Frustrated and Throwing in the Towel

Today I sit here in my bedroom just wondering how did things get so messed up in the first place. I always envisioned when you married someone and had kids and completed those sacred marriage vows that everything would just work out OK somehow in the end.

You would have thought I would have learned my lesson after failed marriage number one when he couldn't commit to staying at home, having a wife and a child without still carrying on as those he wasn't married.

Yet here I sit in yet fight number, oh who knows and I can't remember just how we got to this point. I thought I married the perfect person, the one that would give me my self esteem back and would make me a better person.

Then failures began to set in. This is the starting point for those failures I believe got us to where we are at today. I got laid off at my job of over 10 years and never found my way back to work. However it was Steve's advice that told me maybe it was my turn to stay at home and raise the family. We were certainly pulling in enough money to make that happen. So I stopped looking and settled for family life, homeschooling my kids and trying to live a Godly life.

Then Steve began hating his job. Once more he was faced to settle at beginning a new job at the low end of the scale and start at rock bottom when he clearly felt he was deserving of so much more. Don't we all?

Yet in spite of all the hunting he did, he was never able to pull himself out of the escrow crisis that would soon envelop us all that work in the real estate or banking industry.

Thankfully for him, he got injured on the job and faced a long disability to recovery. I managed to find a part time job but in the midst of this, Steve was never happy. He couldn't get better so he felt he may as well throw in the towel and get back to work before disability ran out.

My brother provided him with a way out but at the hidden expense we would come to see at a much later date. This new job gave him all that he was looking for, more than entry level, the ability to get out of a cubicle and out of an office and seek greater money and challenges ahead. He jumped.

In the end, this job has caused a tremendous tear in our marriage. It has pulled us apart farther than I thought it was possible for marriages to go. This job removed him physically from our home for 90% of the time. He would travel out of state for 4-5 weeks at a time, come home for 3 days and back to that same schedule only a different state.

I told him after seeing him miss Thanksgiving, our wedding anniversary, birthdays and other profound family holidays that this was something I knew I could never endure in a marriage. In fact, had I known what this would entail, I would have told him No! I had lived a marriage the first time around for almost 10 years of someone who was never home. That ended in an affair that would break my heart and trust for years.

Now I was seeing the same pattern repeat and I encouraged Steve to seek counseling because he couldn't see anything wrong with what was going on in our marriage even though I informed him we were at a critical point where we were both discussing divorce as an option.

He went to counseling and was told that if this cost to his marriage based on this job was too great, he needed to quit. We both agreed that it was, and so the rumor began that Steve would look for another job.

It's been over a year and a half now and he still is no further along in the job search than he was before.

His counseling sessions stopped after that one time because Steve things that worked everything out between us.

Now, enter my health issues which at this point, make me want to scream and cry because of the frustration and lack of care of doctors has simply caused this problem to go on too long. Do you think Steve cares? Yes and No! Yes he cares because he hates to anyone suffer, but No because after 4 months of dealing with this, and all the waiting that has gone into this and I, quite simply, am not the same person, I was 4 months ago. This has profoundly affected my life that much. Too view the world outside my window as some movie and yet so removed from things that life is simply passing me by. I live in a drugged out state because the pain is so severe and tests can only be scheduled so quickly.

So I sit today, hopeless, in tears in both emotional pain and physical pain, just wondering what hope is there anymore. I know deep in my heart this won't last forever, but my husband has already checked out. I see it in the things he does for us everyday. He is simply existing and hoping that one day, he will awake from this nightmare and find it's over and crossing his fingers our life will resume where it left off.

I am left alone, needing for physical help from him, which isn't there. He has taken off so much time for things like the kids birthday and wrap around days here and there, that his work has told him he is out of time.

So he leaves for work everyday, while I struggle to find sense of all of this and just wonder where is this all heading. Is there something in here I am supposed to find. How can I get help when there isn't any available and how can I get better when I have no time to get anything done?

So as you can see, I sit here in bed, pouring out my heart to all of you in this great blogging world, because I can't see past my own heartache and physical pain right now. I try daily to summon up the strength to pick my kids up from school, pick them up and do homework with them, and wait til Steve comes home, so I can run upstairs and load up on pain meds and hope that for once they will work and that pain will just never return.

I am lost and so alone right now, and every prayer I have offered up leaves me questioning, what next? Where do I go from here? If I can't depend on those I was supposed to, why are they even here? What purpose do they serve besides being a great dad and a financial provider.

Please comment and help! I am utterly lost at this point!

Second Chances

Ever wonder how we can continue to fail every day in so many ways, yet we get back up again the next morning with a renewed sense of hope to try again? Or perhaps tomorrow you don't get out of bed. Maybe you just stay in bed all day, covers pulled up by your shoulders, your head all snug in your super soft down pillow and you leave the curtains closed.

The fact remains most of us don't just sit in that bed after a horrible, terrible day. Sure some of us may lay there for a couple of days, perhaps a week, but we all have to get up some time. The sad thing is what is going on in our heads while we lay there. It's usually something like, "Poor me, my life sucks, I am worthless, no one cares if I am here today, my life doesn't matter, so why even bother getting up?"

Do you honestly believe that stuff in your head? Why is it, as women, that we believe the lies we tell ourselves in our head? Why is it that we give ourselves the lowest self esteem possible? Is it because we don't feel like our efforts matter? That if we choose to stay at home, we don't contribute to our families financial matters? Is that we are successful because we don't hold down a job and a family? Where do the lies come from? Our past failures? People in our past and present lives? Perhaps a word spoken in anger that finds its way back into our heads like some sick recording that is stuck in a loop?

Nope, it's the enemy, trying to tie that weight around our neck once more, to keep up in bondage to ourselves. To convince us that the lies in our head our true. Do you know how to make them stop? Talk to God! Oh, I can hear you now, God can't hear me, my needs are that great, what can He do for me anyhow? Truth is, do you even bother to try? Do you honestly have a heart to heart conversation with God like you would with a close friend and really pour out what is going on in your life? You matter to God all the time. Your seemingly small matters, matter to God.

Do you know that when you pray to God, that all of heaven stops, and listens? Everything going on at that particular time is being quieted by God. He stops what is doing, makes sure he can hear every word you are speaking, no matter if it's just a whisper or your voice in your head, but He listens. Really listens! Your voice matters in heaven! God isn't even judging the quality of your prayers. He isn't sitting there talking to some of the angels saying, "Oh what is that person asking me for help with that again, can't they just do something for themselves?"

God is a God of second chances. He is willing to overlook every failure we make. Every single one. Nothing is beyond God's forgiveness. He is like a parents that watches a child make a mistake. His heart breaks to just rush out and fix it or to prevent it from happening. Like most parents however, we see the need in letting go a bit. We wait because we know what comes from learning from our mistakes. We learn valuable lessons that will help us to become better people. He is just like us in the fact, that He is never far from us. He is just waiting for us to ask for help. Like any parent would, He races and reaches out to us and helps us. No request is too small, or too big, or not worth His time.

So whether you just lost your job, lost a family member, lost your home in the recent financial mess of this year, lost your marriage, lost hope...remember this, God is waiting for you. He has the hope you don't anymore. He has the courage, the love, the forgiveness, the belief in you that you can pick yourself up and go on. You can even make this next chance, better than the one you had.

Here is something from an email post I got from Max Lucado, one of my most inspiring authors whose works I love and can't seem to get enough of. One call and heaven's fleet appears. Your prayer on earth activates God's power in heaven. You are the someone of God's kingdom. Your prayers move God to change the world. You may not understand the mystery of prayer. You don't need to. But this much is clear: Actions in heaven begin when someone prays on earth. What an amazing thought! When you speak, Jesus hears. And when Jesus hears, the world is changed.

All because someone prayed. May you realize that God gives us second chances on a daily basis, and you matter to Him!