A Hard Night, and a Tough Lover

A few weeks ago, another blogger shared the love story behind her marriage. She was discouraged because she felt it would never go viral — it was too old school and traditional. I didn’t know how to respond. I couldn’t classify my current love story, and I never thought about sharing it.

But times and seasons change.

It was five years ago this time of year my current husband and I pulled our families and friends together for a small gathering. We were celebrating the marriage we had done as a planned elopement the prior fall.

Let me explain and share my thoughts (while I sip some wine).

I am my husband’s first and only wife. My husband is my first spiritual covenant husband, but my second legal husband. I’d made some bad choices resulting in a bad marriage with the only good results being three beautiful but broken living angel babies.

As a result of years of wrestling with esteem and abuse, I’d married and then run when the cuteness turned into emotional abuse and the closeness became control issues. When frustration resulted in flying milk jugs and sneakers, I got scared for my kids. I started doing some serious inventories of my heart, mind, and soul. I’d known my ex was raised in a broken environment. But Jesus was changing him, and with my love he would overcome it all. (Don’t snort.) When it fell, I ran home.

Divorced and annulled within about a year, I’d done several rounds of counseling. Finally, I was ready to try again. I did have a dry run between the divorce and annulment, but the other guy and I didn’t feel right, so after a date or two, we called it off.

I joined chemistry.com. I picked my current hubby’s profile out because he wrote about a book he’d read that was shaping his view of male-female relationships. That my friends is the best bait for a bookworm!

We’d planned to meet. Then my mom’s mom got deathly sick. That gram was my very best friend I had left. My ex’s abuse stripped me of my close friendships, but my family was too tough to run. My hubby (though not yet) agreed to postpone our first date. And the hook went a little deeper in my heart.

We walked through about three months of dating. We’d watched “Fireproof,” “The End of the Spear,” and “Avatar.” He knew by date three he was thinking marriage (about when we had our first kiss); I was standing on the brake pedal because of my angels and my past. But, when I relaxed enough to fall asleep draped across his lap during “Avatar,” I decided to take him seriously… if the angels liked him.

We alternated solo dates with family dates, all the while trying to hide from the ex. When his gram died in early October, we’d agreed we would probably marry. I kept waiting for the ring — my birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, my class reunion.

I was starting to get discouraged. But for Christmas, he’d planned a scavenger hunt resulting in the most beautiful and expensive ring I’d ever owned. We started to plan a late winter/early spring wedding for the following year.

In the meantime, my ex saw the rock and dragged us to court over custody. Still planning the wedding and filled with exhaustion, current hubby and I decided to move the wedding to October. It was planned therefore, but an elopement because we didn’t tell anybody but invited adults that it was happening.

So we married in October, were broke due to the custody challenge by Christmas, and had the party in March five years ago.

I wish I could say it’s been a bed of roses. We’ve endured the ex’s ups and downs, the girls’ ups and downs as a result of the ex’s ups and downs, several health issues, and a job loss for me.

My hubby has earned my love, trust, and respect as he’s tried to lead all four of us hormonally cycling females into a better relationship with the Lord, each other, and others, even my ex. He’s almost landed in his car some nights, but then I remember the good times, cry feeling like a bitch, and ask forgiveness.

Tonight, and I won’t go into excruciating details, my ex went to the worst he’s been in ages. He took several liberties regarding a key to the home my husband and I share with the girls. He got exceedingly irate when I refused to accept his liberties as normal or discuss the issue until my husband got home.

Even as I’m shaking, I’m trying to hide to protect others from seeing him this way or from him painting me as unstable, distant, and uncommunicative. Additionally, I’m trying to calm my girls. They struggle to understand normal life and can’t, and now they need to understand this life we try to make normal for them.

My current husband, after a long day at two part-time jobs, is even now changing locks and deadbolts in the dark. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know how to describe what I’m thinking or feeling to him. It involves terms and phrases like the following:

• Custody relocation law sucks
• Abuse survivors should be believed and relieved without bruises
• How do you speak truth to the kids without triggering parental alienation syndrome
• Please don’t leave me if he gets too crazy

I love my husband, and I love my girls. I have forgiven my ex, but reconciliation and restoration aren’t there for me yet. Every day of my life since our wedding day, I bless and love my husband for the sacrifices he’s made to be in our home as our leader.

(If my Christian readers would say a few for us, that would be awesome!)