After going through one of the most difficult seasons of my life, I find myself struggling to articulate everything that I learned in that season. I think it's because, truthfully, I don't really want to feel the way that I did during that time. My wife of 15 years went through a horrible battle with anxiety and depression. I felt like I had lost the love of my life. My best friend had checked out on me and it didn't seem like she cared to come back. As you can imagine, I struggled with all kinds of feelings. I felt scared, rejected, discouraged, disappointed, angry, sad, frustrated and any other exasperating adjective you can think of. I wasn't prepared for this. My first reaction was to feel sorry for myself. I didn't create this situation, why was this happening to me? Why wasn't she taking responsibility for her feelings? Doesn't she realize that my happiness is tied to hers? Doesn't she remember her responsibilities as a wife, more importantly as a mother? As you can see I was very understanding. I think at one point, as we were traveling to see someone we thought might be able to help, I called her a wuss for not being able to just "get over it". I thought about leaving. If she was going to reject me, then I might as well move on and find someone else. Someone who will value me. It sounded logical. I don't think anyone in my life would blame me. However, one day while wallowing in my sorrow i heard these questions in my spirit...do you love her? Did you make a covenant of love with this woman? What did you commit to? Without hesitation in my spirit I heard myself saying...in sickness and in health, till death do us part. What flooded my soul is hard to describe at this point. It was a mixture of deep love, unbridled conviction and an unparalleled desire to prove myself. All of a sudden, this situation wasn't about what I was missing it became about how I could become a contributor to my family. I wasn't feeling sorry for myself, i was feeling empowered to control what I could control in my life.
To say that I changed would be an understatement. It's kind of like saying the Titanic sort of tipped over when it hit the iceberg. I became a completely different person. I knew that I had to in order to survive. I became a better Dad, I became a better house cleaner, cook, laundry guy, and any other tasks that needed to be done around the house. I began to focus on how I could serve my family. I did things I never thought I could do. Everything I did was to help make things easier for my family. When it came to my wife, I realized that there was nothing she could do about her feelings. I just focused on making her life as easy as I possibly could. Essentially, I became a caregiver. Taking care of her became my number one priority in life. I probably looked pretty flaky to the people around me. I cancelled appointments, road trips, conferences, hanging out with friends, I even missed my own sister's wedding. All because my job was to create a safe environment for my wife. Instead of wanting to leave her, I found myself falling more deeply in love with her everyday. I found myself agonizing over her well being. When I went to work i thought about how she was doing pretty much every minute of the day. I found it difficult to concentrate on my work. I'm not sure how well I did at my job, I think I just floated through for several years. So what the heck happened to me? Here's the part that is hard for me to describe. The best way to put it would be that I gave up. I gave up trying to control a situation that was completely out of my control.
What happened in me was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had my life. I became marked by love. When I gave up trying to fix my situation, I experienced the grace of God on a level that I've never tangibly experienced in my life. Even though I had times of sheer exhaustion, for the most part I had the energy to take on the task of being a single parent. My wife was there but she was disengaged. I did what I could to nurture my kids. To play the dual role of mother and father to them. My love increased so much for them, I had never been closer to them. When I wasn't focussed on caring for my wife, all of my attention was on my kids. I wanted to make their life as normal as it possibly could. The effect inside of me was a deep love and devotion for my family. Everything I did was focused on them. I loved them so much, nothing else and no one else really mattered. It wasn't that I didn't care about people, it was just that what they thought of me or what we were going through didn't really matter. I had learned, by focusing on what I could control, that the only thing that mattered was being all that I could be for my family. Something miraculous began to happen, not only did i begin to experience the love of God on a new level, I began to see my wife slowly be healed. Sure, she had meds to help control her anxiety but those meds never solved the problem, they just helped her cope. She was getting healed. Her confidence was slowly coming back, our connection was growing more each day. No longer did she want to check out of life, she wanted to experience it on a level she had never experienced before. She began to discover new things about herself, to give herself permission to be happy. She wasn't being obsessively introspective anymore. She was discovering who she was all over again. So what had changed? I knew that the change in me had helped to take pressure off of her. I knew that I had helped to create a safe environment where she didn't have to perform for me to love her. I wasn't prepared for what the Lord shared with me next. During a quiet moment it happened again. A question in my spirit. He said "Do you know why your wife is being healed?" The question floored me, not because of what He was asking, because of the answer I was feeling in my spirit. I literally sensed the answer. He said "it's because of the Love that you have for your wife" Even as I write this, it is difficult for me not to cry as I think about how I felt in that moment. I have been marked by love. First, by the Love of an incredible Heavenly Father who never left me in my darkest hour, and second by a love for someone I have the privilege of spending my life with. Love is so powerful it can heal the brokenhearted, it can pull people out of the darkest places. It really is the greatest thing.
That's the view from here...
