I have spent the last two days sitting in a deer blind from before dawn to after dark. I had a few moments when I had deer in front of me, but for the bulk of that time there was very little to hold my attention. So where does your brain go when it is unfettered by daily tasks or to-do lists? Well I don't know about you but mine floats to the large questions I have about life. So what are the larger questions that a man who has drastically altered almost everything about his life in the past 12 months have? What's for breakfast tomorrow.
Ha! Well in some ways that is true you see for a long time now I have been living looking backwards and living minute to minute for the most part. I think for the most part that is okay. I think when you go through something that traumatic the way to heal is one hour, one step, one day at a time. Healing is a seasonal thing. I do not think that this season is over, yet I do think that at some point you have to start picking your head up and looking forward a bit.
So:
1. Is this job that I am currently doing good? I am not asking am I doing a good job, I am. I am asking "if" this is what I should do for this next season?
2. What should I be doing financially? Goals, purpose, etc?
3. To date or not to date? I think I am still in love with my ex, so I believe that the answer to this question is no. I have never been able to put someone in harms way for my own good. That's why when I was at parties or bars and everyone was coupling/hooking up I was the one taking care of the sick, cleaning up or listening in the corner. I could never just put myself first and disregard the others feelings no mater their state. Even though this was frustrating at times when I was a hormonal teenager/twenty-something kid, I like this about myself. And now that I am a much more mature hormonal almost 40 something male I do not want this life experience to rob me of that.
4. How can I be growing? Personally, physically, emotionally, mentally and most importantly spiritually?
5. How am I taking risks, being vulnerable, etc?
6. Who am I helping?
In conclusion, I am a mess. I have been living away from my ex for almost a year in a week or two. I know things about the limits of humanity that I can't unlearn. I have been officially divorced for about 7 months. I am coming up on my one year anniversary at my current job. I am two weeks from being 39. I am 6 months into a 30 or 20 year mortgage.... I can't actually remember which I signed at this minute! My memory is still foggy from the crap and so clogged with part numbers and fun facts about my new job, that I forget even big details like the term of my mortgage. (I knew how many months my wife and I had left in our previous mortgages.) I have been knocked to the ground, but I'm not dead. I have been regrouping and who knows what this next round will bring.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Sunday, November 8, 2015
the fragility of the world
My daughter was a premie. She should have died in the womb. The doctors told us she would. IN fact the doctor wouldn't let us leave his consultation room until we began the mourning process. We left went home and started to mourn the baby we had tried so desperately to have, who was still alive inside of my wife. Long story short about 10 long weeks later I was driving like a mad man to a hospital, running through hallways, hopping on one foot putting a surgical suit on, entering a room along with a Neonatal rapid response team and watched the surgeon make her incision on my ex's abdomen for an emergency C-section. Then they removed the baby quickly handed her over to the team and I sat between my wife who was cut open and bleeding with some of her insides on the outsides and my 3 lb 8oz infant daughter being worked on by 5-6 people trying desperately to get her to breath so I wouldn't have to watch her die within my arms reach. The had to intubate her and put her on a vent. Then they wheeled her away and she was gone. I wasn't sure I was going to see her alive again. They put my wife back together, stapled, and taped her shut. I think that day I discovered how fragile life actually is...
I never really knew how fragile marriages are? I grew up with parents who fought through and stayed together. My grandma lost her first love to WWII but she stayed with her 2nd husband until he died in a room in the same hospital my daughter was born in. My other grandparents stayed together until Alzheimer's stole my grandma's mind and eventually her life. Aunts/Uncles/cousins for the most part. Friends. Not entirely, but in many ways I guess I was sheltered from the reality of the truth about this type of relationship. I guess as I got older it began to dawn on me a little as acquaintances, a few family members, etc. walked the road of divorce. I knew my marriage was less than perfect, but I also knew there were no perfect marriages and I just assumed you stayed together and fought together to keep your family intact. I thought that if you have two good people, two people who don't believe in divorce, don't give up on really anything in life, love each other and love their family that divorce just wasn't an option.
I talked to a friend this weekend, they found out something tragic about their marriage. I could hear the confusion, rage, frustration and below that I could hear the hurt, pain, betrayal but what struck me to tears was the confusion...the shock. I was transported back to a few sleepless nights. Nights I spent racking my brain and heart. Why? How did we get here? Am I so worthless to her? So easy to throw away? How could something like this happen to us...to me?
The truth of it all is everything is fragile, even though we try to blind ourselves to that truth. Houses burn down. Car accidents happen in the blink of an eye. Cancer steals lives in every condition. Stock markets fail. People lie. Companies go bankrupt and/or downsize. Friends leave. Spouses betray. Children turn their backs on their parents. To coin a phrase shit happens. The Bible says that our lives are but a wisp of smoke or a blade of grass. Our lives are but blips in the world, in time, in the galaxy.
Yet, I believe that we are each valued and priceless. We will fail, we will betray, we will be let down, we will be hurt, we will lose, but we will also love if we are lucky, we will recognize grace, mercy, an identity not rooted in success, money, power, etc but in kindness, love and an entity that has perfect love for us and is capable of grace in the midst of that perfection.
So yes everything is fragile, and will fall apart...but we have hope, we have access to strength we cannot fathom the depths of and best of all we are loved.
I am loved!
I never really knew how fragile marriages are? I grew up with parents who fought through and stayed together. My grandma lost her first love to WWII but she stayed with her 2nd husband until he died in a room in the same hospital my daughter was born in. My other grandparents stayed together until Alzheimer's stole my grandma's mind and eventually her life. Aunts/Uncles/cousins for the most part. Friends. Not entirely, but in many ways I guess I was sheltered from the reality of the truth about this type of relationship. I guess as I got older it began to dawn on me a little as acquaintances, a few family members, etc. walked the road of divorce. I knew my marriage was less than perfect, but I also knew there were no perfect marriages and I just assumed you stayed together and fought together to keep your family intact. I thought that if you have two good people, two people who don't believe in divorce, don't give up on really anything in life, love each other and love their family that divorce just wasn't an option.
I talked to a friend this weekend, they found out something tragic about their marriage. I could hear the confusion, rage, frustration and below that I could hear the hurt, pain, betrayal but what struck me to tears was the confusion...the shock. I was transported back to a few sleepless nights. Nights I spent racking my brain and heart. Why? How did we get here? Am I so worthless to her? So easy to throw away? How could something like this happen to us...to me?
The truth of it all is everything is fragile, even though we try to blind ourselves to that truth. Houses burn down. Car accidents happen in the blink of an eye. Cancer steals lives in every condition. Stock markets fail. People lie. Companies go bankrupt and/or downsize. Friends leave. Spouses betray. Children turn their backs on their parents. To coin a phrase shit happens. The Bible says that our lives are but a wisp of smoke or a blade of grass. Our lives are but blips in the world, in time, in the galaxy.
Yet, I believe that we are each valued and priceless. We will fail, we will betray, we will be let down, we will be hurt, we will lose, but we will also love if we are lucky, we will recognize grace, mercy, an identity not rooted in success, money, power, etc but in kindness, love and an entity that has perfect love for us and is capable of grace in the midst of that perfection.
So yes everything is fragile, and will fall apart...but we have hope, we have access to strength we cannot fathom the depths of and best of all we are loved.
I am loved!
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Look through the symptoms to the root
I have started watching House MD on Netflix, it is an interesting show. This cantankerous doctor with a back story, that has wounded him, is a brilliant diagnostician. He is like the Sherlock Holms of doctors. I have noticed two things one he is constantly trying to decipher all the symptoms and/or causes seeking to almost get them out of the way to get to the root cause. The other thing he has said often is everyone lies.
As I look back at the marriage that I shared with my ex before the last year, I think we had good things and bad things going on..like every marriage. But if I look at it from here, at a distance, I notice that we had a broken defense system. What does that mean? It means we never really figured out how to get through the bad stuff together. So when they came we reacted to them, often times individually. Yet, we didn't have the ability to walk through them together. To use the metaphor here, our body had no real immune system. So when the little crummy things of life happened bumps, bruises, illness we would wipe some salve on it or take a pill and then move on. Which at first is not that big of a deal. But eventually something big happens and the anemic, battered body that you bring to the table when something big happens cannot get through it.
Okay let's climb out of the metaphor before I get too lost in it. We never really learned how to communicate, we surely never learned how to conflict. Part of that stemmed back to issues we brought to the table individually. Our conflict styles did not match up, we would have needed to work very hard and extremely intentionally to accomplish healthy conflict. We didn't do that.
We never took the time to really figure what we loved to do together. We knew what we loved to do individually and sometimes we would include the other on our terms. But we never spent enough time or energy figuring out the things that would create an environment of health as a regularly communicating team outside of the ordinary daily details or conflict.
I think we were so focused on growing up ourselves and raising our daughters that we stopped even thinking about growing our relationship.
It's funny when we started dating we were headed in the right direction. We didn't even kiss for months because we knew that this gets in the way of communicating and we wanted to focus on getting to know eachother not just focus on the next time we were going to kiss. We prayed together, trying to include the other in our intimate relationships with God. We read devo's and books commenting on the things that stood out to us. We spent much of our time in groups, so we intentionally set apart a night a week where we could be alone on a date just us. In my mind the way we began was on a pretty solid foundation. We even attempted to do this when we were first married, but careers, expectations from family, friends, and probably most importantly the unmet ones from each other began to pile up between us.
To slip back into the metaphor, our main arteries to the heart of our marriage began to clog. It was subtle at first, then a couple of big blockages landed infertility and unmet financial obligation. In some way we knew these things were there, that they were slowly killing us, but as long as we didn't "mess" around with them we were "okay".
So we had "lots" of symptoms, but what was the root cause. Because the truth is we are both lovely, intelligent, hard working, caring, people. We have supportive families who love us and loved our spouses, they aren't perfect but humans never are. We share many stories, memories, bonds, got through infertility to have two beautiful daughters, worked hard in our careers and stood out among our peers. We even love each other.
Love- well that is an interesting thing. Now we may be on to something. There is a piece of scripture from the message that goes like this: The eyes are the windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty eyes in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have. This is not a scripture about marriage but it applies so well here. We choose over and over again to live squinty-eyed, greedy to put it bluntly. It wasn't that we didn't love each other, the problem was we loved ourselves more.
The root problem was we were human. We avoided awkward situations and uncomfortable conversations....we were selfish... in the end that's what tore us apart. It wasn't the symptoms though there were many. We forgot to open our eyes wide in wonder and belief that this other person was more important than we were and that they were worth sacrificing our own self love for any day of the week. The funny thing is that didn't have to kill us, to be honest it still doesn't. But we will probably carry on making the same mistakes and falling prey to the same symptoms again and again. I believe that we could fix us, the us that we never gave a fair shot, the us God put together to make us more whole with Him, the us that loves our daughters to infinity. But we won't.
As I look back at the marriage that I shared with my ex before the last year, I think we had good things and bad things going on..like every marriage. But if I look at it from here, at a distance, I notice that we had a broken defense system. What does that mean? It means we never really figured out how to get through the bad stuff together. So when they came we reacted to them, often times individually. Yet, we didn't have the ability to walk through them together. To use the metaphor here, our body had no real immune system. So when the little crummy things of life happened bumps, bruises, illness we would wipe some salve on it or take a pill and then move on. Which at first is not that big of a deal. But eventually something big happens and the anemic, battered body that you bring to the table when something big happens cannot get through it.
Okay let's climb out of the metaphor before I get too lost in it. We never really learned how to communicate, we surely never learned how to conflict. Part of that stemmed back to issues we brought to the table individually. Our conflict styles did not match up, we would have needed to work very hard and extremely intentionally to accomplish healthy conflict. We didn't do that.
We never took the time to really figure what we loved to do together. We knew what we loved to do individually and sometimes we would include the other on our terms. But we never spent enough time or energy figuring out the things that would create an environment of health as a regularly communicating team outside of the ordinary daily details or conflict.
I think we were so focused on growing up ourselves and raising our daughters that we stopped even thinking about growing our relationship.
It's funny when we started dating we were headed in the right direction. We didn't even kiss for months because we knew that this gets in the way of communicating and we wanted to focus on getting to know eachother not just focus on the next time we were going to kiss. We prayed together, trying to include the other in our intimate relationships with God. We read devo's and books commenting on the things that stood out to us. We spent much of our time in groups, so we intentionally set apart a night a week where we could be alone on a date just us. In my mind the way we began was on a pretty solid foundation. We even attempted to do this when we were first married, but careers, expectations from family, friends, and probably most importantly the unmet ones from each other began to pile up between us.
To slip back into the metaphor, our main arteries to the heart of our marriage began to clog. It was subtle at first, then a couple of big blockages landed infertility and unmet financial obligation. In some way we knew these things were there, that they were slowly killing us, but as long as we didn't "mess" around with them we were "okay".
So we had "lots" of symptoms, but what was the root cause. Because the truth is we are both lovely, intelligent, hard working, caring, people. We have supportive families who love us and loved our spouses, they aren't perfect but humans never are. We share many stories, memories, bonds, got through infertility to have two beautiful daughters, worked hard in our careers and stood out among our peers. We even love each other.
Love- well that is an interesting thing. Now we may be on to something. There is a piece of scripture from the message that goes like this: The eyes are the windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty eyes in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have. This is not a scripture about marriage but it applies so well here. We choose over and over again to live squinty-eyed, greedy to put it bluntly. It wasn't that we didn't love each other, the problem was we loved ourselves more.
The root problem was we were human. We avoided awkward situations and uncomfortable conversations....we were selfish... in the end that's what tore us apart. It wasn't the symptoms though there were many. We forgot to open our eyes wide in wonder and belief that this other person was more important than we were and that they were worth sacrificing our own self love for any day of the week. The funny thing is that didn't have to kill us, to be honest it still doesn't. But we will probably carry on making the same mistakes and falling prey to the same symptoms again and again. I believe that we could fix us, the us that we never gave a fair shot, the us God put together to make us more whole with Him, the us that loves our daughters to infinity. But we won't.
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