The Husband

I wish you could see us on our off days.  You know most days of our lives.  The ones that don't usually make it to a facebook status, a blog post, an instagram picture, or even make it out of this house.  But we have them.  Many of them.

Recently I've been a puddle of gloopy gloppy muddy mess.  Everything I've kept inside I finally allowed to flow out.  And it poured out over the past two weeks with a force I had no idea was inside me.  I vented.  I yelled.  I weeped.  I mourned.  As if I had put myself in a cocoon for the past two years and I had spent the past two weeks finally burning away the layers and disassembling the me I've created unaware that I was about ready to reemerge as a butterfly.  But it was painful.  

The experiences of my past and the poor choices I've made were so painful, that I secretly covered them up with the facade of strength and confidence.  But deep down I was broken and in need of someone to take charge.  I had managed to over power my husband's desire to lead me as I had found convincing ways to prove I knew better, in fear that if he knew how messy, insecure, and afraid I was, I wouldn't be the same passionate woman he thought he married.

But just the other day I lost it.  I lost it all, then willingly handed it over.  And it was the toughest thing I've ever done.  To cry in front of the most beautiful man I've ever seen and reveal just how afraid I was that he would leave me, find me less of the woman I had pretended to be, and even more afraid that he had held resentment towards me for the road our family has walked these past few years, was the most vulnerable thing I have ever done.  I let the man I had hoped would forever see me as wonderful, passionate, beautiful, and of worth, see me as wretched, messed up, disheartened, and broken.  I let him into my heart.  

Prior to this moment, I had stormed into my car overwhelmed at the thought I was about to lose my family.  I screamed out in fury over the past choices that led me to this point and begged God to reveal just what He was doing in my life.  Because days before, I knelt before Him with my heart out saying "even if I lose this life, may I always have you".  And I had hit a corner I had never discovered before, one, that at the time, felt like I was about to lose this life and family I had made. 

So there I was.  Across from my husband and at the foot of the Cross.  Ready to die to live.  And there, with a grace only Heaven could paint, he saw the woman he had finally wanted.  A woman who would let him in.   

We don't have it all together.  In fact, we're still flubbing up even after the deepest heart to heart we've ever had.  We're still navigating the waters that are leading us to a place to thrive.  But we're doing it together.  One man.  One woman.  Jon and his bride.  And I couldn't be better reminded of the heart of the man I fell in love with.  The heart of the man I proudly get to call, "My Husband."