Got an email from a friend today. She wrote, “I hope the beginning of school has been uneventful this year.” HA! Me, too! Alas, yes, school has begun, but no, it has not been uneventful.
I had to take Youngest into her PCP today – her 2 day follow-up to her ER visit Tuesday night when she had an anaphylactic reaction to an OTC nose spray and her throat began closing. Was I calm? Enough to handle the situation well. This is just one of the “uneventful” events of this last week.
A lady in the office at the doc’s office and I got into a conversation about marriage. She lost her husband of 30 years 3 years ago. She said, “It was all horrible, but we were just really getting to know each other and to figure it all out.” She’s met another man recently, and they have a great relationship. Her kids tell her they wish their spouse was like him. She tells them that they don’t come perfect & they aren’t going to change, and with time, we not only figure that out, we come to value and appreciate it.
If I want him to accept me as I am, I need to accept him as he is. This seems, in general, to be a much more difficult concept for women to comprehend than men.
My husband met another old friend of mine today, for the first time, as they exchanged projects that I’m working on for her. She and I have kept up over the years, but until a couple weeks ago, we hadn’t seen each other face-to-face since my first marriage. She told my husband today that she had never seen me happy until now. He told her that he works to provide a safe environment for me to be myself and to be confident and safe in being myself. And I am. We ain’t perfect – very far from it. If we listed each others not-so-favorable-traits, probably no one would believe we married each other. But we choose to accept each other as we are. It’s how marriage works.
we were just really getting to know each other and to figure it all out.
This is poignant and bittersweet. I’m sad for her that she lost him when they were undergoing that change.
My father and mother got married YOUNG. My mother just turned 20 and my dad was 24. The next 9 years involved back to back child-bearing and my mother was dealing with her own demons. They’d been married for 17-18 years before my mother confided in me that they had only now begun to connect.
Marriage is hard. I’m glad I knew that before I got married. I’m also abundantly grateful I have a mother to help walk me through the hard spots who recognizes I’m with the right man, that I need to stay with the right man, and that I need to learn to be the right wife.
I have a lot of conflict with my husband… over work, his inability to say “I love you” to his kids, and other mundane topics, but I am fully aware I have my own issues that I struggle with daily. I’m more vocal than he is…
i think it is difficult to get over our perceptions of how others should be. wise momma.
I wonder at what great things were lost when my ex left; but I consider on the whole that God has worked mercifully and favorably towards me. It is not clear to me how I should pray; if at all my ex and what that means to me. An earlier me would do this out of some kind of Christianized beta instinct; i.e. she was married to me; thus I should pray for her. The end of all these thinkings is that I have considered that I should pray for God to have mercy on her when I get roiled by thinking on those things; which does not seem to violate either His commands or my dignity. I wonder at what OTC med your daughter got an allergic reaction to?
Equate Fast Acting Nasal Spray:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Equate-Phenylephrine-Hydrochloride-1-Nasal-Decongestant-Nasal-Spray-Fast-Acting-Nasal-Four-1-oz/10325040?srccode=cii_18492716&cpncode=32-152897946-2&sourceid=1500000000000025851520&veh=dat
since she doesn’t like the taste of nasal sprays, i put some on a q-tip and just swiped the inside of her nostrils. then she said, “My throat is swollen.” so i got a flashlight and looked – it wasn’t red and didn’t look much swollen. a few minutes later she said it was more swollen and hard to swallow, so i looked again, and it was more swollen. i had a mini panic moment and flung into action. twas a bit scary. and i am VERY thankful i gave her such a small dose … a full dose would have most likely have meant 911-epinephrine.
i can’t find the info on it online, so i’m going to buy another and see if it has the info sheet. i need the info sheet to know the ingredients. i may have to email equate and see if they’ll give it to me.
the pray for your ex thing is an “interesting” topic. there are some who have said i should. but i often cannot. when i do pray for him, i try to pray straight from the scriptures. there is this ‘christianized beta instinct’ that we MUST pray for EVERYone. i don’t buy into that. however, i am thankful for those who choose to pray for my ex. i prayed for him extensively when we were married.
“I wonder at what great things were lost when my ex left;”
me, too. it’s so hard. i ponder these things, too, and ponder them for my husband … and see what was lost in him, too, when it happened to him.
“but I consider on the whole that God has worked mercifully and favorably towards me.”
yes. and i often make the conscious choice to focus on this. it is sanity.
***
i do not know him. he and his mother are friends with another woman i know. but his wife came up pregnant by another man and took their daughter and left him. he’s turned into an alcoholic and is severely depressed. my friend said of this man, “I just don’t think he wants to live anymore.” my heart breaks for him. it’s so difficult to explain these things to people who haven’t gone through it … and it’s even more difficult to explain to the one who is considering divorce what it really looks like on the other side.
and i think women are cruel to men in this regard, for i believe that b/c of the ways God has made men and women different, it is a different kind of difficult for a man to deal with the unfaithful wife than it is for a wife to deal with the unfaithful husband. this is not to minimize the difficulty for anyone … just saying it’s very different.
there’s this very strong belief in women, in general, that they need to “work” on men to get them “right” … that men *need* a woman’s help to be a man … that men *need* women to make them better. women foster and cultivate this belief in each other.
women need to tell other women:
1. that men are good just the way they are.
2. that if they want a man to accept her the way she is, she needs to learn to accept a man, and men, the way he/they is/are.
3. that it is good that men are different.
4. that if you’re looking around on your man, the problem is you, NOT him.
an unfaithful and/or abusive and/or addicted man does not give his wife the liberty to do the same. God does not give us instruction with “if’s” attached. God does not tell us to honor Him *if* the situation warrants it. this does not mean we must allow and do nothing about unfaithfulness or abuse or addiction; but it does mean we do not get a free pass to dishonor God because someone else is.
2 Samuel 13:14-15
New Living Translation (NLT)
14 But Amnon wouldn’t listen to her, and since he was stronger than she was, he raped her. 15 Then suddenly Amnon’s love turned to hate, and he hated her even more than he had loved her. “Get out of here!” he snarled at her.
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this verse has always intrigued me. Amnon sinned against Tamar, then he hated her. Tamar was violated and hated, and yet she was innocent.
i’ve noticed that when poeple sin against another person, that if they do not take responsibility for their sin, they tend to hate the person they sinned against.