Anniversary reflections - a Confession of sorts

I haven't blogged in a few days. Anniversaries hit me rather hard, and Tuesday, the 12th, was the 32d anniversary of my wedding to the man I now refer to, in my nastier moods, as "the Faerie Prince." We can also call him DH - because "Dear Husband" also shares those initials for his name.

DH was one of my best friends in high school, and I simply could not bear the thought of ever facing a future in which he was not a central figure. We dated for a year, and married.

We both had our issues. I was the daughter of a mentally ill mother; he was fighting a secret issue that I didn't learn of until later. I was wounded, emotionally. I saw him as strong, decisive, heroic. I expected him to fill my "love tank."

He couldn't.

When we returned from our long weekend honeymoon, he took to a chair in the evenings and hardly had a thing to say to me. Suddenly, this beautiful boy who had been my best friend became a cold, silent, almost-hostile stranger. For years the memory taunted me, infuriated me; I didn't know how to fight back against such neglect and contempt.

But believe me, I did my best. I became consumed with thoughts of "justice" and "right." DH wouldn't be warm or companionable to me? I shut down. I became, I'm sorry to say, more passive-aggressive in the things I refused to do to be a good wife and friend to him.

I didn't know what his struggles were. What's worse, at that point in my life, I didn't care. I'd married him so I could be dear and important to someone; if he wouldn't give me that which he'd promised, then I'd be damned if I'd stick my neck out for him, either.

I was no help to him in his struggles, in his sorrows. I made his journey even more difficult than it had to be.

I do not absolve him from his part of the failure. He ought to have been honest, before. Of course, we were young, we were ignorant; that kind of honesty was simply not possible for us at that point in our lives. But later on, he ought to have been. Instead, he sat in the counsellor's office and smirked and said, "I know a good marriage takes a lot of work, but frankly, I don't want to be bothered." (I ran into that counsellor, ten years later. She remembered us vividly because of this one comment.)

But I'm sorry, now, that I wasn't a better, a more mature, a more independent woman. I might have done him some good, and in that, I failed miserably.

I am praying for him, and for his deliverance and his conversion. It's a small bit of restitution that he'll never see or know of - but I deposit it "on account" with my heavenly Father Who does see and know all, and Who will distribute it rightly, in His own way.