Ok. There are things I know about myself. I do know who I am in some sense, but I've also lost myself. For a very long time I have found my identity in being a wife, mother, and homeschooler. The last 6 months I have found those things are changing in ways that I cannot control and have no idea how they will turn out. I am no longer homeschooling my kids after 18 years. It wasn't my choice, it was something my kids asked for and my husband chose to act on, and I found myself having to adapt. I wasn't ready for it. I'm still a mom, but 3 of my kids are grown and my youngest two are growing more independent by the day. My role as mother changes all the time, it always has, but it has been a big part of who I am and at the core of every decision I've made for over 23 years. My biggest identity has always been that of wife. From the very beginning of my marriage there have been things I have sacrificed of myself because my husband didn't approve or see value in it. In the last years our marriage has really struggled, to put it vaguely and lightly. We spent nearly two and a half years in counseling, and when our counselor felt we had gone as far as he could take us, he sent us out on our own to use the tools he spent so long teaching us. As part of that process of allowing my husband to learn to use his tools, I had to step back and allow him the space to do so. Since that time, without me constantly telling him how to be in a relationship with me, he has chosen over and over to not pursue a relationship with me.
I find myself on very uneven, uncharted, unsteady waters. Nothing of what has been constant in the last 28 years of our marriage has remained. I've been waiting all these months for him to define us, to define or find me in us. Lovable. Lovely. Loving. Comforting. Needed. Desirable. Fun. Funny. Engaging. Conversational. Friendly. Quirky. Talented. Smart. A wonderful mother. Understanding. Worthy. Valuable.
In that moment in the conversation I was having with my acquaintance, I realized I have been waiting to be whatever he wanted me to be so much that in his inaction of building a new relationship with me, I was unable to see who I might be in the future because I could not control the outcome of how he would define me. I will tell you, it is a really dangerous thing to allow someone else to define you. This power that I have given up put me into a depression like I have never experienced before. That realization has been simmering in me these last weeks. It's a lot to process. I'm coming into it, slowly.
In all likelihood, though I am not certain that Father doesn't have a miracle in His almighty pocket, my marriage will end in the coming months. And I will no longer be able to define myself in the context of being a wife. Tonight, I find myself very much at peace. The moment of realizing the truth of what is happening, put me in a place in which my knee-jerk response is to run to and rest in Christ's love. A place where I could have been all along, but wasn't. I find myself this evening wanting to seek Christ more, wanting to be more in him, wanting to find my identity in him.
