For Now

Hear my cry. 
Hold my heart near.  I am troubled and anguished by things which I can't understand.  I am hurt.  I am pained.  Love comes with a price.  What is that price?  Does it demand the death of myself?  What exactly does that mean?  Aren't there boundaries that are good and healthy?  Or am I wrong?  Perhaps just selfish? 
What is right and good.  How shall I know it?  Isn't all of life about learning?  How do I know what You want?  Really know. 
Told today that some people are coming back from the mission field by my husband.  I know that they will have something to say.  I tried to talk to her a couple of years ago when I had just been gone on a trip and and thought that I wouldn't make it in marriage.  She told me I mustn't think that way.  Basically that there is no choice.  Is there no choice? 
Am I completely heathen?  The desire of my heart is to be free from being used by the one who is supposed to love me.  I am willing to be aware of being used by many.  I don't fight it.  But this is cruel.  I cry out but who will hear me?  Who will know the pain of my heart? 
These long years have passed.  He shows no compassion.  He will play a game to get what he wants.  But there is no true intimacy.  "I want to screw you," is not foreplay.  Nor is forcing me to do the things that humiliate me.  But those things give him power over me.  Even in my own mind.
He is ashamed of me.  He lets me know.  Then lets me know how I can buy favor.  I just can't for now.  Not anymore.  For now.  For now, I have to risk what I fear most. That my worst fears are true.  That there will be none to hear.  None to understand.  That You, God will turn from me.  That I am undeserving of compassion.  And yet, even with that great fear........I cannot turn back.  Because I want to live to praise You.  I want to know what You can do in my life.  I want to know the woman you made me to be.  Unhumiliated.  Unshamed.  With great heart and desire to give.  I want to live.  Oh, please, let me live.  In Your mercy, Don't leave me here.  Don't allow me to be consumed by this.  Free me.  For now.  See me.  Help me.  I can't even put to words the messages I am given.  I don't even know how to tell him.  I don't want to hurt him.  And that stuns me.  But it lets me know that you must be here.  Because if it was only me, I would want to annihilate him.  I want him to learn.  To figure it out.  I want him to love someone with a giving love.  And I wonder that if I find out that he can how insignificant that will make me feel.  How horribly ineffective as his wife. 
I have tried to know him.  Tried to meet his needs.  Tried to be the one he wants.  I am not her.  Never was.  Never will be.  For now, I feel like I need to save the lost one.  The drowning one.  Retrieve what was once.  And what should be in the future.  Because right now I am living like one in a dream.  Can't answer questions truthfully.  Can't go to a marriage seminar....what a crock that would be. 
For now, I need the freedom to NOT make it work.  It has been my job for so long.  But, really, it's not my job.  My job is to be who I was created to be.  The thing that marriage is supposed to do is celebrate those things.  I need to feel like who I am matters.  I need to learn again self respect.  I am getting healthier.  That is bad news for him. 
I don't know what is in the future or what direction You will take me.  But I know what I need, for now.