Life changed

I see that it has been since May that I posted.
I feel like that was almost like another lifetime ago. Isn't that crazy?
Sometime between when we gave up on our marriage and decided to go on the planned cruise with our kids (but then we'd probably separate after that) and pulling back into Port Canaveral after 7 days at sea....somewhere in there, God brought healing.

Maybe it started when we went to Father Newman, and he told us there could be no fundamental change to our marriage, because we would always fundamentally be the same people. Maybe it started when we agreed to postpone arguments on the cruise for the sake of the children. (We DIDN'T postpone arguments, but we previously agreed to, and maybe that agreement was part of the healing). Maybe it was just admitting to God in prayer that I didn't have the stuff to stay in it anymore, that enough was enough. I really cannot say. But the cruise certainly marked a turning point.

We fought and fought, knowing that the alternative was an end to 'us'. That brings a focus to the fighting....it became a sense that we were fighting FOR us -- for the survival of our marriage-- rather than against each other. It was hard, so hard that I remember nights where we were too tired to physically lift our heads off the pillow to kiss and makeup at the end of it. The Kleenex ran out. Our voices became hoarse whispers. But we made it through to the next day having resolved some small piece of the problem. We slowly realized we weren't backing down, then that we weren't giving up, then that we might just make it. We recovered trust. We recovered respect for the other's perspective. We recovered affection, and desire. Hope was truly the thing with feathers; it would flit in and out. Some days I would have no hope; some days I thought perhaps I could at least imagine having hope. And at some point, I guess I realized that I must have had hope all along, because I was in a position of looking back, realizing that I had held on. I don't know how.

I wish I could patent the process and replicate it for the benefit of others. But I cannot. It is so particular and so precious. I can only stand on the other side and know what it took from myself and from dh to get here. There are still a few niggly issues that haven't been really covered yet. And there are circumstances that uncover the same old rush of feelings....but we are different. We are able to hang on to one another, draw strength from each other, and fight through the conflict (and the desires to flee, to lash out, to withdraw, to sweep under the carpet for the sake of 'peace'). I can now say I love my husband. I really love being married to him. And it's been years since I felt that deeply, in the way I do now. Funny thing is, if you know me IRL, you'd think we had a pretty good marriage....two people who laugh frequently, who seem compatible and well suited, who have been together for over 20 years. But now, there is an immediacy and an intimacy that's never been there before. It is a costly intimacy, because the suffering we've both undergone to have it has been real enough to taste.

I pray to God that he will restore to us the years that the locusts have eaten.