In the end, nearly 8 years boiled down to an hour and 9 minute conversation.
My mind feels a bit numb, like I’ve been hit in the head with something heavy, and can’t quite remember simple things.
It felt like a business deal, discussing, bargaining, and wrapping things up in a deceivingly neat little package that we could present to the next person down the road who stopped to examine our disguised goods. And it the end, how very very anti-climactic it was. When the stage is set for a love story, you expect it to end like a Taylor Swift song. But in real life, it seems to end like a gothic novel: leaving you with a sad taste in your mouth, a sore heart, and a feeling of resigned homesickness for a place you know you’ll never see again.
Yes, I’ll be the first to admit, this has happened to us before. But I’ve finally come to the point in my life where I am ready and able to become more than a high school sweetheart, more than a teenage fling, a college courtship. I’m ready for the real thing, I’m ready for the challenges, the responsibilities, the partnership and daily, continual support… in short: I am ready for marriage. But marriage and final separation don’t belong in the same discussion, and if they are the two options you’re looking at, you know there’s a problem.
When two people are fundamentally different in the very core of their beings, what can you do? Fight it? Yes, you can. We tried for years. But dreaming of a far-off future and actually coming to the place where it’s time to act on it are very different things. It’s easy to think that things will get better in time. It’s easy to say, “I don’t have to worry about that, when the time comes, it will work itself out.” It’s easy to push your fears to the furthest corner of your mind, and pretend that you don’t notice when they start to collect cobwebs. But when something happens, when a decision has to be made, you have to clean the attic. You have to pull out the broom and dig into those corners, dreading what you’ll find in the darkness.
My worst fears have been realized, the biggest shadow of all crept into the light and spread his cold hands around my heart.
I’m not a child anymore. I’m not a child anymore, which I suppose means that I have to face my fears and be able to live with the outcome of the battle that somehow has to be fought. I have to stop thinking of only myself, and the selfish desires of my present day heart. I have to think of my future, my children, their futures, and so on. But wait, dare I even type the words from another dim corner of my mind? I fear for my ability to even have children with the risks it involves for a CRPS patient. I have to be careful not to wound myself, to tear my skin, to break a bone, to twist an ankle…for fear that this disease could spread. “Jumping” is possible in the later stages. And since childbirth is one of the most traumatic experiences a body can face, what does that mean for me and my maternal heart? I don’t know.
If the Lord decides to give me children, I know the foundation I want them to have in their lives. I know that at that point, it won’t be just me anymore. And how could I knowingly and willingly subject them to the uncertainty, the confusion, the loyalty issues, the resentments, choices and pain of having parents with battling viewpoints on what they both see as the core of their beings?
The verse, “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…”** kept ringing through my head last night as I tried to claim sleep for my own. I realized, it really came down to this: Who do I have more faith in, myself, or my God?
It’s easy to think you know the answer right off the top of your head. It was on the tip of my own tongue to give the automatic response of, “God, of course.” But that hasn’t been the case. I’ve been trying to make it true by bending God’s will to my desires, defending myself with the idea that God can give us the desires of our hearts. If that was true, then surely he would know mine, would grant me what I wanted if it had such potential to make me happy, right? But then I realized…God never changes, but people do. God gave us free will to do with it what we would, and that free will can take us down a path as far away from Him as those bricks will lead. The desires of my heart haven’t changed enormously, but the weight of responsibility to my future family now rests on top of the already overweight heart. I suppose one could think I was crazy for thinking of them now, but I don’t think so. We all have to grow up sometime.
And so, the hurricane has finally hit – and I am sick at heart to see the dreams of my kingdom collapse around me. I believe with all my heart that he is sick this night too.
I suppose it was ridiculous to think that we could just play house forever. Sooner or later, you look out the window of that plastic hut and realize the world is bigger than you thought it was when you were safe within the walls, and it brings you sharply back to the reality that you were only playing all along.
Autumn has officially hit our small town. As I was driving home through the wooded two lane road, I realized that right beneath my nose and seemingly overnight, the trees had changed to vibrant fire hues. The sharp wind of the perfectly sunny day sent the fallen leaves soaring like papery birds, and I was enchanted. I wondered how I could have possibly thought that yesterday was so beautiful, when something like this was in the works all along.
I suppose it’s like a song. A simple melody is beautiful, and you can appreciate it for what it is. But when you hear the same song with a stringed orchestra accompaniment, you realize just what you were missing – though you could have gone your entire life without even realizing there was something more matched to the fine tunings of your heart if you’d never heard it.
Oh, how I pray that we didn’t just mutually make the biggest mistake of our lives.
**Joshua 24:15
Leave a Reply