Today would have been my 29th anniversary if God, life, and my ex-husband hadn't had different plans. My plan was to grow old together, to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, to watch our grandchildren grow up, and to be a part of our children's lives...together. My plan was for God to heal my husband. For him to be mentally and physically whole. My plan was for him to no longer have to fight his demons and embrace the love we all wanted so desperately to share with him. My plan was not for a broken and shattered life. I believed God would make it all okay. I believed that as long as I was a good wife and I tried my hardest, one day I would get the life I deserved. Unfortunately, my ex-husband's addictions, depression, and inner demons drove him further and further from me until we the chasm between us was too wide to cross. My co-dependency, lack of boundaries, and my own internal battles only fueled the destruction. I was willing to follow him to hell if that is what it took to stay together, but God had other plans.
Unfortunately, my ex-husband's battles led to him taking his own life. When I had attempted the same release from this pain-filled life, God blocked it. More than once. I realized anything I did to try to take matters into my own hands would only cause more pain, and I have had enough pain for one lifetime. I was left trying to find my way through the brokenness. After his suicide and my aunt's subsequent death a few months later, I was at my lowest. I had nothing left to give. I had tried and tried for years to make things right without realizing that it was all beyond me. Only God could make a way through it all.
But what do you do when the only One you can turn to is also the One who has allowed it all? How could I reconcile the pain and trauma that God had allowed in our lives with a loving God who wants His best for me? How can I trust a God that I had trusted with all my heart, but had let me down? Especially when God is the one that took each of my loved ones away but left me behind? The only way is to seek the truth and to get beyond me, my limited understanding of it all, and how I felt about it all. I had to seek God all the more. It has not been an easy journey and it is definitely the path I would have chosen, but it is the path that I am on.
I am learning to seek the tools that will help me heal and bring me closer to God. Only when I am close to God can I see any of it from His perspective, to see the truth behind all the pain. From a lifetime of trauma, I had completely disowned my emotions, my needs, and my body. I had lost my identity in being who everyone else needed me to be. Then one day, they no longer needed me and I was left lost and alone. Fortunately, God seeks out the lost.
This month, my friend and I have started the Switch - Emotions journal. For me, it is a path to identifying my disowned emotions and to begin unraveling the tangled knot they have all become from what I have been through. Edith Eger says, "you cannot heal what you will not feel" and that stuck with me. Until I develop a healthy relationship with my emotions and begin to identify what I am feeling, I will not be able to heal. At the same time, I am facilitating a Grief Share program. It is forcing me to face my own pain in order to help others through theirs. The 28 Prayer Journey is to help provide fuel and to force me to intentionally turn to God instead of disconnecting and disassociating from it all.
I have not written in several years as I became stuck in the abyss of anhedonia, grief, and depression. This is the beginning of my journey from surviving to thriving.