Nally had one power trip after another, and had a 3 hour drawn out fight refusing to nap. When she finally calmed down, turns out she didn't sleep, she had just sat and looked out of the window the whole time. She said “NO” to me a million times, hit the boy, hit me. It was one of those days, i wanted to run away from home permanently.
So you can imagine when Enoch came home to pick me up to take to his work dinner, where i have to sit demurely and prettily impressing his new partners -- i wasn't the least bit in the mood.
Little did i know God had other amazing ideas.
Would you believe that the Almighty God would seat us at the table with the Chief Operating Officer? Him being one of the 2 newly married couples and us being married the longest among them?
Would you believe that God would use him to tell ( and i mean word for word ) my husband to take the 2 kids more, give me more time off, remember that i love him even though i don't seem like it ?
Would you believe that God would have him say to us, that we are the most amazing couple, so many others would have been divorced by now, ( he should know, his first marriage ending during residency, his second during the age of our children ) and that we show such emotional intelligence to have gotten therapy prophylactically before the kids were here, during and now? That we had our accountability group, that we still had our date nights?
i felt like God had used the person my husband most admired and is in awe of -- to tell him that i was special, i was wise making all those decisions to protect our marriage, that i was amazing to stick with Enoch as long and as far as i did, that i was doing a good job as a mother.
i have never met this man, but he sat and talked all night with us. He gave us tips about all he has learnt through his years of marriage and we talked so genuinely about God, and sex and marriage.
It was amazing.
Dear Lord,
you make me tear up with how much you lavish on me. i take baby steps towards you, mumbling scripture through my toddler's bloodcurdling screams and i tell you how much i long to run away. What do you do? You use an esteemed stranger from my husband's work to encourage me, to admonish him, to affirm our marriage, to celebrate how far we've come and how much we've survived, to spring from a potentially superficial night of “medicinal” elitism -- a conversation so genuine and real that floods my parched and worn heart.
Thank you for loving me so publicly for showing my husband so tangibly all my heart's longing and cries. For encouraging me to press on in this marriage, in my job of raising my children, and for all my hopes and dreams once upon a time when i wanted so much for my relationship with Enoch.
Thank you Lord, you are the Lover of my soul, your cherish and nurture me, and because of you i can face tomorrow.
Tania, thanks for writing this post. I never realized that having kids would create so much stress in my marriage. Your posts have kept me sane and we are trying to arrange for couples therapy. I hope that will work out. Keep posting!
Posted by: Christina | Mar 21, 2005 at 07:35 AM