.........and marriage got hard.
We had only been married about a year and a half. How could the honeymoon be over?
We had never really been through hard times before as a couple, and we didn't know how to react to them. I'm sure my endless months of crying myself to sleep every night over my identity crisis really didn't help the marriage bond. But soon, Bill was laid off - downsized. Our lease was up. Our rent was going up. We couldn't resign the lease because we weren't going to be able to afford the new rent. We couldn't look for a new place because we were unemployed.
Bill's previous chaplaincy position had been fairly flexible around his class schedule. Now what?
Well, here is where mentors step in. A couple in our church, whose children were pretty much grown, had a fairly empty house. They had already taken us under their wings a bit. They invited us out to lunch one day and offered for us to move in with them until we figured things out.
They had two extra bedrooms with a bathroom that joined them. They asked if I could cook for them, so they could start eating better and not waste so much eating out. It was a huge blessing!
Bill did find a job as a delivery driver for a printing company. He worked 50 hours a week or more, to make up for the lost pay from the previous job. He had to change his class schedule to only include night classes.
So here is how a day would look. Bill would get up and leave about 5:30 in the morning and take the car. If I wanted the car, I needed to wake Clayton (six months old at the time) up and take Bill to work. Bill would be gone, routinely, until 11 p.m. He would work a full day and head to class. He was going to seminary a couple of nights a week. He was going to the community college for night classes as well, trying to update his computer graphic skills in hopes of landing a better job. Weekends were full of studying and paper writing and trying to survive the classes.
I would hang out all day in a big, empty house with our baby. I never saw Bill. When he came home, he was ready for bed or had homework. There was no time for "us."
I don't know how I would have survived without the friends we were living with. They LOVED Clayton. They would walk in the door and grab him and play with him and let me make dinner. They loved on me.
My struggle with self-worth was difficult before, but it multiplied intensely as I allowed the enemy to speak lies to me: "If Bill loved you, he would be around more." "If you were worth loving, he would stay awake to be with you."
I can't tell you how many times I would have left if I could have. Truth was. Where would I go? I had no money, no car, no job, no college degree, no place to go. I felt trapped.
It was a good kind of trapped, though. The kind where God forces you to face your problems and learn about commitment. The kind where you press further and further into the Lord, because he is the only one you feel you can share your true heart with. How could we be heading into ministry when our marriage was cold? How could we be valuable to God's kingdom when our family was a wreck?
Truth is, we were just two broken people who had come together to form an imperfect marriage. Truth is, that is how most marriages start.
Our wonderful hosts could obviously see some issues. Cindy's mentoring was priceless to me at that point. I cherished conversations at the dining room table with her as she spoke truth to me. Her kindness and gentleness was just the prescription for my broken and selfish heart.
I was doing the only thing I knew to do, I was pouring every ounce of myself into the one that was with me all day and always smiled at me and always wanted to see me and always wanted to play with me: Clayton. He became my life. I built really tall and thick walls around myself and wouldn't let Bill in. It was us against him. I really didn't know how to minister to my husband, so my child became my priority.
Life didn't get better right away, by any means. We had so much to learn. But I can tell your right now, without hesitation, it has been so worth hanging in there!
Years later, a counselor gave us copies of these books:
Oh, how I wish I would have known the stuff in these books 12 years sooner! So, if you've never read them, please, please, please benefit from my hard-knock life lessons learned! They are a very short, easy read; but full of information worth gold!
I'm praying for you today.
No comments:
Post a Comment