Another day of living bedridden in a high-risk pregnant passed, and I checked it off my
little hand-made, bedside calendar. Then I'd count the days I survived and the days I still had to go.
It was my own personal ritual.
Day after day, I leaned into the
Lord through prayer to gain strength.
Yet, even with the strength I
garnered from prayer, there remained plenty of weak moments when I felt like waving
the white flag of surrender and giving up. Then my inward-seeking self would roar
back. “None of this is worth it!” I’d confirm vehemently to the silent room and
emotionless ceiling. “After all, I have a
life to lead. My husband and son rely on me, and I’m not very reliable
lying in bed. Who’s looking after my family and household?”
And
what if, after all of this sacrifice, we still lost the battle? That ugly
possibility always hovered around the perimeter of my conscience as I forced
myself to view the situation realistically.
One afternoon, though, in the depths
of doubt, a “voice” spoke to me in such clarity from my heart that my
conscience snapped to attention: Fight
for me, Mom, the “voice” entreated. Fight
for me!
How could I not? It was all I needed
to “hear” to buttress my resolve to go on. What I was doing was right and
necessary, even if it were physically painful. The fight would endure until a
succinct end signaled victory or defeat. And I would go down swinging.
But as my resolve strengthened,
Chris’s withered away. At twenty-eight weeks, he slumped into the rocking chair
in my bedroom after a rough workday and caustically announced, “I don’t know
how much more I can take. I’ve
experienced just about enough! I’m
tired, sick and frustrated. The demands from everyone are unrealistic, and I
have realized my limit!” His voice was sharp, accusatory, dripping with disgust
and anger.
Then he launched a final blow. “If
it all ended today, I would be happy. I could live with myself for the rest of
my life and not feel the least bit of remorse.”
I was crushed into silence. What had
happened to the man who so lovingly washed my hair once a week and tenderly
helped me change my clothes when they wouldn’t last another day? I desperately
needed his encouragement; I needed him to continue to be selfless with his love
and support. He was doing everything humanly possible to take care of my
physical needs, but his emotional conviction waned dangerously. It actually
seemed to have packed its bags and vacated. I thought—hoped—it was a single night of him unloading his frustrations. But
it wasn’t. With increasing frequency and intensity, he complained vehemently about
the demands everyone was placing on him—from work, to Parker, to me. It
threatened to become a nightly ritual, and instead of happily awaiting his
return home, I started dreading his appearance every afternoon.
What did he expect me to do? How did
he expect me to provide him with any emotional support? I knew and appreciated
how hard he was working, but there was absolutely nothing I could do to lighten
his increasing load, much of which was brought on by his own design since he
also continued his relentless pursuit of self-employment while working full
time.
Yet guilt racked me. The gravity of
my situation had become a frightening, monolithic burden—to me and everyone
else. Keeping me focused on my goal continually strained my tolerance
boundaries and sanity. My heart ached for him and his burden, but I was
incapable of shouldering his afflictions, too. He needed to find someone else
he could unload on.
I started resenting his daily
castigations against his company, his “situation,” and the demands of both. It
was difficult for me to not regard his attitude as selfish and coarse. He
needed someone else upon whom he could pour his fears, doubt and anger. He
needed someone else to strip away the hard, emotionally protective veneer he’d
constructed around his heart and mind. Without me, he no longer wished to
attend church regularly, so support wasn’t coming from that arena. And the men
he knew didn’t call to ask how he was doing.
The situation ballooned out of
control, so he took what seems to be the familiar male approach: he lashed out
against it, or tried to reduce it to a state of insignificance. Chris was a man
in limbo who wore his negative emotions on his sleeve, on his face, and in his cornflower
blue eyes. There were times when I even dreaded turning my head to look into
those more frequently flashing, angry eyes. Eyes that had formerly been so
expressively tender and loving. At the worst times, those precious eyes, and
the man I love so deeply, seemed to find everything about me—and the situation I had put the whole family in—irritating
and disgusting.
By the thirtieth week, I was terrified
of my husband.
If this was the enemy’s way of
trying to undermine our union, erode our foundation and assure my failure, it
was working. The chunks were rapidly falling from the edifice.
As the loneliness deepened and
separation from the outside world threatened to drive me insane, sorrow now
penetrated my soul. I felt acutely alone, even when my family was in the house—especially when my visibly miserable,
overburdened husband was present. Yet, it all made me even more determined not
to disintegrate emotionally or physically, or to walk out of that room
defeated. I would not be forever cursed with what ifs overtaking my conscience
like a slow-growing parasitic fungus, every waking moment for the rest of my
life. Not after all of the love, suffering and perseverance already accomplished.
How could I throw God’s mercy and
grace in His face and tell Him that He could have it back, that I was finished with it? How could I tell Him
He was expecting too much from me—from
all of us—and that I had changed my mind; that I no longer desired to
sustain the precious life I was carrying? The life He had given me?
Alone, yet not alone.
If I thought I’d hit the end before
that point, I was dead wrong. I needed to crawl under the shadow of the cleft
and hide.
At least there I knew I’d be sustained.
And protected.
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NEXT WEEK: Little sparks of encouragement…
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Until next week,
Thanks for
joining me!
Blessings,
Andrea
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