glass is never half-empty or half-full. It's both :)).
I have also been inducted into two national honor societies and, in a total surprise to which Sara was a witness, was named Student of the Year for my program. Color me absolutely boggled.
I have also continued with some of my goals - working on my Master's without killing myself. Managed to take most weekends off to spend with the Spousal Unit or at home. We did move to a lovely new apartment that I will post pictures of. I have also found some Bible-study type books and have been digging into those...which in turn is sending me into the dreaded character growth territory.
I also changed my ringtone to Fat-Bottomed Girls but that's neither here or nor there. Just hilarious to see people look around when my phone rings :).
Before I get into the rest of this, I want to say these are my thoughts about my own personal marital situation and I'm not advocating a one-size-fits-all mentality. Everyone needs to seek out God's answers for their own situation. So (deep breath), here we go:
Our therapist says that the SU and I have reached a crossroads. In his words, "at the risk of talking myself out of a job", it's time to make a choice. That choice is either separate or decide that I am okay/resigned to living with what the SU will give me for now and not count on anything changing (although in the therapist's POV, he believes there is potential for change for the better). In the words of Mutant Enemy: "Grrrr. Argh."
This has been and continues to be an incredibly difficult path to walk. I am very lucky to have a core group of women who have been praying for me and offering counsel or just a shoulder to cry on 'cause, believe you me, I've been doing some crying (and I am someone who hates to cry). After our session last week, I was pretty darn sure that separation was the next step until I got up the next morning at 5:30 and read Henri Nouwen's Turning My Mourning into Dancing for about two hours before the SU woke up.
One of Nouwen's points about experiencing solitude is that it should be time when you dare to stand alone before God and so, for me, any type of separation should be for that (if that is the route I take) and not just because I want to get away from the SU. If God is to be at the center of my marriage, I cannot just put him aside for the sake of my own mental and emotional comfort. To love someone is to be open to suffering (per Nouwen) and there is a need to trust that the risk to love someone is worth it.
Something Nouwen also talked about was how Jesus related to people for *their* sake and not his. His focus was not on satisfaction but responding to someone's real, deep need. Over these months of counseling with the SU, I have discovered very deep, unmet needs in my husband that make me grieve; things I had not really known or really thought about beyond the few times he mentioned them. Do I think there are things he needs to get kicked in the pants on? Oh, yes. But some of those kicked-in-the-pants behaviors are outward expressions of things he has never dealt with or maybe ever been able to deal with. How can I not at least feel compassion towards those places in my husband that are so wounded?
To do that, though, to stay and wait for God's timing versus my own, versus my own desires and expectations involves a big leap of faith. I want the fairy tale. I want the grand gesture and the passionate attempts to change. But I may not get anything like that and I may not get anything even close to it for a long time. I may very well be asking for things in a language the SU does not speak.
"But our lives are renewed every time we trust more. We take a leap of faith and trust only to see the next layer of possibility" (Nouwen, p. 53). If I am to trust God, I cannot expect to know the whole plan nor can I expect to use *my* definitions as the end result. If I take the leap of faith, I can only trust that God will see it and respond. What is the next layer of possibility? I don't know. It may be better communication. It may be the SU believing more that I love him and I do not have a list of pluses and minuses that I keep tallied up in my head which in turn releases him from some of his bondage. It may be me learning how to love in the midst of my own discomfort. It doesn't mean I can't want to know the outcome but it does mean that I don't necessarily know what it will look like nor should I put a label on it because the label immediately brings it back to ME and I start trying to bend things to what I feel the result should be rather than letting God work as he will. If I try to hard to create the result, I lose my trust. If I lose trust, I lose hope.
I don't want to do that.
I need to look beyond my own expectations. Is the SU where I want him to be? No. But God knows where he is.
God also knows where I am. In his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son , Nouwen talks about Rembrandt's painting of when the prodigal son returns home and he talks about having felt like both sons in the picture. His words concerning the elder son struck me:
"I came to see how I had lived a quite dutiful life...had always been obedient to my parents, my teachers, my bishops and my God. I had never run away from home, never wasted my time and money on sensual pursuits, and had never gotten lost in 'debauchery and drunkenness'. For my entire life, I had been quite responsible, traditional, and homebound. But with all of that, I may, in fact, have been just as lost as the younger son. I suddenly saw myself in a completely new way. I saw my jealousy, my anger, my touchiness, doggedness and sullenness, and most of all, my subtle self-righteousness. I saw how much of a complainer I was and how much of my thinking and feeling was riddled with resentment...I was the elder son for sure, but just as lost as his younger brother, even though I had stayed 'home' all my life" (Nouwen, p. 20).
He then goes on to talk about a friend of his with whom he shared his view of himself as the eldest son several months later. His friend said to him, "Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realized that you are called to become the father" (Nouwen, p. 22).
If I was to leave the SU now, I am pretty sure no one would fault me. They would say I have done everything I can reasonably be expected to do. But is that definition of "reasonable" accurate? Have I given myself and everything involved with this situation up to God including how I think it should go or does part of me sit in subtle judgment of the SU because he does not conform to expectations, because he does not seem to quickly and obediently respond to the good counsel and advice he has been given over and over by many who care for him?
That's not to say I can't be tired or need to vent or seek counsel. Trying to live in faith doesn't mean I am superhuman or that it all becomes easy. Trust me, my inner child is having a tantrum over this. "But I don't wanna!!" But two words keep coming back at me: all in. They were words I used when the SU asked me why I wasn't mad at God over what happened to our shop. I told him then that the things we lost were just stuff and I had to decide if the stuff was more important or if I was all in for God. Our pastor used those words in last week's sermon as well. "All in" means I can't hold back, can't choose what to experience and have to give. up.
That scares the pants off me. "Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be."
Am I called to wait?
"...marriage is foremost a vocation. Two people are called together to fulfill a mission that God has given them. Marriage is a spiritual reality. That is to say, a man and a woman come together for life, not just because they experience deep love for each other, but because they believe that God loves each of them with an infinite love and has called them to each other to be living witnesses of that love. To love is to embody God's infinite love in a faithful communion with another human being" (Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit).
God -
Help me to hear you and your desire for not just myself but my marriage. Help me to give up my expectations, my desires, my wants, for yours. Give me strength when I need it but also help me to be weak and rely upon you as well. Help me love when I feel I cannot or do not want to, to remember that the Spousal Unit is just as much yours as I am. Give me your heart for him.
Thank you for my husband. Thank you for the love he has given me and the joy he has brought me. Help me to remember those times when all I want to do is point out how 'bad' he is and be superior in that. Let me live in your timeline and not mine and to remember this prayer in the midst of the moment when I most want to lash out.
Help me change from the elder son into the father.
I want to be all in.
Amen
As far as school, I passed the Spring semester with all A's and will be starting my two Summer classes next week. This is the home stretch - two classes this summer and my Capstone this Fall and I will be DONE with this Master's degree. I'm alternating between "Woohoo!" and "Oh crap, the semester's starting again!". (My glass is never half-empty or half-full. It's both :)).
I have also been inducted into two national honor societies and, in a total surprise to which Sara was a witness, was named Student of the Year for my program. Color me absolutely boggled.
I have also continued with some of my goals - working on my Master's without killing myself. Managed to take most weekends off to spend with the Spousal Unit or at home. We did move to a lovely new apartment that I will post pictures of. I have also found some Bible-study type books and have been digging into those...which in turn is sending me into the dreaded character growth territory.
I also changed my ringtone to Fat-Bottomed Girls but that's neither here or nor there. Just hilarious to see people look around when my phone rings :).
Before I get into the rest of this, I want to say these are my thoughts about my own personal marital situation and I'm not advocating a one-size-fits-all mentality. Everyone needs to seek out God's answers for their own situation. So (deep breath), here we go:
Our therapist says that the SU and I have reached a crossroads. In his words, "at the risk of talking myself out of a job", it's time to make a choice. That choice is either separate or decide that I am okay/resigned to living with what the SU will give me for now and not count on anything changing (although in the therapist's POV, he believes there is potential for change for the better). In the words of Mutant Enemy: "Grrrr. Argh."
This has been and continues to be an incredibly difficult path to walk. I am very lucky to have a core group of women who have been praying for me and offering counsel or just a shoulder to cry on 'cause, believe you me, I've been doing some crying (and I am someone who hates to cry). After our session last week, I was pretty darn sure that separation was the next step until I got up the next morning at 5:30 and read Henri Nouwen's Turning My Mourning into Dancing for about two hours before the SU woke up.
One of Nouwen's points about experiencing solitude is that it should be time when you dare to stand alone before God and so, for me, any type of separation should be for that (if that is the route I take) and not just because I want to get away from the SU. If God is to be at the center of my marriage, I cannot just put him aside for the sake of my own mental and emotional comfort. To love someone is to be open to suffering (per Nouwen) and there is a need to trust that the risk to love someone is worth it.
Something Nouwen also talked about was how Jesus related to people for *their* sake and not his. His focus was not on satisfaction but responding to someone's real, deep need. Over these months of counseling with the SU, I have discovered very deep, unmet needs in my husband that make me grieve; things I had not really known or really thought about beyond the few times he mentioned them. Do I think there are things he needs to get kicked in the pants on? Oh, yes. But some of those kicked-in-the-pants behaviors are outward expressions of things he has never dealt with or maybe ever been able to deal with. How can I not at least feel compassion towards those places in my husband that are so wounded?
To do that, though, to stay and wait for God's timing versus my own, versus my own desires and expectations involves a big leap of faith. I want the fairy tale. I want the grand gesture and the passionate attempts to change. But I may not get anything like that and I may not get anything even close to it for a long time. I may very well be asking for things in a language the SU does not speak.
"But our lives are renewed every time we trust more. We take a leap of faith and trust only to see the next layer of possibility" (Nouwen, p. 53). If I am to trust God, I cannot expect to know the whole plan nor can I expect to use *my* definitions as the end result. If I take the leap of faith, I can only trust that God will see it and respond. What is the next layer of possibility? I don't know. It may be better communication. It may be the SU believing more that I love him and I do not have a list of pluses and minuses that I keep tallied up in my head which in turn releases him from some of his bondage. It may be me learning how to love in the midst of my own discomfort. It doesn't mean I can't want to know the outcome but it does mean that I don't necessarily know what it will look like nor should I put a label on it because the label immediately brings it back to ME and I start trying to bend things to what I feel the result should be rather than letting God work as he will. If I try to hard to create the result, I lose my trust. If I lose trust, I lose hope.
I don't want to do that.
I need to look beyond my own expectations. Is the SU where I want him to be? No. But God knows where he is.
God also knows where I am. In his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son , Nouwen talks about Rembrandt's painting of when the prodigal son returns home and he talks about having felt like both sons in the picture. His words concerning the elder son struck me:
"I came to see how I had lived a quite dutiful life...had always been obedient to my parents, my teachers, my bishops and my God. I had never run away from home, never wasted my time and money on sensual pursuits, and had never gotten lost in 'debauchery and drunkenness'. For my entire life, I had been quite responsible, traditional, and homebound. But with all of that, I may, in fact, have been just as lost as the younger son. I suddenly saw myself in a completely new way. I saw my jealousy, my anger, my touchiness, doggedness and sullenness, and most of all, my subtle self-righteousness. I saw how much of a complainer I was and how much of my thinking and feeling was riddled with resentment...I was the elder son for sure, but just as lost as his younger brother, even though I had stayed 'home' all my life" (Nouwen, p. 20).
He then goes on to talk about a friend of his with whom he shared his view of himself as the eldest son several months later. His friend said to him, "Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realized that you are called to become the father" (Nouwen, p. 22).
If I was to leave the SU now, I am pretty sure no one would fault me. They would say I have done everything I can reasonably be expected to do. But is that definition of "reasonable" accurate? Have I given myself and everything involved with this situation up to God including how I think it should go or does part of me sit in subtle judgment of the SU because he does not conform to expectations, because he does not seem to quickly and obediently respond to the good counsel and advice he has been given over and over by many who care for him?
That's not to say I can't be tired or need to vent or seek counsel. Trying to live in faith doesn't mean I am superhuman or that it all becomes easy. Trust me, my inner child is having a tantrum over this. "But I don't wanna!!" But two words keep coming back at me: all in. They were words I used when the SU asked me why I wasn't mad at God over what happened to our shop. I told him then that the things we lost were just stuff and I had to decide if the stuff was more important or if I was all in for God. Our pastor used those words in last week's sermon as well. "All in" means I can't hold back, can't choose what to experience and have to give. up.
That scares the pants off me. "Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be."
Am I called to wait?
"...marriage is foremost a vocation. Two people are called together to fulfill a mission that God has given them. Marriage is a spiritual reality. That is to say, a man and a woman come together for life, not just because they experience deep love for each other, but because they believe that God loves each of them with an infinite love and has called them to each other to be living witnesses of that love. To love is to embody God's infinite love in a faithful communion with another human being" (Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit).
God -
Help me to hear you and your desire for not just myself but my marriage. Help me to give up my expectations, my desires, my wants, for yours. Give me strength when I need it but also help me to be weak and rely upon you as well. Help me love when I feel I cannot or do not want to, to remember that the Spousal Unit is just as much yours as I am. Give me your heart for him.
Thank you for my husband. Thank you for the love he has given me and the joy he has brought me. Help me to remember those times when all I want to do is point out how 'bad' he is and be superior in that. Let me live in your timeline and not mine and to remember this prayer in the midst of the moment when I most want to lash out.
Help me change from the elder son into the father.
I want to be all in.
Amen
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)