Count your blessings

The last couple of month s I have been feeling alone, betrayed and abandoned, but after spending a week away and with family I have seen how many people are there to support and love me during this time.  What a blessing it was to receive guidance and inspiration through my father as he laid his hands on my head and gave me a blessing that has re-inspired me in my choices and a new found need to renew things with my husband, which in part means I really need to get over this pride that is holding onto the hurt I have felt I unjustly deserved.  Instead of focusing on that I instead need to focus on how to bind with my husband so we are once again on the same page.  What a promise and a blessing to be reminded that no matter my husband’s choices, I will be blessed according to how I live my life, so let’s take the focus off of him and put it back on me because I have found several flaws and weaknesses that could use some work and strengthening.  So for any who care to read this very self- reflective post, here are my goals to try and work toward both short term and long term.

·       Keep prayer and scripture reading ever present in my home

·       Keep peace and love in my home because that is the only thing the advisory cannot replicate

·       Be an influence through personal example rather than through words.

·       Teach my children knowledge, scripture and love so that they have the foundation they need to make their own choices.

·       Fill my own cup so that I can fulfill me needs, in order to continue serving those around me.

I have been blessed with so much and I know that like the car accident, the fire and the miscarriage, I will be a better, a stronger and a more compassionate person for having gone through these times I feel I am at my weakest.  This week was just what I needed and I hope I can maintain this focus and I continue on.  So if you feel I get too negative or lose track of these goals, just remind me of my blessings, for I have nothing to feel sorry about.

kick

Josh got to feel the baby kick for the first time last night.  That was very exciting for both of us and it was nice to have that bonding moment.  I hope that solidified the realness of this pregnancy for him.  I know what a relief it is to me to feel movement.  The last day or so has gone pretty well.  Last night we began to outline our expectations.  For example, I will no longer expect Josh to read his scriptures or even believe in God, but since I am willing to compromise on National Guard or the Reserves Josh is willing to compromise coming to church with us on Sundays to help me out with the kids and if I plan Family home evenings he will participate with the kids.  I know we have a long way to go, but I feel like my husband actually sees us again.  Maybe the thought of actually losing us was the wakeup call he needed, but now I feel as if we are both trying to fix our marriage.

I won’t be posting for a couple of days since we will be attending a family reunion and I have never been so excited!  My entire family (immediate) will all be there so this will be the first time we have all been together in two years.  It will also be such a relief to have mom and dad there so if maybe for an hour or two I can feel like I am the one being taken care of and worry free.  I also can’t wait to show off my growing belly.  Hugs to  you all, the prayers have been blessing our lives and I can’t thank you enough!

anxious

I am starting to get anxious for my husband’s upcoming psych evaluation on Thursday.  Although the Army says that the mental stability of their soldiers is their number one priority, I feel that is only true to a certain degree. If you mention the word suicide, they are high risk and concern until the soldier says he is not at risk of suicide and then all the concern seems to dissipate.  Seeing as my husband at the moment is showing signs of 4/6 symptoms of suicide I am beyond frustrated that we have had to wait a week to even get in and see a doctor, and this doctor may not even be the right doctor for bipolar testing which means there is a high possibility we may have to wait for yet another appointment.  I just want what is best for my husband and not another list of excuses and justification that may result in a trained soldier being med boarded (which the Army is always more than reluctant to do with a soldier they value).  For brief moments I feel like the husband I married is still there, but there is so much hurt and fogginess clouding his eyes that it sometimes if hard to see the love I know he has for us.  I just want him back and I feel and am hoping that medication will help him stabilize the difficulties he is going through.  If anyone is bipolar or has someone close who suffers with this I would love any advice you have to offer because I want to support him, but that’s hard when he pushes me away.  Hope.  Hope.  Hope.

Keep Reading

I am so hurt and upset right now.  Never before have I felt so unwanted and unloved by the person I thought would love me forever.  The emotions and reality of all of this are catching up with me and my heart aches with worry and loneliness.  My entire marriage I have given nothing less than everything that I have and despite all my husband’s issues I feel as if I am the one who comes out lacking because he didn’t want me as much as he wanted other things.  Please don’t take this as wallowing or self pity or even lack of strength; it’s just a bleeding heart that is feeling the pangs of rejection.  I always thought I was enough; that I made him happy, but I guess I just wasn’t what he needed.  So can I be someone a person needs?  Can I be enough for someone other than my children?  I always thought that he was the only one who knew how to love me and in the end I feel as if that love has run out.  I don’t want to be a divorcee or a single mom to two.  I just want to be loved and taken care of.  I don’t want to let this jade me, but how can you not take it personal?  How can you not wonder if there is even a person out there in the world who knows how to love you?  How can you not be scared of rejection that makes you doubt your being?.........

While I was writing the above portion my husband was reading over my shoulder and watching my cry as I finally let out some of the pent up hurt.   He watched me cry and wrote for probably about half an hour before he joined me on the floor and began sobbing into my shoulder apologizing over and over for what he was doing.  He said he could never choose the Army over me.  He wasn’t willing to give up his wife and kids.  We sat in each other’s arms and cried for what we almost lost.  I told him of my feelings of betrayal while he described to me his mixed confused emotions of how he saw himself.  Although my husband feels the Army is still a large part of his life and doesn’t want to let it go, he is now willing to do so to try and focus on our marriage and our children.  I think we are both looking forward to answers as we continue to fight the Army to get the proper testing done that he needs.  As of right now he has an appointment scheduled for Thursday.  We both feel that his issues need to be fixed before we can begin to repair the damage between us.  We will still continue marriage counseling, but we both have a renewed hope now that we are both willing to make this work.  This really is an answer to prayers.

not much of an update

Tomorrow Josh tells me for sure whether or not he wants a divorce or if he is willing to continue to try and work on our marriage but after talking last night he let me know he was leaning more towards divorce.  So I am pretty confident that will be the outcome.  I will stay in TN until the baby is born since all my pregnancies are so high risk and I have a great doctor who is aware of everything that it wouldn’t be fair or comfortable to try and start over mid pregnancy with someone else.  Once Josh finally verbalized divorce is the option he wants then we will probably put in paper work for separation.  He will go live on post while I remain living here in Clarksville and at that point we can begin the process of separating bank accounts, titles, etc.  Plus, if Josh chooses divorce, being Army he will probably only see his children once, maybe twice a year that this time of separation will help me transition our son into the absence of his father.  After I deliver we will then file for divorce and start our lives over apart, living the separate lives I guess we have been trying to live together. 

Bipolar II

This morning I called my mom to let her know about the possible divorce.  Of course she was heartbroken and began asking questions.  My mom is only aware that Josh has a depression issue and post traumatic stress, but I had never before shared with her my concerns of the bipolar that runs in his family.  You see since we have been married both myself and my father in law have been trying to convince my husband that he should be tested seeing as he exhibits all the classic signs of bipolar depression.  So I was shocked when after about an hour of talking my mom instead of berating my husband as I thought she would, she paused and said that it sounded like my husband was bipolar.  I then voiced my concerns on the issue and how I have been begging him for years to be tested for it and shared some of the things he had shared with me the night before.  She said that she felt he sounded suicidal and that I might want to do more research on the subject.  I asked her if she thought that would be pointless seeing as at this point I wasn’t looking for much of a change in his actions or decisions.  She said that she thought there was a point because all the things I had been feeling so rejected and disheartened about sounded like symptoms rather than personality and if he refused to be tested then I should contact his superior officers to make sure he got the help that he needed.  To preface this a little, my mom is a psychologist and her calm concerned reaction took me back a little making me stop to re-assess this issue that has always been present in our marriage.

As soon as I got off the phone with her I found a great sight that gave me the information I was looking for (http://www.helpguide.org/mental/bipolar_disorder_symptoms_treatment.htm) My husband has always exhibited the signs of bipolar depression, but never the mania aspect of it and was comforted in knowing that there seemed to be an answer to all the things he was struggling with and that my husband very much fit the bipolar II.  I went through the checklist of symptoms and felt my husband fit 8/10 symptoms.  I then went through the signs of suicide was astonished and terrified that he fit 4/6 warning signs.  The reality of the situation hit me hard as I recounted the conversation I had had the night before where my husband admitted that he had thought about suicide more in the last two months than he had ever before.  Then the worry hit.  If my husband was willing to give up me and our children, suicide didn’t seem like impossibility.  I knew talking to him would do no good, it hasn’t for the last year plus and began calling members in the Family Readiness Group to try and get numbers for my husband’s SGTs.  I left a couple of messages and after about half an hour had received the number for his 1^st SGT.  I wrote out what I was going to say when I called and picked up my phone to make the call when my phone started ringing.  I guess word had spread faster than I had anticipated and was relieved when my husband called me to talk about my concerns and comfort me that although he admitted his depression was bad he never would consider following through with suicide.  I read to him the page I had found and he agreed to all the same symptoms I had felt he related with.  I also went over the signs of suicide and he agreed to showing those signs and although he had been thinking of suicide he would never do that to me and the kids.  We talked for about half an hour and his SGT even got on the phone to reassure me that she would make sure my husband got the help that he needed.  Josh then told me his plan of action was to read what I had found and would print off the symptoms and take them with him to his therapy session on Monday and ask to be tested for bipolar II. 

When my husband got home he read over the article and he admitted that he felt as if his symptoms did match bipolar II.  I asked him if he felt that maybe his feeling he had changed in the last year could be attributed to a long time low.  He admitted that it might be a possibility.  So this still does not solve anything but once again the issue has at least been addressed and I feel the people who need to be there to help and support him can be now.  I have a little bit of hope that all this selfishness and self destruction is all chemical and can be improved with medication, but I still feel as if things have reached a certain level that this won’t exactly change anything unless my husband decided he really wants me and the children, otherwise I feel as if things will still progress and I mentioned earlier, but here is hoping?

Divorce?

As you know I gave my husband a list of five things I needed to see improvement on before our next session to prove that he loved me and to show that our marriage was worth the little work I asked him to do.  He agreed to all the things on my list and he stated that he thought they were all fair.  Yesterday was our appointment and our deadline.  We began our session my sharing how these things were accomplished and it was very clear that only minimal effort was put in on the items that were worked on and there were a couple of items that hadn’t been attempted at all.  The therapist asked my husband if he had agreed to the terms and if he thought they were fair.  My husband replied that he thought they were fair at the time, but no longer thought so.  The therapist then asked why he changed his mind.  My husband responded that if I accepted who he was I shouldn’t expect him to complete the items on the list.  The therapist then asked my husband what it was that I was not accepting about him and he listed two items: that he was a soldier and that he was not a member of the church.  The therapist then made the observation that he felt (but could be wrong) that Josh was subconsciously and passively trying to sabotage our marriage because deep down it wasn’t what he wanted or he would make every effort to try and same it and the therapist felt he was giving a take it or leave it sort of attitude.  He broke down our session to the simplest terms by saying that it we didn’t seem to have anything to bind us together; we didn’t have a common goal or desire and we seemed to be going in two very separate directions and that the “hang ups” we kept stumbling upon were the church and the military.  He then said that he advocated for families to try and stay together, but if there wasn’t an agreeable compromise to the both of us then we would both be miserable and resentful.  He said we could both try and negotiate terms to make our marriage work and continue trying or if we were unable to compromise on what we needed then accept we no longer could make a marriage work and seek a divorce.

Essentially it was church against army.  I have always believed very strongly in my religion and it is more than just a religion, it is a way I live my life, but in the long term I would rather my children have an inactive father who doesn’t believe in God than to have them grow up without a father at all.  I am willing to compromise that if he is willing to compromise the Army because I can’t give up both.  Since my husband has left the church I no longer feel he is inspired, protected and in honest since he no longer holds the same values as me I do not trust him.  I just don’t see how we can make our marriage work if he stays in service.  I offered my husband my proposal, but he did not find it suitable.  I asked if he could think of any other compromise we would both be happy with.  He responded that he could not.  He then announced that he thought divorce was our only option.

We split ways for an hour or two so we could process the reality of what was said but upon returning home I brought up all the things that were still bothering me.  I demanded that he at least admitted that the Army was more important to him since that was what he had chosen.  He kept arguing that, that wasn’t the case.  I asked him to explain himself and he said that he felt like we would be better off on our own since he couldn’t be the husband we needed him to be.  I let him know that this argument didn’t make sense because it would be better for our children to have him for a father than no father at all.  He then went on to say that I deserved the chance to find a husband who did believe in the church.  It was at this point that I pretty much broke down and said to him I had no intention of dating.  How could I date with a toddler and a newborn?  Plus if he didn’t want me, what makes him think anyone else would with two children in tow?  How would it be better if I had to get a job to support our children, so they no longer had a dad or a stay at home mom?  How would it be better for them when I would have to move in with my parents and they wouldn’t be able to have a house or place to even call their own?  How would it be better for him to miss his children’s lives?  I told him that I felt his depression was once again talking and he needed to be very clear on what exactly he was saying and thinking before we made this permanent.  He said it was a hard decision and he knows it shouldn’t but he needed a couple days to decide over the Army or us.  I told him I would need to know before my family reunion because I would need the time away with my family to make plans if I needed to, so my husband has until Monday to decide what he wants in his life.  At this point I can’t help but prepare for the worst and I am trying not to get overwhelmed with plans of moving and divorcing while pregnant and with two little children.  I am not angry but I feel it is incredibly unfair, especially to my children and I feel it is all very selfish.  I love my children with all my heart and I have the support if my family as well as his, so I take comfort in knowing I have help through this trying time.  Please keep us in your prayers!