I arrived home and saw my husband’s face for the first time in two weeks. If you will allow me to be honest, it was not a favored moment in the history of our marriage. Sure, while I was away I had plenty of time (for me) to mentally grasp the idea that things would never be the same. To actually see his face and feel that truth was an uncomfortable experience. It was almost like blind date awkwardness; I wonder what this guy will look like or how he will act? Well, he looked awful and we were both feeling nervous about where to start.
As I stated in the previous blog post, acceptance doesn’t mean I love our story, but it freed me to face it head on. Now that I was home and had help with kid duties, acceptance wasn’t the only thing freeing me to face our mess. Now there was tangible free time to sit and reflect on what happened.
Enter, depression.
When the reality sets in that tragedy has occurred it is a natural response for depression to take over.
This kind of grief enters on a much deeper level emotionally and feels like it will never go away. I began to withdraw from anything that would bring laughter or happiness to the home. The heaviness of (what feels like) infinite sadness clouds every decision and I was choosing to sit in my room all day long. I couldn’t even pretend that I wasn’t depressed, so instead I embraced it. And I embraced it hard.
By the grace of God I was halfway through pregnancy with my third child, so “embraced it hard” means that I sat in the sadness and allowed myself to feel hopeless without self-guilt. This was incredibly hard for me because I had never dealt with any trauma in a healthy way before. I had only known self-medicating through substance abuse (drinking, smoking, drugs), over eating/not eating, or my medication of choice; pretending nothing ever happened. Pregnancy at this time was a (scary) gift because it forced me to face the demon of adultery and kiss it on the lips.
Depression in the discovery, without a crutch or coping mechanism, freed me to be out of control.
Knowledge that I was not in control, actually put control back into the hands my Rightful Owner; God Himself. This truth gave me permission to feel whatever hit me in the moment and not hold back. It was the first time I ever felt that God was not fickle. He could handle me, He could handle this mess, and He could be trusted to hold me with His might no matter what I did.
And boy, that supernatural trust in the bigness of God allowed me to start the grief cycle all over again; and in my deepest depression yet, I was going to do business with Him and my husband.
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