Last night I talked for awhile on the phone with a good friend of mine whose wife is good friends with my wife. We share the same spiritual mindset and they’ve been through many similar struggles in their marriage. He’s the opposite of me personality-wise so I really like to bounce things off of him.
After talking with him I realized that one of my main issues to work on in this as an individual: PATIENCE. I wasn’t raised to be patient, I wasn’t genetically born with it. There are a lot of strikes against me here. The good news is that I believe that this shakedown I’m going through will help give me better tools to be more patient, less self-absorbed, and appreciate the fact that lots of important things in life take time to happen if they’re to be done right. If you’re talking about healing, paradigm shifts in your personal life, career, relations with your children…..if you want the best result with those things, time is the main necessary ingredient, and time can only do it’s job if we are patient.
I know now that my focus needs to be on prayer, and NOT engaging my wife in heavy conversations or me trying to “fix it.” When I do that, I believe I create noise that distracts her from letting God do his work in her. Also by trying to “fix it,” I’m not walking the walk, handing it over to Him, and trusting Him to roll out the right plan.
Today, after she arrives so I can leave, my focus will not be on changing her mind, changing her heart, changing her spirit, etc. That’s not my job, my burden, my place in the world. Instead I will be focusing on finishing up her mother’s day gift, relaxing, and visiting some friends tonight for prayer and to catch up with them on their lives and their new baby that is due any day now.
Exhausted
I picked up the Mother’s Day present to day and it turned out awesome. I know she’ll dig it as their mom so that’s cool. I then went to have some lunch and talked to my mom for about an hour. It was pretty heavy with lots of focus on recovering after divorce even though we aren’t there yet.
I then went to another friends house and hashed it out some more with them. I was kind of working through some of my anger with them and felt better, worse, and more exhausted at the same time.
Last, I had dinner with some close friends of ours and talked to them about what’s going on. My wife had called to talked to the wife of our two friends while I was there. Afterwards, the feedback I got was that she just sounded exhausted like me. She said that based on what my wife said, it’s not appropriate to put a time limit on any of this right now. Apparently my wife is addressing her heavy issues in counseling which I’m stoked to hear. The thought of what we’ll have to do if she needs a lot more time is a little daunting as I can’t afford to rent another place alongside our mortgage. We may have to come up with some new arrangements if it’s not time to stay at the same house yet. I’m willing to wait this out for a bit to see where it heads.
To our friend’s point, my wife is a very slow cooker when it comes to issues so maybe this is the trial of my life when it comes to patience.
I know God has something in the works, I’m starting to feel like I’m in outer space. I almost am not thinking about if it’s gonna work or not and more just about getting up in the morning, and then going to bed.
Heading to bed to read and pray.
I’m just so tired so right now from head to toe.
