When I was in the last session of “crazy prayer” (the generational healing prayer thing our church does), we completed the process of forgiveness for the last person on my list of folks who had left our church. I had felt abandoned by many of those folks, and viciously attacked and hurt by others. The list of names was long, and the months of prayer sessions to forgive each of them was longer.
After each person had been completed, the ladies taking me through the prayer process would ask, “What do you need from Jesus right now?” Sometimes the answer that came to my thoughts was strength, or comfort.
After completing the last person, they asked the same question again. This time the answer that came to me was, not to be abandoned. To know that I am not going to be abandoned in life, or keep being abandoned, or feeling abandoned. I sensed that I heard the Lord’s soft reply in my thoughts, “I know that about you, Joy. That’s why I gave you a husband who will never leave you.” A small pause, then, “And I don’t want you to leave him.”
I sensed that God had spoken to me as strongly as I have felt a handful of other times in my life.
For about two years now, Benjamin and I have been in marriage counseling. Before counseling, and throughout it, I felt a reoccuring sense that we weren’t going to make it. There were countless days I felt maxed out with the pain of living with him, and I felt like leaving. The counseling was vaguely helping, but seemed insufficient to resolve our issues. I wanted out of our marriage so badly. I even voiced to a few close friends that I felt marrying him was the worst decision of my life, and more than anything in my life, I wished I could take it back.
So hearing this clear statement from God was more of a blow than a relief. Now I really couldn’t leave. The only hope I had was that if God was telling me to stay in, He must also be planning to make it a place where I could survive. I already knew I couldn’t keep living the way we had been for most of our marriage. Hence my desperation in wanting to leave. God had to know that, and therefore, had to have a plan to make our marriage a place where I could live, where it wouldn’t continue being the way it was.
I didn’t tell anyone about this experience for weeks, just praying and pondering in my heart. Several months later, I felt it was the right time to tell Benjamin. He cried a lot. It was really healing for him to hear.
There have been a lot of ups and downs during counseling. Times where things seemed to be going amazingly well, so many problems were resolved, significant progress was being made. But then things would take a turn for the worse, chaos would ensue, and I would desperately want out. This was really my worst fear of staying in the marriage, because it is the most common pattern for those with ADHD (and even some other mental disorders): someone gets upset with you, so you work really hard and get better for a while, then you relapse and everything falls apart again. I had experienced this pattern throughout our entire seven years of marriage, and after that much time, really didn’t have hope things would change for the better, then STAY changed for the better.
Well, I’m happy (but still somewhat hesitant) to report that for now, staying better has been staying for a while. Benjamin needed a stimulant-type medication for ADHD, as the non-stimulant was helping, but wasn’t strong enough to completely treat the problem. Since taking the stimulants beginning in November, he has consistently been acting like a responsible, caring, responsive, attune adult. It has made a world of difference, and he honestly loves the way he feels when he takes them. He can immediately tell he is more alert, focused, motivated, and energetic. The difference is like night and day, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
All along the way of my sadness, anger, frustration, and feelings of lack of commitment, this was what I really wanted. To have a marriage. A marriage to Benjamin.
It wasn’t that I wanted to leave. I just didn’t want things to stay the same. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. It was that I couldn’t believe he loved me when he kept doing so many things that were hurtful to me. It wasn’t that I wanted a divorce. It was that I wanted an amazing marriage, and this wasn’t being it.
I couldn’t be more grateful to God, our counselors, my parents, family, and friends who have done their part to help us pull through.
We are not abandoned, because God has not abandoned us. And he has put people in our lives who didn’t abandon us, and who became the faithful hands and feet of Jesus in our lives.