On the Right Path

My small group from church is planning a retreat--mostly a weekend away to hang out together and have fun at someone’s island cottage. The group is small enough and the way the numbers are configured, it really is important to invite my husband; but there is a terror in me—a terror that goes deeper than I know how to explain. If I invite him into my world, I fear I will be squashed, shoved aside, swallowed up. When I am with him, I feel like a non-person. The terror is so big that every time I try to talk about this I’m overcome with great pain and tears. And yet, if I don’t allow him into my world, how can our marriage improve? So of course I have to invite him.

Well, he was in a foul mood tonight. The triggers for his anger were little things that he completely misinterpreted in a negative way. I think he has such low self-esteem and thinks so poorly of himself that no matter what anyone says, unless it is blatant praise, he interprets it as that person saying he's no good. And then he gets mad at us for saying he's no good even though we didn't say that at all. That's what seems to have happened tonight.

Should I make the invitation tonight, even though he was so angry? The answer seemed to be yes and so I did. He’s going to think about it.

Amazingly, after I made the invitation, my husband became friendly again. I happened to be chatting with a friend and she said, “He really is needy.” Yeah. He is. And he tries to cover it up with anger, self-sufficiency and other ugly things.

And then I had an insight. The only way that I can deal with his neediness in a healthy way, is for me myself to get healthy and find healthy ways to take care of my own neediness. I myself am/have been very, very needy. So long as we're both really needy (as we both have been from the very beginning), we'll both be so focused on our own need that we can't see the other's. Or, even if we see the other's, we can't deal with it because of our own neediness.

So, I've been on the right path, all along, for the healing of our marriage--getting well myself. I can't heal him and I can't really meet his needs--not the deep needs that make him behave the way he does. But as I change, he will change too, to adjust to the change in me. How he changes is up to him but he will change. So, I have to keep on keeping on working on me. It’s the only way our marriage will improve. And of course, the only way to work on me is to keep pushing closer and closer to God, deepening the relationship He has been pleased to have with me, learning to listen ever more closely to what He wants to tell me and then obeying.

God, please do your will with me and with my marriage. Heal me in all ways, including the terror in my soul, and change me so that I am a reflection of You, heavy with the fruit of the Spirit, and able to see and love my husband as You do.

Diaries 1969 part 2

1969, 13 years old

I made my first trip into the USA. My parents had taken me to the US when I was a baby but since I didn't remember that, it didn't count. This one did. Two things were very noticeable the moment we crossed the border: all the flags that were flying from homes and businesses and, secondly, the increased population density. Even now you can travel for a long time before you drive through a town on the highway. Back then it was even more desolate here in Manitoba. But in Minnesota? There were houses all along the highway. I'll never forget the shock I had.

But the trip was more memorable because I spent the entire time at our destination in the company of one of the boys from church who had also made the trip (it was to campmeeting with sister churches in Minnesota). Two days later this boy phoned me up and asked if I would "go around with him". He became my first boyfriend. It lasted only about three months but recently when I bumped into his mom some place, she introduced me by saying that I nearly became her daughter-in-law. Some wishful thinking went on there, I think.

I have to chuckle at one entry made in October. "Went to Hillary’s. ... Distainful evening. Too quiet. No Christian atmosphere." I remember that evening. I did NOT enjoy myself!

Our church went out every December, knocking door-to-door collecting money for international aid programs. At 13 I was out there with the adults doing my bit. My average "take" that year was $10 a night. I loved doing this. It was always a fun challenge. We had metal canisters with a battery-operated candle sticking up from the top. A bunch of us would pile into a car, go to our assigned territory and then compete to see who could collect the most. It was always dark (sun sets around 4:00 that time of year) but we were never worried about safety (though I was terrified of dogs roaming the streets).

I developed a friendship with a university student in his early 20s who probably had romantic thoughts towards me but hid them so well I didn't have a clue until many years later when I pieced everything together. He played the violin and I played the piano and so there was a logic to our friendship but I learned so much from him. He was studying music at the university. One of his subjects was learning how to conduct an orchestra. He taught me how to read an orchestral score and Tchiakovsky's Symphony in E Minor will always have a special place in my heart. He was Chinese and would take me out to these little hole-in-the-wall restaurants. I learned how to eat with chopsticks. His twin brother was an excellent cook and I later learned a lot of Chinese cooking from him. The last day of 1969 was spent playing piano-violin duets. Years later, quite by coincidence (we'd long lost touch with each other), our sons took violin lessons together.

Diaries 1969

1969, 13 years old

I was in the church choir.

Two friends of mine and myself put on a program at the nursing home affiliated with our church.

A young man (in his 20s) was interested in me romantically. I hated him, probably because I never seemed to get relief from him. My mom frequently invited him into our home. One time she allowed him into my bedroom while I was sleeping so he could kiss me. I was not a happy girl about this. The man phoned me up a few years ago and actually apologized to me for his behaviour back then and asked my forgiveness.

I liked reading Nancy Drew. My teacher (a really strange fellow with strange ideas) was very much against books like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and told my class, in all seriousness, that if we continued reading such books we'd develop holes in our heads.

In March our school janitor retired. We had a rather progressive principal who was very student centred who decided that rather than hiring someone new, he would divide up the job and hire students to take various parts of the job. I was one of the lucky ones (so I thought) and became janitor of the girl's washroom and the kitchen. $14 a month seemed like big money back then.

I played Moonlight Sonata on the piano, by memory, for Talent Night. I loved playing that piece! I still love hearing it.

In April a group of us from school/church went to a youth conference in the next province over. I gave the opening prayer Saturday morning. I remember loving this trip. The older students had come along (I'm not sure how a young one like me got to go but I did!) and what fun I had as we all camped out on the floor in some school, talking and singing the night away! We went to sleep at 6 a.m. and had to be up by 7:30 to drive home. I didn't care.

Our principal developed anti-smoking teams. We had a case of flasks that showed the various poisons in cigarettes (arsenic and cyanide are two I remember) and a mannequin who could really smoke. Inside him were two glass jars filled with fibreglass, meant to represent lungs. We would make the mannequin smoke a cigarette and then show how black the lungs were after only so many cigarettes. It was a convincing show. We travelled around to various schools, and even did a presentation to the Women's Temperance Society with several hundred in the audience. Scary stuff!

My first summer job--babysitting the daughter of my mom's friend while the mom was at work all day. I don't think I enjoyed it but I sure got a lot of reading done! Reading was my passion and I read on the long bus trip to and from my job as well. If I recall, I had to get up and a most ungodly hour, especially considering it was summer vacation, in order to get there on time.

Diaries 1968

I started journalling just after my eighth birthday. That attempt lasted only three months or so. I tried my hand at writing a diary again just after my 12th birthday. I think I was in grade 7 that January. I remember being so excited about being asked to be a librarian for the new fledgling library our principal was starting for our tiny school. We had 10 grades, three teachers and 66 students. The library wasn't much bigger than a closet but what honour and prestige to be part of its founding! I remember feeling so very important.

For years my grandparents took my mom, my and my three younger sisters ice skating once a week in the winter. The January I was 12 was the first time and I had to share my mom's skates because I didn't have any of my own.

That same January a well-known speaker was brought to the city by my church. So many people were expected that we rented one of the old stone churches. It was massive, complete with pipe organ and U-shaped balcony. What fun I remember having, exploring this place and being amazed at all the different kinds of rooms they had. I can't remember a thing about the speaker, however, though I duly noted his name in my diary.

Our church community was like a miniature sub-culture and was very close-knit. As I've read through the things I've written, I've really been impressed by the closeness we had with everyone even though we were all spread out over a large city.

At 12, I got my first job in direct sales, selling greeting cards and gift items. I also got my first experience in customers stiffing the salesperson as one person made a very large order and then never paid me for it. I had the turtle-shaped pajama bag she ordered for many years. What else was I going to do with it?

I was taking piano lessons, swimming lessons, went to church twice on Saturday and to Pathfinders (like Scouts) on Sunday mornings. I was starting to get crushes on boys.

In July I sewed a dress for my mom and a week later sewed another for someone else.

In August I got my first 3-speed bike. My grandpa "made" bikes in his basement from various used bike parts he managed to scrounge.

Some beginnings

I've been transcribing my childhood diaries.

I started the first just after my 8th birthday. That one is always interesting to look at because, although I kept it only for 3 months, it records the last two months I lived with my dad. My mom left my dad at the beginning of March and a year and a half later, he killed himself.

In those three months, I visited a Ukrainian church, got 5 stars in math, got the mumps, Dad bought us chocolates for Valentine's Day (this surprises me), my baby sister swallowed Borax and we left my dad.

My dad was 16 years older than my mom. I was born out of wedlock when Mom was 18. She seriously considered giving me up for adoption and, in my teens, I met the family that wanted to adopt me. The girl they did adopt was brutally raped and murdered by an intruder into their home when she and I were 14 or 15 years old.

Dad was still legally married to someone else when I was born, though he had been separated from his wife for several years. I was a year old when my parents finally crossed the border and got married though my dad never did get a divorce from his first wife. Whether it was because she had a baby out of wedlock, because she lived unmarried with my dad or because she did both with a married man, I'm not sure, but Mom was disfellowshipped (excommunicated) from her beloved church. I never did ask her if Dad was disfellowshiped.

I don't think they ever had a good marriage and they were very poor. My earliest memories (except for one) are when I was three years old. We lived out in the country with my paternal grandparents then. Those were, in many ways, very idyllic days for me, even though, with my little sister, we were 6 people crammed into a small house.

But our home got even smaller when we moved out on our own to a village closer to the city where my dad worked. The house still stands but I'm told that it is now used for a dog kennel. It's too small even for a one-car garage. A third daughter was born to my parents while we lived in this one room shack. We had no plumbing. Dad brought water from the city in pails. Can you imagine raising three little girls and washing diapers in those conditions? I was in grade one while we lived there.

And then we moved to the city. We rented a two-bedroom apartment with a separate a living room, kitchen and bathroom. I thought we had moved into a palace. I think my favourite part of our new home, however, was the long hallway that connected the rooms, where my sister and I skated up and down in our stocking feet on the polished wood.

I have some good memories of living here, and may share some of them in another post, but there were some hard times too and it didn't surprise me at all when, one night when my dad was out, my mom told me we were leaving.

Writing an Unfinished Story

Two summers ago I finished writing the book about my struggle with same-sex attraction. That was the same summer that God promised that my marriage would be healed, better than I can imagine. But He also gave me an instruction and that was to begin a book about my marriage. I put it off for one reason or another until this January, God started hassling me about it. So finally, less than a month ago, I began hunting for my old diaries and the letters my husband and I had exchanged during our "courtship". I found some of my diaries and the letters I sent, though not the letters he sent. It is enough to begin. I'm transcribing everything, putting it into a Word document in chronological order and then, once that's done I'll be able to sort things out from there and begin to look for the story God wants me to write.

How can I write a book about my marriage when it's still in shambles, you might ask. How indeed! When I started the first book, I was deep into an ssa relationship that should not have been (though I had become so blind that I didn't see the dangers of it until it was too late). I was still living the unfinished story. God's got a sense of humour when He gets a person writing the story of their deliverance when they're still in need of deliverance. And so now, though there's no sign of anything improving in my marriage, I'm starting the story of how God did (will do) a miracle in our lives and changed (will change) our marriage completely around to be a blessing instead of a curse.

I haven't a clue how it's going to happen but I can't help wondering if the process of writing the story will somehow trigger the change. Certainly transcribing all these diaries, journals and letters will give me a good look into what happened and what I thought about it at the time. It's already been an interesting journey.

I started the letters yesterday or the day before, having done all the diaries prior to our marriage. We met in the summer 1970. I was 14. We married at the end of December 1973, on my 18th birthday. I found, as I started to transcribe, that my stomach was turning in knots. It has been a painful relationship right from the beginning and returning to that time obviously stirred things up in my sub-consciousness.

As I wondered what to do about this, and discussed the pain with a friend who thinks I’m nuts to be returning, in any way, to such a painful time, it occurred to me what to do. So, as I’m transcribing these letters, I’m praying, “God, show me the Truth about all this!” Knowing the facts isn’t enough. It’s important to know the Truth. While the story is one that is full of pain, it is, essentially, a redemptive story, even if the redeeming hasn’t happened yet. I’m also realizing, when the pain comes, that this is a signal of unhealed wounds. And so when the pain comes, I’m using that as an opportunity to ask God for healing. I know I am in need of a lot of healing in regards to this relationship. The pain is also a sign of the need to forgive and so I’m asking God for the grace to do that too, for each wound that surfaces.

Another friend recently gave me two passages from the Bible which she put together as one:

Fret not yourself because of evildoers
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
Lean not to your own understanding
In all your ways acknowledge him
And He will direct your paths.

She gave it to me in regards to another troublesome relationship but I think it works for this as well. I’ve written it out and pasted it on my monitor as a reminder.

So, I’ll likely be sharing snippets from diaries and letters and insights I gain as I go through this process. There are a lot of letters to go through—2 oversized shoe boxes (more like boot boxes) full—and those are mostly BEFORE marriage. Then there will be all the journals after. It’s a rather daunting task but I’m expecting God to be showing me things. In fact, he already has.