Hope is good

After meeting for four hours with a friend that we both thought could offer some perspective, we came away with a lot said, and a plan for getting us started on the path back from the edge. We aren't off the edge, but we're both sensing that it is worth the work it will be to save ourselves from this hellhole we've been dancing around the rim of. The plan is this:
- Table controversy. Not forever, but just for now. Write it down to come back to later, but for the time we're on the cruise, just defer conflict till we get back. Use this trip to have fun and reconnect with one another and our children. Refuse to be drawn into anything that doesn't serve that goal. When we get back, we'll talk about the situations we've written down, but not until we get back.
- Dh needs to spend time one-on-one with this friend, searching out some of what's going on inside him.
- She suggested that I get away for a solitude of at least 2 weeks, maybe three. Alone, or perhaps with the help of a spiritual director. She observed that I need to find out who I am, unrelated to whose daughter, mother, and wife I am. She said I needed time without everyone around to rediscover the nugget of who I really am, at core. I have been wanting a spiritual director, and lo and behold, she gives me a brochure of a local ministry of spiritual direction -- that has both Catholics and Protestants on the board, and among the directors.

In the past few weeks, I've had 5 glimmers from God that he's out there, and I'm not forgotten.

One was a momentary flash of just how great a marriage ours could be...it lasted a nanosecond, but that instant was filled with images of what dh and I could look like if our marriage existed at the level it should and could. A

Another glimmer was a searing insight (in a McDonald's bathroom, along I-26, of all places): what IF there's a big ol' problem in myself and it isn't primarily dh's problem? This insight wasn't a capitulation to his perspective, but rather an opening myself up to do the internal work that I (and only I) can do.

The third glimmer was a phone call from this friend we met with, last week. I hadn't heard from her in ages, and I had spent the day in tears. Finally I threw a pair of socks on the floor and told God, "ENOUGH. I've had enough. You're going to have to do it, because I've had ENOUGH." Within a few minutes, she called, and we set up the meeting that we just attended.

The fourth glimmer was the snakebite. It really gave me a metaphor for life.

My last glimmer was the solitude/spiritual director angle our friend suggested....I had been wanting that, but didn't know where to find what I was looking for. It's almost like, if this had been a script, it would have tied itself up too neatly to be believed. But it isn't a script, it's my life. And somehow all these threads wove together to lead me to a spiritual director.