December 31, 2003

As I sat and tried to remember how my life had changed in 2003, my thoughts drifted back several years to 1987.

It was Christmastime and my husband and I had been going through some tremendous difficulties. He had told me that he would stay with the family through the holidays, but after that he was leaving us. I guess he didn’t want to ruin Christmas for the boys, who were then six and three.

So I tried to hold myself together and went and bought presents for the family. I remember I only got half of my Christmas cards mailed that year and I felt bad because I was worried that the relatives left out would think I didn’t like them.

I tried to act normal and be a good Mommy to my sons, but I’m sure they knew something was terribly wrong. I have never been any good at hiding my feelings.

I cried and sobbed and begged and pleaded with my husband not to leave us. I couldn’t understand how he could leave me after 12 years together. How could he leave our two precious little boys who looked up to him? I tried everything I could think of to stop him from leaving. All my pleas fell on deaf ears and my efforts were in vain.

Normally we threw a New Year’s Eve party every year, but I was a basket case, barely making it through each day, so that was out of the question this time. Our best friends decided to have one and we were set to go to their house.

Before we left we had music playing at home and the song Three Times a Lady came on. We danced to the song and my husband sang it in my ear. We clung to each other and I think we were both crying. I felt my life ebbing away with each word.

Three Times a Lady

Thanks for the times
That you've given me
The memories are all in my mind
And now that we've come
To the end of our rainbow
There's something
I must say out loud

You're once, twice
Three times a lady
Yes you're once twice
Three times a lady
And I love you

When we are together
The moments I cherish
With every beat of my heart
To touch you to hold you
To feel you to need you
There's nothing to keep us apart
You're once twice
Three times a lady
And I love you
I love you

Neither one of us wanted to go to the party, but we did.

At midnight I kissed my husband and whispered, “Happy New Year.” He just looked at me with sad eyes because he knew it wasn’t going to be one. He knew he was going to follow through with his plan to leave.

Each day that he stayed home, I never lost hope that he would change his mind and stay. But one day around the end of the first week in January he told me he was going to the store and he left. He didn’t come home. He went over to visit our friends and my best friend was supposed to call me and tell me that he went to a motel. She forgot to call me. I just sat on the couch and cried all night long. I couldn’t believe he had walked out in such a fashion.

I’ll stop the story here, but suffice it to say that this was the prelude to a nightmare with a sequence of events that I don’t know how I lived through. But I did.

Here I sit all these years later, the wounds are still here. The pain is implanted in each cell of my body. Here I sit mourning over the tearing apart of my marriage, the other events surrounding it, and the hurt and pain my kids endured.

Sixteen years later! What’s up with that?

I feel like I have been holding my breath, raising the kids, going through life being the strong protector and stepping up to the plate. Now the kids are grown and it’s time for me to collapse.

It’s like some strange surreal feeling. I mean, if you were kidnapped and held hostage for a month, you would probably click into some type of survival mode, and you would make it through, only to have a breakdown when you got back home. But can one snap into survival mode for 16 years?

Would it be possible to stay in that mode through Little League and homeschooling, baby-sitting and trips to the beach? To continue on through years of teenage rebellion and moving to a new city and caring for a mother with Alzheimers?

Was I in some sort of altered state all through that and now I have reality slapping me back into consciousness?

People say you have to pick up the pieces and go on when something bad happens. Indeed, that’s what most of us do. After all, what choice do we have?

So why am I so filled with sorrow over past events that it’s pouring out of my eyes and running out of my nose? Is it trying to escape the place inside where I have kept it so safely all these years?

I do mourn the loss of my marriage. I mourn the fact that my kids grew up without a father. I mourn even worse things that I won’t speak of now. But I can’t turn back the clock and the kids are not really kids anymore. My husband is someone else’s husband now. Not that I have any desire to be with him anyway, but one can lament the loss of their marriage without wanting it back.

Maybe it’s kinda like crying over spilt milk even though you’re lactose intolerant.

I am sad to be alone at this stage of my life.

I know the Lord Jesus is more than enough to meet all my needs. I know He has taken wonderful care of all of us and hidden us under His wing. I know He will continue to see me through and I am eternally grateful.

I have far too many blessings to even recognize them all myself.

I guess as long as I am in this earthly body, I will have these emotions that are also a gift.

Wow, so much for Auld Lang Syne! I knew I shouldn’t have selected that tone to ring on my cell phone!

Psalm 63:7 ¶ Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.