joyful2beeblogs

After my husband completed the studies in the Old Testament, we moved to a small town in Mississippi for one year while my husband finished the work on his dissertation on Ecclesiastes.

Thinking surely some church or university would hire him quickly, we moved into the back room at his parent’s house to wait.
I easily found a job as a nurse. After sending out many resumes, he waited, waited, and waited for some church to hire him.
Finally, a year later, a small church hired him as a minister.

We moved to the new church when I was 4 months pregnant. We both had wanted a child. He comforted me every month that I became sad that I had no baby for the four years before he found a church because I wanted to have a baby.

Finally, after our son was born, stresses increased because of the church situation and the financial situation, and I suspect his undiagnosed diabetes. I was blamed for every scratch, splinter, or injury our son got as a toddler,and because I was the “adult, I was in charge, so I was responsible.” I was yelled at for not protecting our child from injury! What a sorry failure I was as a mother, or so I felt!

My parents rarely ever argued, so I had no understanding of how to fight verbally. My family got along amazingly well, and we loved each other and enjoyed time with each other. I was not prepared for our marriage’s turn for the worse.

I am strong and intelligent
After years of friends telling me they didn’t like the way he talked to me, I finally started to regain my power by building my own confidence and seeing that I had to be pretty intelligent to have been hired as an ICU/CCU nurse for 17 years in four different hospitals (from New Orleans, to Meridian, Mississippi, to Greenville, South Carolina to North Carolina) out of 37 years of my nursing career. I was not dumb, stupid, or forgetful! I had so much stress on me that I couldn’t function normally when we had an argument. The stresses at work were easier to handle than those at home!

He had to depend on me
Twenty years after our son’s birth after I had been resurrecting my self confidence, my husband had a stroke and I had to physically do things for him, I was the one who lifted him up emotionally when he was down, he finally began to see my strength and my worth again.

I Could Not Leave My Sick Husband
I could have left him after the last time that he put his hands around my neck (with no pressure). Finally, Ì told him that if he ever did that again, I would leave him!

But I knew he depended on me to draw his insulin because of his poor eyesight and pour his medicines for him. I could not leave him after he was sick. What kind of woman would I have been to do that? How would I have felt if I had left him and he died a week later?

After His Death I Grew More
Instead, I began to empower myself with the knowledge that I had adapted to my life, his illness, my circumstances, and changes, better than he did. I even saw a counselor after his stroke and again later after my husband’s death to be sure I was handling my life in a healthy way.
The counselor said, “You have been through a tsunami! Cut yourself some slack. You have done amazingly well. You adapted to changes that life brought you. He could not adapt. You survived and are still alive. He did not survive.”

Regrets, I Had a Few
I have many regrets about how I handled my marriage because of how this affected our child and how it also affected me. I truly loved the man I married. But I lost him a little at a time after the first 4-5 years of our marriage.

There were changes in his brain before the stroke
Take this as you want to: after his stroke, the MRI report was given to me. I read that he had had several silent mini strokes.
Sure, he had issues from his own childhood. I found out later. After a back injury that was so painful that his blood glucose rose to 800, he had had diabetes for about 10 years before he was diagnosed with it. Ten years before would have been when we were living in New Orleans. This alone could have worsened his behavior and had physiological effects on his brain over time.

I don’t want to make excuses for him, but at least some of his problems were physical. I admit that I was an enabler and should have stood up for myself, but I was unprepared for how our marriage changed. I had to “feel my way in the dark” and survive. But I am a survivor! I am a tough cookie!!

The Healing Starts
Years later, on his deathbed, he saw his life more clearly. He apologized to our son and to me for how he had behaved. He told me that he loved me. I stayed at his side until he died.

After his death, I received money from his retirement fund, unused vacation money, and so forth. I had repairs done on the house over three years and sold it. I bought a two bedroom condo. Making major decisions and paying my bills like I had never done before, and doing a good job of it! (I never dreamed I could do these things to think of myself 5-6 years before!) If I don’t know something, I look it up or ask someone that I trust for help.

I look back on my life and see how things could have been. They could have been much worse, but they could have been much better.
Nursing gave me a life away from my husband. Our son brought joy, love, and light to my life.

My faith in God brought me strength, faith in the future, and resolve to get through it all as best I could, with the belief that everything would work out for the best. My faith also gave me a capacity for sympathy and compassion, as I saw his behaviors and sought to understand them.

On his deathbed, he told me how much he loved me and was affectionate like he hadn’t been in years. The man I loved at the beginning of it all shone through. He finally found peace in his sleep.

I have peace now, knowing that I did what I thought was best at the time. Sure, I made mistakes, but they all culminated into the tough cookie with a tender heart that I am today.