I knew my husband (now my ex husband) was getting exhausted with me. He would come home and have to feed and bathe the kids. Wading through the mess, he would ask what I had done that day and I could only shrug. I never had anything new to tell him.
One day I went to him and told him something was very wrong with me. I was sad all the time. I couldn't fix it. I couldn't change it. I didn't know what to do. He looked into my desperate eyes with a coldness that I can feel to this day. He told me I needed to figure it out and get it together.
That's it?! Get it together?! I would've been enraged if I could feel anything other than the Darkness. I told myself this eternal sadness was going to cost me my marriage and my family. Something had to give. So, I made an appointment and drove to a therapist's office.
It was a hot South Carolina day, with temperatures over 90 degrees outside. I parked and walked up the stairs to the therapist's office. I waited only a minute before the smiling young girl at the window informed me that my appointment had been cancelled and I needed to reschedule. I turned away bummed that my only hope had failed and began walking back to the parking lot. As soon as I hit the doorway of the office I realized that I had left my 3 month old newborn baby in the backseat of the boiling hot car.
Finally I felt something new. Sheer panic swept over me as I ran with all I had to my vehicle. I unlocked the doors and there was my sweet, peaceful Lila, sleeping like an angel. By the grace of God, she was alive.
I knew in that moment that something needed to change. The darkness had almost claimed my new baby's life, and I knew it would eventually claim mine.
I tried therapy, but they simply prescribed me anti-depressants, in which the full bottle sat in my medicine cabinet. I called people at church and I continued attending regularly. I started cleaning up the house in the hopes it would clean up my life as well. Nothing was working. The Darkness had it's claws so deep into my wounded soul, it seemed nothing- not even God- could save me.
My husband slowly stopped coming home after work. He would claim to go to the gym with work friends; yet he came home showered, clean, dressed nicely, and smelling wonderfully several hours later. Almost all of our communication had ceased and the chasm between grew wider each day.
In late November of 2007, I came to him one Thursday evening and told him that I was leaving with the kids that Saturday. I was packing all our clothes, and I was taking them to Minnesota. He looked me dead in the eye and simply said, "ok". No fight, no argument, no trying to keep me or the girls. Nothing. Not even a question of why or conversation about it. He was done. He had quit and was moving forward while I sat in the same dark place for too long.
That Saturday I packed every piece of clothing we had and I let the girls each grab 3 toys. I loaded them and our things into our car and we headed north to my mom's house in Minnesota. My husband was planning to come up for Christmas anyway, and hopefully this little break would convince him that he wanted his family back. He came for Christmas. We painted on smiles and didn't tell anyone what was really happening. I begged him for counseling. I begged him to fight for us. But it was too late. He had moved on.
Let me explain something to make things a little more clear. Looking back, I believe what I struggled with was post-partum depression. It hit me for no apparent reason after Lila was born. It lingered and while it seemed to improve here and there, it never went away. When Lila was still a baby, we got pregnant again. I was thrilled, because I hoped this baby would change everything. I hoped this baby would bring my husband and I closer than ever. At about 8 weeks along, I began miscarrying. It was awful. Long, drawn out, excessive blood loss, and worsening depression all ushered the Darkness back over me like a tidal wave. After several weeks of bleeding, the doctors rushed me into emergency surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy. They told me they had never seen anything like it, and that it could have and should have killed me.
It was after that surgery when the Darkness really consumed me. It was then that I decided to live in my pain and my husband decided to move forward.
I know this story is bleak and sad and not very uplifting. But, that's life isn't it? It's ugly and raw and real. It's vulnerable and messy. I couldn't see it then, but I see now where God showed up during that time of my life. When I thought He had left me to die, I see now that He was cradling me and carrying me through it. He was refining me. Making me so much better than I ever was.
When I left Lila in the hot car, He made sure to cancel my appointment so I would immediately turn around. When I was having the longest and most painful (in every sense of the word) miscarriage of my life, he was watching me and urged me to go to the ER on the very night that it would've killed me. When I was lost in a loveless marriage with a man who cared nothing for me, He held me and showed me the way out.
I struggled with shame and embarrassment for a long time when I finally left Andy. I knew he was telling the world a different story, and I didn't have the strength to say otherwise. I knew people thought terribly of me, but I was mostly concerned with what God thought. I know He hates divorce, so I scoured the Bible for anything that would give me a way out. I begged and pleaded with God to show me He wouldn't hate me for this.
He showed me some very specific passages from the words of Jesus himself. They provided me with the peace and comfort I needed to move forward. They gave me permission to step out of the darkness and into a new beginning. I could finally breathe again. I could finally feel joy again. I could laugh and mean it. Most importantly, I could look at my daughters and I could actually feel the love I always had for them. I was alive and the Darkness was dead.
I know there are friends of mine sitting in very dark places right now. Dealing with unimaginable tragedies and losses. I experienced so much loss during that time, but like I have said before- without death, there couldn't be a resurrection.
I fought to hold onto my dead baby and my dying marriage. I stayed too long with a man who had already begun his new life. I couldn't let go. But once I did, the Darkness immediately lifted and I could breathe again. I'm not talking over the course of months or years. This was a supernatural- right now- this moment- kind of thing. Like stepping out of the shadow and into the bright sunlight. It was so simple, yet the most difficult and complicated thing of my life. I left shame, embarrassment, neglect, hopelessness, loneliness, and fear with the Darkness. I left it all behind and stepped into my resurrection. Into my new mindset. Into my new hope.
It wasn't easy. It took a lot of courage to move forward. And except for a few very dark nights, I have never looked back. I encourage you to have courage. Be bold. Take that step and begin living again. When we pause too long in the death, it overtakes us and convinces us that life is just a distant memory. But death has been overcome. It's been beaten and has no power over us anymore. We just have to choose not to believe the lie. We have to choose to move forward out of the Darkness. We have to choose to live.
...."Death has been swallowed up in victory."
"Where, Oh death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God!
He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
- 1 Corinthians 15:54-57
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