When I was a young woman, starting at about the age of 14, I began to build a man beside me in my bed with pillows. It was in the night that my fears would come to fruition, it was when the suicidal thoughts would come and I would question if I was truly lovable, was I disposable, was I enough or was I going to be too much for a man to every truly love and know. I would listen to music to try and ease the thoughts, to give myself something else to think about, to give me a different feeling about myself. I remember lying there so many nights wondering if this would be the night that God would let me take my own life and let me find peace. I lived with a packed bag in my closet for years, wanting to run, but not knowing where to go. I used to talk with God and lay out a fleece before Him although I had no idea what a fleece was. How many nights I would lay there in the darkness of my room and say to God: If I am not asleep by midnight tonight is the night that I will end it all.
I searched in many beds of many men to find that peace that I so longed for. I added shame and guilt on top of my feelings of wanting to be desired and needed. I longed to be enough, I longed to be loved, to be appreciated, to be noticed. I put myself into the same position over and over again and though some would say I was a “bad girl”, I was a girl overwrought with feelings of worthlessness, feelings of never ever being enough. I wanted to be the kind of girl you wanted to take home to Mom and yet more times I found myself sneaking into the windows and not walking through the front doors of the boys that chose me.
When I was a senior high school I found this boy that promised me the love that I was looking for, he wrote poetry for me, he made me feel good about myself. Like I could conquer the world and for the first time in years I found that at night I dreamt of him, I no longer had the suicidal thoughts. There appeared to be an end in sight to the need to die because someone, someone had noticed… me. I began to open up to him and to share my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, aspirations; my desire to be a writer, my desire to be married, and to have a family. It was a few months after graduation that I found out that I was pregnant. Though I don’t remember what he said to me, what I heard was that I was not enough to be the mother of his child, that I wasn’t enough to be his wife. He didn’t love me enough to work through the process. Yet, I had so intertwined myself with this boy that it took 2 abortions and countless heartaches and realizations for me to walk away.
I met my husband just mere months after getting out of that relationship, when he noticed me, and began to seek me out; again I felt that my needs had been met. He never stood a chance. He had his own baggage for sure. He met a broken woman, with very fresh wounds, and I looked to him to be my deliverer. My husband was in the military and already had orders in hand to leave the country. I contemplated my escape. I was willing to marry him when he proposed 4 weeks into our relationship and I said I do to him just short of our 5th week anniversary of knowing one another. I thought that I had found my knight in shining armor and that all of my nightmares would come to an end.
Our story isn’t pretty. I wasn’t pretty, he wasn’t pretty and we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into. It was a few short months before we found out that we were expecting our first child that had been conceived on our wedding night. I remember sitting with him at the beach there in Puerto Rico and we discussed our options. We were both scared to death. Abortion wasn’t an option, but there was thought given to me coming back to the states and raising the child on my own. There were a lot of tears that day for both of us. It was the first of many intense moments that have defined our almost 16 years of marriage. We are both intensely tenacious and neither of us wanted to admit defeat to our family and our friends. I believe it is that stubbornness that has left us the only of our friends from that season in our lives that are still married. We walked away from the beach that day committed to the building of our family. However, within me, I heard, “You will do until I find someone or something better. You will suffice as a mother, but I am holding out on the possibility that there is another woman out there that is a better fit for me.”
I have lived a life of insecurities and fears. I have learned to mask them for the masses, I have portrayed myself as a fighter, as someone strong and courageous but in the still of the night, when I crawl into bed my tormentors return and I am left to battle on my own. There have been many nights that I have crawled into my marriage bed feeling guilt, remorse, shame, unlovable and even unloved. My husband and I have both tried to ask the question dozens of times “Are you the true one that God has for me?” I continued to seek the attention of other men, he of other women. The irony of the entire situation is that though we kept looking, we have never found anyone else that could fit us the way that we fit each other. A testament, that God is so much smarter than we can even fathom.
In these past few months I have found myself crawling back into a bed for the first time in almost 16 years without the warmth of my husband next to me. I find myself plagued with the same questions. Am I enough? Am I too much? Is he going to find someone else better suited to him? Is he still going to love me when we reunite? Have the changes that God made in me going to leave me unattractive to him? Is he still going to want me? Would he fight for me? I don’t know the answers. Honestly, my experience usually trumps my theology in these areas. I struggle internally with this battle, daily especially without him next to me to comfort me or to speak words of encouragement to that young woman that still questions her self and her worth.
However, what I have been accepting more and more every day is that there is someone out there that loves me more than he does. That all of these years, the one thing I was searching for, caught every tear I cried. Just recently I had this understanding that Jesus was with me all those nights, crying his own tears over my heartbreak. Every time I sought to ease my flesh, He too was there. There hasn’t been one moment of my life that He has ever left my side. As I look towards the future I have a lot of those “If____ then___” scenarios that run through my head. I have chased all of them to the end and what I have discovered is, no matter what the “if” may be, the “then” is always the same. God. Then God. Then I would seek the healing for the pain, I would begin to again put one foot in front of the other, then I would start writing again, then I would begin telling my story and sharing how “if” “then” God changed me. Made me realize my weakness, and revealed to me that God is the only answer no matter what the circumstances. Always and forever.
The beauty of life is so simple, or maybe he just keeps it simple for me. It all comes down to there is no need to fear “if” because “then” is when God will step in and wrap you in His arms and become the Deliverer and the Healer that can never found in any human solution.
“I will fight for you – I will die for you. I KNOW that you are worth it”. ~Jesus
Share
