2018 was a year full of gifts, after the harshness of 2017.
But they were gifts I did not want.
I had a very vivid dream one night, where I recall having a conversation with God. Or at least some human-looking form of Him. And for all my inability to really stand up for myself in real life… I apparently had ZERO problem bringing this particular set of complaints right to the Almighty.
“Look, God. I thought we discussed this. I asked you for a nice easy year. I asked you for happiness. I asked you for peace after the storm, and for love after the hurt, and for all the good things.”
” I know, Terra. That’s exactly what I gave you.”
” Ok maybe you have me confused with some OTHER terra who got all the things *I* asked for. Because (insert my voice getting high and shrill at this point) LET ME REMIND YOU of the things I got.”
And I proceeded to tell God about all the very very very crappy things I have had to deal with over the past two years. Maybe 5. I lost track. It all became a blur.
I remember very specifically feeling like my life was unraveling at the moment we discovered our in-home nurse for Kendall had overdosed herself on not only her own three full bottles of opioid pain-killers, but had started an Iv on herself with Kendall’s supplies and taken a week’s worth of any and every IV med we had in the house. (For the record, I don’t recommend trying to kill yourself with IV clot busting medication… I mean really??? But I digress.) Came home to her death-rattle breathing on the couch, Kendall scared to death, and I heaved the nurse up on my shoulder and put her in the car to drive her to the ER. I had no idea what she had done until a few hours in to the ER stay, at which point the police came to start an investigation which ended up with a grand jury indictment.
In the midst of that chaos, my barely-making-it marriage was definitely beginning to crumble. There had been infidelities (on both sides – like I said, it had been a crumbling mess for a long while), but for some reason, seeing the black and white evidence of the betrayal hits you in the face like the titanic ripped over that glacier. It guts you. It spills you open and you feel like a fish out of water with no gills. In my darkest moments, I felt like I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. I felt like my parents would disown me forever if they knew my failures (they didn’t, and they never would, but I believed this lie to be true). I had so many friends with great marriages and who actually still went to church together and I didn’t feel like I had anywhere to turn in my pain. So I turned inward.
I let that pain swallow me up and I became a shadow of the person I used to be.
We began the divorce process and oh…no matter how amicable you tell yourself it will be because you refuse to be “that couple”… divorce is brutal and ugly and hard and painful. You are literally “ripping assunder what God has joined together”, as you agree to in your vows and It. Is. Horrible. You find yourself fighting over who gets the good pair of salt shakers and which glasses are yours to keep and the hardest part of all is that it’s the poor babies who are hurt the worst. And I would say that throughout the painfulness, we really DID keep it mainly amicable. There were certainly some dark days, very dark moments. And I, in my pain and fear and anger, reacted. I am not trying to make this about anything on the other side of this partnership – I have done enough inner work and digging into the depths of my soul to know that I was not an innocent bystander in all of this pain. This is my story, and I am trying to own my part in it as best as I can.
It was painful. More painful than I would ever wish on my worst enemy. Pain that I pray no one close to me ever has to feel….even though I know statistically some will.
I was ripped apart to the very studs of my “foundation” as a person.
and in between all of this, Kendall is in the hospital fighting for her life through sepsis again. And again. And in the middle of one of these times, my “not-quite-husband-but-not-yet-my-ex” is involved in an accident requiring airlifting to a larger hospital out of state, and my father-in-law is getting sicker with congestive heart failure, and I am fired from a crappy job that I poured my heart and soul into. I am left with no income, but firm in my resolve to keep my house for my babies who have already had their lives ripped apart and I refuse to make them pack up their lives into boxes and further destroy their hearts. So I am determined to find ANY WAY to make this work, to pay the bills and to figure out how to mow the yard and how to fix the dishwasher and how to make it so the sound bar connects to the TV because that was always his job not mine. I dig deep into some reserve of self that I didn’t even know I had and I do all of this.
And the divorce is final. And it feels both like a death and a new beginning in the exact same minute and i don’t have the emotional wherewithal to know how to process that. About a week after this death of marriage, the death of my refrigerator occurs and THEN i really started to lose it. no food, wasted food, no money to replace the food, and a company not interested at all in helping me resolve this problem. And then my father-in-law passes away and my babies are hurting all over again at the loss of their beloved Poppa Bob. We are all hurting.
And then the car kept breaking down, including totally shutting down in the middle of an icy freeway with a semi-truck barreling down upon us. I had nowhere to go and I KNEW we would all die right there. i prayed it would be quick and painless. This is probably a blog post of it’s own someday….
To this day I have no idea how that truck avoided us. I have no idea how we are still here to talk about it.
That night after getting home, in the negative windchill temperature, our heater died in our house. And within a few hours, Kendall was septic again. And it was snowing. Again. And I remember telling myself I couldn’t cry on the long hard drive following the tracks of the ambulance at 4 am northward. Because if I cried i wouldn’t be able to see the road and I had to see the road. I had to stay awake and I had to keep it all together because there was no other option.
“So were THOSE the gifts you thought I needed, God? THOSE PAINFUL HORRIBLE GIFTS?!?!?!?!”
‘but it’s exactly what you asked for…
It’s everything you wanted, everything you needed, and more!”
“No way God, ” I say with my voice lowered, tears threatening to spill over.
“THIS hurts. THIS is painful. This is cold and lonely and looks NOTHING like – or FEELS nothing like – what I wanted. Or needed. “
“Look again, terra”
“I. Don’t. Want. To. EVERRRRRRR. Look. Again.” (crossed arms, jutted jaw, pure defiance.)
“Look again….” He says in a gentle soft tone.
I asked for Love. And Love showed up in the form of friends, neighbors, co-workers, family. We were really never truly alone.
I asked for Strength. And I am pretty sure that one came in waves. huge waves. Drowning waves.
I asked for Hope – and it is there every morning, without fail.
I asked for happiness….
and through all of the broken things –
Broken Fridges.
Broken Cars.
Broken Kendalls.
Broken arms.
Broken me…
I got ALL OF THOSE THINGS.
And more.
I got ME.
I am Love. I am strong. I am hopeful.
And I am Happy.
Look again, my friends.
No matter what mountains of horribleness are looming large above you…
Always
Look
Again.
Oh yes…. there it is.
T.