Better

I’m feeling a bit better.

Don’t get me wrong, I still haven’t a clue if I will still be married in a year, or even six months. But I feel better.

I was getting very anxious about things. I was depressed, having trouble sleeping even with medication, and have lost 23 pounds in the last few weeks. I became especially anxious when I started thinking about this other guy enough to go to the trouble of figuring out who he is. I also became a little more lost when I accompanied Brenda into small vices (alcohol and tobacco) so we would have those moments to share and talk.

I’m not so troubled about the other guy right now. He is nobody. Well, he is someone, and I do wish him happiness, and salvation, and health, and blah, blah, blah. But I know that Brenda picked him out as a way to fantasize about a life of freedom from the burdens which have troubled her. He isn’t anyone which God chose for her. This does not mean that I do not believe she will go to him. She may. But him or someone like him, it doesn’t matter. He is a symptom of the wounds which have hurt my wife deeply. He is a placebo to medicate the internal hemorrhaging which has been going on in her since she was a child.

I’m not so troubled by the alcohol and the tobacco either. Though I was sharing those things with her for good reasons, they aren’t me. I can take them or leave them. I’m not going to make a habit of such things just to find time to be with her.

None of this is in my hands.

Whether she stays or whether she goes, that will be her choice.

I vowed that I would stay by her. I will.

I vowed I will love her all of my life. I will.

I made that vow not only to her, and family and friends. I vowed to God. I made a covenant to God that I would be what I could be, was made to be, to her and for her.

I haven’t always been successful at that. I have let her down many times.

But what I choose to do today, to do this moment, is what counts.

I choose to follow God and trust He will lead me to the place where I will be the man He created me to be.

I am reminded that there were three persons involved in making those vows. I made a vow. Brenda made a vow. And God was who we made that covenant in and to. What Brenda does is not simply a reflection on who I am as a husband. It is also within His hands to deal with it.

She is His child as well.

Her vow was made to Him as well.

He will not abandon her, even if she seeks to abandon Him.

I trust the Lord to watch over my wife, even if there comes a time when I cannot.

I will intentionally drop my curiosity about this other man. It does not matter who he is.

I will do my best to drop my concerns about what Brenda will do as well (yeah, I know: "Good luck with that.").

Instead, I will continue to love her, to cherish her, to do all the things that I swore I would do.

It has been dark of late. I am fixing my eyes on the Shepherd who holds the light for me in this darkness.

I see that not only is He holding a light for me...

He is holding me...

and her.