A year ago tomorrow, I was in the throes of birthing our 6th child. It was an emotional time for us as a couple. Less than a year earlier we had watched our 5th child die, now we were moments from her younger brother being born. 2008 held misery. The early morning hours of 2009 held healing. We had come full circle, living through both extreme grief and extreme joy.
A few months after the death of our daughter and a few months into my pregnancy with our son, I had a dream. It was one of those chaotic early pregnancy dreams. I wanted to divorce my husband and marry another. However, when I looked at this man, my real husband, who shared the memories of the birth and the death of my precious little Emily, I knew I could never walk away from him. The worst day of my life was the worst day of his life. I awoke from that dream in tears.
A husband and wife share not only a bed, but life events. His pain is my pain. His joy is my joy. The babies I’ve birthed have been his babies too. And the child I buried, he buried as well.
It is easy to get caught up in our differences. It is easy to proclaim, “He just doesn’t understand me!” It is easy to see everything from our own point of view and ignore the fact that circumstances that affect us affect our husbands as well. The financial strains, the wayward child, the too-small house are all circumstances that each member of the family must deal with in their own way. It is part of our story. It is a section of the path the Lord has set before us.
I walk this road with my husband at my side. Sometimes we are holding hands and all seems sun-shiny. Other times he feels a million miles away and I trudge along, feeling sad and alone. Yet when I glance over at him, I am able to see someone who knows the same joy and the same pain I know. He knows the bliss of being the first pair of human hands to hold his child. He knows the hot tears and heaving sobs of grief. We share too much to break from the path and go our separate ways.
~Amy
You can read more from Amy,
including more on her journey
through the grief of losing a child at…
Thank you, thank you, Amy, for sharing your heart. I have been blessed with a new outlook…a fresh perspective.
God's blessings to your family as you journey through another year.
Carol
That was just beautiful Amy. I feel the same way about my relationship with Kyle. Men and women are different. The way we see life and treat life can be so opposite at times that we wonder what the other is thinking. How could they not be passionate about this!? How could they give so much attention that!? Yet, when it all comes down to it – when you've loved together and suffered together, all the rest seems very small.
My husband is my hero who has crawled up on a gurney with our daughter so she wouldn't have to be alone in the ambulance. He's the one who spoke at our daughter's memorial service. It was my husband who held me in my deepest grief – his deepest grief, and yet momentarily set his feelings aside so he could be strong for me!
Yes, we certainly are blessed to have our men.
Love,
Lynnette
PS Happy birthday to baby boy tomorrow!
Whoa! Absolutely beautiful Amy! I too am reminded of all the good and the deep sorrow we have shared as husband and wife. I cannot imagine in my worst nightmare to go through what we have been through without him. We were close to begin with and by His grace our marriage and 'oneness' has only grown through the most difficult times.
thank you for this reminder!
Thank you for this beautiful reminder.
So true, and so eloquently written.
Blessings and continued healing to you both in 2010,
Jean
http://www.jeanmatthewhallwords.blogspot.com
Great post and so true. Thanks for sharing.
That was beautiful, Amy.
It is a lesson that took me nearly 7 years to learn. Example: It honestly didn't occur to me that when he left me and our newborn son for 7 weeks' training, that he – well, basically, that he had feelings about it. Isn't that absurd? I felt like such a fool earlier last year when it dawned on me that it tore him up to leave us. He certainly doesn't bawl and carry on like I do, and I'm not asking him to! I'm just amazed at how much the same we are, even while we're so different.
Yes, it is true. And the longer we are married, the more trials and joys the Lord allows us to walk through together, the more bonded we become. Going through cancer, miscarriage, deaths of parents…joys of childbirth, pride in their graduations, and later, we hope and pray, the joys of their marriages and having grandchildren. It's His plan, and it's part of the truth of "the two shall become one." What God has joined together, let not man put asunder. Thanks for sharing your story.
Wendy