A post in which I am learning to get over myself....

Well. After posting a couple of weeks ago about how good I was feeling and how rich we are... I think the universe must have looked at me in all my smugness and decided I needed taking down a peg or two.

Because last week, was awful. Just awful.

It sort of ended up being a perfect storm for crapness. Shane and I have been floating along, kind of forgetting that our marriage actually requires effort and neglecting each other, he had a supremely bad week at work, and then our kids had a big week of sickness. It was nothing drastic, but it was a week of conjunctivitis, high temps, a few vomits, and just an endless amount of whinging and unhappiness.

And you know how it goes sometimes, when you are sick, or your kids are sick, and a very small, tiny part of you really and truly starts to believe that this is the way things are always going to be? I knew, I knew, my children would be healthy again. I knew that eventually they would not be disgusting balls of germs who spent every waking moment making me want to tear my hair out. But still, a part of me was sure that things would always be bad.

So it all ended up culminating into a lot of stress and tension, until Shane and I were both simmering balls of badly concealed rage, who could barely even say a civil word to one another.

You know what? I understand why it is people get divorced. Even Christians. I really do. I can see how easy it would be. To be unhappy, and then allow yourself to hold on to a tiny little bit of bitterness, and nurture that bitterness, and feed it, until all of a sudden it has grown, and it's not a tiny bit of bitterness you're holding onto anymore, it's a mountain. Then, suddenly, the mountain has grown and it has Everest-like proportions. You can't see any way to climb that mountain, and worse still, you can't find any point. The person you love seems like a horrible stranger, and you start believing the lie that the whole relationship was a mistake. It becomes a truth, that you never should have married that person. And so suddenly, even though separation and divorce seem like terrifying, terrible prospects, they become so much more attractive than spending a single moment more of your life with that wrong person who makes you so unhappy. Everything else, your children's needs, your beliefs, they all pale into insignificance. And all you can see is the world of pain and bitterness and anguish that you are trapped in.

I don't want to hold onto the bitterness. It would be easy, and I would be right. But still, I would be wrong. It is hard, and it is crappy, to swallow pride, and unhappiness and see past the negativity.It is hard, finding the difference between righteousness, and self-righteousness. But it is necessary. And as soon as you try to let go of your bitterness? Things can slowly, start to get just a little bit better.

I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. (It was an epiphany to me, anyway). Because Shane and I, we have been together many years now. We fell in love when we were in high school. And the epiphany was this. The man I am married to now, is not the man I married. But that doesn't matter. I need to love Shane now, as he is. Not as he was, or as he could be. I need to get to know this version of my husband, and love and appreciate, and take care of, and respect him.