Hello to the board community (from a Man in need):
I had just wrapped up my crystal clear recall of the very first moment I set eyes on the woman I would be joined with for a lifetime.
For both her & I it is an understatement to say that we have had to deal with a whole lotta crap since that first encounter. Obviously some of it has been self created and other parts of it have not. Fate (for those who subscribe to it)can place in your lap apparent joys as well as apparent sorrows.
Myself and my mate were beset by terrible news only 4 months into our engagement and just a couple months prior to our wedding day. That news was that she might very well have a tumor in the area of her brain stem. Not that there is any great way to receive news of that magnitude, but to have it delivered to you in an office visit would have been surely preferable to hearing it over the phone as she did.
Needless to say our lives were turned upside down. It hurts me now and causes me to quiver a little to think of this. That was nearly 6 years ago and it is to this day a weight that our marriage (and each of us individually)has had to endure. The two of us have counted our blessings that from that day until now her physiological health has not been impacted in any way. I certainly hope those same blessings from GOD on high continue just the same.
Suffice it to say that our marriage, like most, has had its continuous tests for resiliency. Sometimes we fared better on those tests than other times. And as is evidenced by a helpful and well utilized Board such as this one, certain times in life require outside assistance from others and hopefully from trained professionals as well. With this devastating news happening during our engagement the two of us thought it wise to seek out the help of an LSW counselor for help with the multitude of issues staring us in the face.
My then fiance had a 13 yr old daughter who's emotional state and well being would need to be closely monitored during this unfolding crisis. This was of course my fiance's first priority rather than herself. Secondly, as tough as a person as she is on the outside, my fiance's widely ranging emotions could not be contained. A third reason for the counseling sessions(and more peripheral and lesser)was what this discovery would mean in terms of our marriage plans and just what part I would play in her life from this point on.
Not that many wedding engagements don't have plenty of twists and turns to them which shake the core on some level but ours had a uniqueness to it that I am glad many other people do not have to face. I found myself being questioned by my fiance about if I would want to stay with her given the circumstances and why I would do that to myself. More than 5 years later I would still answer affirmatively to that question and I have never regretted it. Even as I sit here now having to wait day in and day out for divorce papers she claims she has filed, if we could magically move backwards in time(with the knowlege of our present life) I surely would not have chosen to bow out of the chance to marry the person that I Love more than any other. I may not be sure of too many things right now, but of that I am sure.
Another thing that I can say that I am sure of is that as of today (and we are supposed to be living for just this 1)I am still a married man. I am even a happily married man at certain moments. As I survey my perspective on the present state of my marriage, I see myself doing the things that I need to be doing to allow for the best possible outcome to our marital mess. In casting my view on my wife I see her scrambling to survive and to her that would seem to include discarding her marriage because she see's no way to experience anything other than pain that she attributes to the marriage.
Jesus reigns supreme. Despair will not come over me.
