It has been a really hard time for my husband and I in the last few weeks. Our struggles in life have really come close to overwhelming us. Praise God that I think we have reached a turn-around low point in the last few of days, and that there are strong rays of hope for some ways to begin climbing back up out of this pit.
Sunday I was really distressed, and I ended up talking to one of my pastors for a long time about what we had been going through recently. He said one thing that has really stuck with me. It was something like "You and your husband have always been in crisis for as long as I have known you." Which is true! There were some big bumps in the road for us previous to this time, but it's been very hard since my husband lost his last permanent job in high-tech five years ago. Our jobs and financial situation, our emotional and physical health, and our extended family situations have been a painful, frightening roller coaster ride.
When I heard my pastor say that he'd only ever known us in crisis, I wanted to scream. That is not what I want to have define me!
So I've been thinking. Maybe I can reframe this time? Accept the roller-coaster ride that we seem to be on as just the way life is for us right now, and try to figure out how to go for the ride without fighting against it so much? Maybe much of my experience really does depend on how I look at it?
I know that's not an answer to all hard or bad things that happen in life. But this experience I'm in is not about abuse or injustice. I think part of my struggle is rooted deeply in my expectations of God and life, expectations that He would provide me with the life that I had dreamed of and planned for in my early adulthood. I don't think that dreams are bad. But maybe, being unwilling to accept life taking me in a different direction than my dreams is bad.
I'm still thinking, trying to understand, trying to be willing to change and live in the present reality that I find myself in. I'm really tired of feeling in crisis most of the time, and I'd like to find a way to move beyond that. I can't do much to change most of the circumstances, but maybe one of the things I can change is how I look at them.
And moving another step deeper - can I acknowledge and accept my feelings about these losses and changes, and yet not dwell in grief? Not stuff my feelings, yet live in the reality of my life today without railing against it?
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Ever since I got together with my wife we've struggled with one thing or another too, and I've had people say the same thing to us. "You've been through so much!"
We've been through constant crisis, and it seems like it never ends.
Perhaps the crisis doesn't have to define us but how we defeat it.. we're fighters, grief can be hard to overcome in it though and there have been times that it's threatened to pull us under too.
You are in my prayers.
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