A Bend in The Road

Shortly after my last post my husband admitted to be plagued with thoughts of suicide.  This was my biggest fear.  He thought he was hiding it from me, however, he is learning that he cannot hide things from me.  Like I mentioned in my last post, God has given me wells of understanding that I don't fully comprehend.  God speaks to my heart of what my husband struggles with.  One night, after a confrontation during which my husband refused to speak with me, I left the bedroom and went to sleep with our daughter.  I had begged him to simply hold me because I needed to know he loved me.  He refused.  It cut me to the core.  So I told him everyone has their breaking point and I have reached mine.  I could deal with the aggression, deal with the frustration, the fears, the lack of intamacy.  But I could not deal with is blatant disregard for my feelings and needs, especially at such a vulerable moment.  As I settled into my daughter's bed God spoke to me to go back to my husband.  It wasn't an audible request, it was a stirring in my heart, a thought in my mind.  I am a very stubborn person.  I don't give in so easily after I've made such a stand against my husband's behaviour.  But the feeling would not go away.  I went to him.  I put my arms around him and rested my head on his chest and whispered how much I love him.  He held me tightly. 

Later he agreed to see his therapist.  He made an appointment and I told him we both needed to make lists to describe what was going on.  I made mine the night before his appointment while he slept.  He made his the next afternoon as we had lunch together before his appointment.  I told him, "Don't be mad about what I put on my list."  My list was two pages, typed and single space.  He wrote his on a napkin.  He said, "Don't be mad about what I put on mine."  The strange thing is we both were referring to a single item I had put on my list (which he hadn't seen) and he was about to put on his list.  Suicide.  It's not something I like to admit my husband dealt with, deals with.  He referred to that night...he had grabbed his bottle of pills and sat there with a handful of meds ready to end it all.  He struggled to snap out of it but all he could think of was how much better the kids and I would be without him.  Then he saw my daughter's face.  He played out the memory of coming home from Afghanistan and our 10 month old daughter being the first to see him, her chubby arms outstretched.  It's amazing to me...that he could leave when she was only 4 months and yet she recognize him so readily 6 months later.  It was a God thing.  God knew he would need that memory to survive.  I believe that with all my heart.  So many young children refuse to go to their fathers after such a long separation or they shyly hang back taking hours to days to warm back up.  It's a heart-breaking site, but never one my husband had to experience. 

I held back a sob as I read as he wrote that experience.  I told him, "Why do you think I went back in that night?  Do you think I would normally do that, being so stubborn as I am?  God told me."  Tears streamed down his face.  He began to understand, I think, how much I love him...and most importantly, how much God loves him.  During the appointment the Psychiatrist suggest my husband check himself in at the VA's psych ward if he couldn't tell the Dr that he would never actually go through with suicide.  It broke my heart to hear him respond, "I don't know that I wouldn't.  I don't know.  Sometimes it just is all I can think about.  They would be better off without me around."  He truly believed that...that we would be better off.  It broke my heart for him.  He spent the next week there.  It was a very hard experience.  We both sobbed at one point or another, breaking down completely.  He didn't want anyone to know, so there were very few people I could confide in.  Not many people can understand the pain I suffered that week.  My husband was so broken, so hurt and I couldn't help him.  I was a failure.  My kids cried for him daily, asking where he was.  I couldn't tell them. 

Oh, I wish I could say it was kittens and rainbows when he was finally released.  It wasn't.  It was better, but we still had a long way to go.  He still shut me out.  He still shuts me out, refusing to talk to me, hold me, pushing me away perhaps out of fear of losing me.  I still fear he thinks of suicide.  I became afraid of finding him dead and trying to explain to our children what happened to daddy.  While he was in the hospital I called his work telling them he would not be coming back in, indefinitely.  They were kind and understanding (he worked as a civilian with the military).  They said he had his job back whenever he wanted it.  I was grateful.  A week or two after my husband came home he had an appointment with his usual therapist.  The other therapist, Dr W, had told him of a 6 week inpatient program through the VA.  I had encouraged Husband to think about it.  He was adament against it.  At his new appointment the usual therapist, Dr. M, mentioned the 6 week program.  To my surprise Husband said he wanted to do it.  I don't know what changed his mind.  Perhaps he thought coming home from the psych ward would make things all better and quickly realized it didn't.  Whatever it was, he was committed to getting better for the sake of his family, and for himself.  It's coming close to a week now since he started the program.  I miss him.  The kids miss him.  He can take his phone so that's nice.  But we've already had a big argument.  He mentioned suicide, I called the hospital staff, they rushed into his room at midnight interrogating him.  We made up and laughed about his experience.  I think he learned not to mention suicide so flippantly.  I don't know why he even did.  Perhaps he knew he had pushed me too far and was afraid of losing me so he tried to real me back in with the fear of losing him.  Truth is, I will always be there for him.  I absolutely believe our marriage can make it.  But it depends on his willingness to better himself.  To move foward and leave the past behind.  There might come a time when I am forced to leave.  But I will always hope that if it came to that, he would put his family first and do whatever it took to get us back.  He's proving that to me now and I'm grateful. 

I do have a wonderful husband.  Though I cry myself to sleep because of the hurt and pain and sense of failure, I know that I am blessed.  God has blessed me with a wonderful man, wonderful children, and the knowledge that God will never leave me no matter how dark the path gets.  Psalm 42:5 has gotten me through the darkest valleys of my life, "Why are you so downcast, Oh my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for even yet I will praise Him, my Savior and my God."  God also laid this Scripture on my heart when Josh went into the psych ward that week... 2 Corinthians 4:8-9,13-14 "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.... It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence."

God will never leave me nor forsake me even in my darkest hour.  I pray that this bend in the road is the start of a new life, leaving past hurts and pain and fears behind...for both my husband and myself.