Escape Routes

I'm always looking for an escape route.

When G was sick, it was sometimes denial, sometimes anger, sometimes fantasizing about what life could be life if we didn't have the heart problems - or even (and this one is very hard to admit) he died. Whatever it took to get out of the pain.

That's something I've forgotten. How much pain there was. Because physical limitations and painful side effects and worsening organ function also led to depression, anxiety, fear, sometimes terror. There was PTSD to deal with. There was anger at God that sometimes was misdirected at me. A feeling of total and complete helplessness and being in way over my head.

I had worries about how his mental state might affect P. If seeing his dad crying so often was doing damage to his little soul. There was frustration because I couldn't tell what G wasn't able to do vs. what he wasn't willing to do. There was disappointment in the man he had become and feeling that he was often disappointed in me.

Sometimes I felt caged in. He did not do well alone. I did not do well at home without others to interact with. He became increasingly unable to do things, to travel, to last at parties for as long as I'd like him to. We fought at weddings. We fought in the car. We fought in grocery stores! Nothing but, just two different people pulling in two different directions. I felt like I was always the one having to surrender and give up and apologize first. He likely felt the same way.

Our life and marriage wasn't perfect. But we were a family. Our little family. And God was at work. And really our last year together was probably the best we'd had in a long time. We gave each other more grace. Had matured and understood each other better. We were pulling in the same direction. Had more fun and less fights. I wasn't trying to escape G any longer. But I was trying to find a way, any way, to keep him alive.

Since G died, I find myself trying to escape once again. Where is the way out of this pain? The way back to that other type of pain that was familiar? The way forward past the grief and into a life that helps me accept what has happened and make sense of it? Is that widower who is such a good dad my escape? Will he swoop in and love me and take care of me and solve my problems? That's laughable, but that's where I've been! Fantasizing about life with a man that I barely know. Wanting to be pursued. Wanting someone to live life with. Aware that P is getting older and some day it will just be me. Disappointed when I didn't have an email from said widower - though he had no reason to email me. Finding reasons to email him.

Escape route.

There's no healthy escape here. There never was. It's me in this circumstance, clinging to Jesus, not forcing anything to happen. Letting the story He has written for me unfold one day at a time.