Prayers

For so many years my prayer was to be enough.  Good enough housekeeper.  Good enough mom.  Good enough cook.  Good enough lover.  Good enough gardener.  Good enough listener.  Good enough encourager.  Good enough friend.  Good enough to be married.  To him.  To be able to keep the peace.  To allow him to thrive.  I would have done anything.  I prayed to be able and willing to sacrifice.  To not be self serving.  I wanted to be willing to do what it took to make a marriage work. 

Years.  And years.  Never being successful.  Having moments to hold and cherish.  But nothing substantial to feel like there was a foundation.  Never knowing that there was respect.  Nor compassion.  It has eaten away at me.  And now I experience holes in who I am.  In who I was.  There are such needy places.  Places that were destroyed.  Places I liked.  But now, it's as if I walk in a world of post war.  A city that has been bombed over and over.  Torn down.  Yet, in the middle of everything, there will be one beautiful thing remaining.  

My prayer is to build a foundation on the beautiful things that remain.  Faith.  Hope.  These I still have.  Though they have shaken and trembled, they stood fast.  From them, peace and joy can come again.

Yet, I feel like the one wandering through the bombed out city.  Disoriented.  Losing sense of direction because so many things are gone.  I feel alone.  I feel like people in other places look at me and don't understand the greatness of loss I have experienced.  Not just of marriage.  That was gone.  But of trying to stop the loss of everything and in so doing, losing my self.  It's painful.

I pray to not struggle so much.  To relax.  But my whole self is on high alert.  Because he's always coming back.  It's like waiting for the bombers overhead.  Listening. Heart pounding.  Wondering what will be hit this time.  And will I survive.  

And my prayers have changed.  To saving not my marriage but me.  My very life.  My very self.  

And yet, I walk around the world.  And nobody sees how lost.  How hurt.  How devastated I am.  Nobody acknowledges that perhaps I was a hero.  Saving others.  Giving life.  From my own supply.

And now in need.  But alone.  Without encouragement.  

But my prayer is to be the encourager to myself that I have been to others.  Because it needs to be done.  I have to walk a little further.  Do a little more.  Find ways to function.  And do more than simply function.  Somehow.  And it doesn't do any good to try to tell others that I'm good or good at things.  It just sounds arrogant.  When really, in saying it aloud, I'm just trying to tell myself that I am still alive and still have purpose.  Though the bombings have come and so much is destroyed.  I am still alive.  Albeit faintly.

My prayers.  Were they answered?  Yes.  I am not good enough for him.  And he will not choose me over his mother.  And no matter what, he'll never honestly be happy with how I am.  The answer wasn't pretty.   It wasn't yes.  But it was answered.  God is reminding me instead of how to live.  Not how to try to please the husband.  And you know, I'm having a hard time doing it.  Shock.  Trauma.  Of too long carrying the other to safety.  Of doing the work.  Of caring.  

Prayers.  They still rise up within me.  With hope...that peace and joy and passion will return and that fear will subside.

blessings.