So he had asked for a divorce (that's two if you count the initial incident) and I balked. No, we were not going to talk divorce. I was going to give him time and space to think, without the pressure of having to talk to me everyday or answer my probing questions. He could take whatever time he needed to get his head on straight. No divorce!
In September I turned 41. (Just a year before we were on a cruise for my birthday. So much changed in 12 months!) He sent me flowers, like he did every year, and on the card he wrote "I will always love you. No matter what we're going through." I don't think he'll ever know how that crushed me and how it ruined my favorite day in the whole world. I knew we were going through stuff, but did he have to put that on my card? I couldn't stick that in the plastic pronged cardholder for all the world to see. I was gutted about that. Still am. It seemed so insensitive.
Anyway, we trudge along through the fall. Me trying desperately not to do or say *anything* that would upset him. Me holding my tongue during every phone call. Me changing the way I respond to him or his conversation. All because I know if I make him mad, he's going to leave me. But also knowing, somewhere in the back of my mind that if I stay the person I was quickly becoming, he'd eventually leave me anyway. Who the hell was I? I mean, I am not the type to bite my tongue about much. I am outspoken, strong, determined and a badass. But right then and there, I was just mostly scared. Terrified. Panicked. What was I going to do?
I prayed. I blogged. I read scripture. I tried listening to God's voice instead of my own. And I heard God say that there was going to be restoration. Jeremiah 33:6-11 was what He gave to read over and over and over. And I did.
But I also cried. A lot. There were times when I looked like I had just come out of the ring Mike Tyson. People at work thought that I had terminal sinus headaches because that was the excuse I used to cover the blood-shot and swollen eyes. I told so few people. Only 3 people in my circle knew. No one else could ever know.
Between my birthday and Thanksgiving, it was nothing but a blur of crying, praying, blogging and hoping. I don't remember time going by at all. Just that one day I was giving out candy to the neighborhood kids and the next I was desperately trying to figure out how to tell the family that I was in no mood to celebrate Thanksgiving.
My aunt had died the year before. She died a week after Thanksgiving and it was only because of her and her memory did I relented to continuing the tradition of hosting T-Day at my house.
Boy was it something.
Back soon!
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