MLC Poetry - Verse 1 - 11/05/20 02:35 AM
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I have followed your hurting and healing from afar, these many months. I have found so much wisdom here and it has been a tremendous help in getting me to where I am. I thank you!
I wanted to give something back to you. Right before this started, God gave me the gift of writing. I see now how He prepared me to express myself during this time of suffering. It's made all the difference.
What I envision this thread to be, is that every few days I will share a poem, prefaced with some background of what inspired it. My hope is that people will respond with anything that it inspires them to share. All my writing is informed by my faith; but I hope that all of you find something in it that is helpful.
Having said all that, I'm not going to begin with a poem, but a description of my bomb drop.
Zero Hour
It’s a nice summer day. We go on a walk in our favorite neighborhood near downtown, in our small North Carolina city. We’ve been looking for a house in this neighborhood for two years. As we are walking, I see a For Sale sign in front of the house we like the best. I can’t believe it! I immediately call the agent and leave a message for her to show it to us ASAP. I don’t want it to get snapped up. In the excitement, I don’t notice that my husband doesn’t seem to share my enthusiasm.
After we get home, my husband says he is going to take a nap. As he goes into the bedroom, I ask him if he wants company. He says, “I guess”, without much enthusiasm. I go into the bedroom and ask him what’s wrong. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, bomb drop!
“I don’t feel emotionally connected to you”
“I don’t love you like a husband should love his wife”
“I had just accepted that nothing would ever change”
“I don’t know if I can love you again”
“I’ve been hardening my heart against you”
The agent calls in the middle of this and I tell her we won’t be looking at the house. I’m very afraid, but not hopeless. We’ve been married nearly 35 years, my husband is a pastor, we’ve never been separated, and we’ve always made it through hard times together. Surely, we will just go to marriage counseling and make some changes and we’ll be ok, right?
Wrong. So wrong. Each day following seemed like living in some kind of Twilight Zone episode, where people wake up in a place that seems mostly the same, but in some way terrifyingly different. I was living in the same house with the one person in this world who had vowed to God to love me, no matter what. But here he was, telling me he felt nothing for me; not even compassion. What was going on!
He didn’t want to touch me or even talk to me. I still had to go to church and pretend everything was ok. We had planned on spending the 4th of July with our son’s family and spending the night. I didn’t want to go; I didn’t think I could act for that long. It was torture, but we did it. I felt all the time that my world was spinning out of control. “Jane, get me off of this crazy thing!”
We were both in tremendous pain; it was palpable. My mind sped like a hummingbird from one thought to the next. I got little sleep and ate less and less. I was losing a pound a day and was small to begin with. I called the doctor and got anxiety and depression medicine. But no medicine could take away the feeling that my entire body was burning up. My skin felt like it was on fire. I remember thinking, God really does purify us in our trials.
I have followed your hurting and healing from afar, these many months. I have found so much wisdom here and it has been a tremendous help in getting me to where I am. I thank you!
I wanted to give something back to you. Right before this started, God gave me the gift of writing. I see now how He prepared me to express myself during this time of suffering. It's made all the difference.
What I envision this thread to be, is that every few days I will share a poem, prefaced with some background of what inspired it. My hope is that people will respond with anything that it inspires them to share. All my writing is informed by my faith; but I hope that all of you find something in it that is helpful.
Having said all that, I'm not going to begin with a poem, but a description of my bomb drop.
Zero Hour
It’s a nice summer day. We go on a walk in our favorite neighborhood near downtown, in our small North Carolina city. We’ve been looking for a house in this neighborhood for two years. As we are walking, I see a For Sale sign in front of the house we like the best. I can’t believe it! I immediately call the agent and leave a message for her to show it to us ASAP. I don’t want it to get snapped up. In the excitement, I don’t notice that my husband doesn’t seem to share my enthusiasm.
After we get home, my husband says he is going to take a nap. As he goes into the bedroom, I ask him if he wants company. He says, “I guess”, without much enthusiasm. I go into the bedroom and ask him what’s wrong. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, bomb drop!
“I don’t feel emotionally connected to you”
“I don’t love you like a husband should love his wife”
“I had just accepted that nothing would ever change”
“I don’t know if I can love you again”
“I’ve been hardening my heart against you”
The agent calls in the middle of this and I tell her we won’t be looking at the house. I’m very afraid, but not hopeless. We’ve been married nearly 35 years, my husband is a pastor, we’ve never been separated, and we’ve always made it through hard times together. Surely, we will just go to marriage counseling and make some changes and we’ll be ok, right?
Wrong. So wrong. Each day following seemed like living in some kind of Twilight Zone episode, where people wake up in a place that seems mostly the same, but in some way terrifyingly different. I was living in the same house with the one person in this world who had vowed to God to love me, no matter what. But here he was, telling me he felt nothing for me; not even compassion. What was going on!
He didn’t want to touch me or even talk to me. I still had to go to church and pretend everything was ok. We had planned on spending the 4th of July with our son’s family and spending the night. I didn’t want to go; I didn’t think I could act for that long. It was torture, but we did it. I felt all the time that my world was spinning out of control. “Jane, get me off of this crazy thing!”
We were both in tremendous pain; it was palpable. My mind sped like a hummingbird from one thought to the next. I got little sleep and ate less and less. I was losing a pound a day and was small to begin with. I called the doctor and got anxiety and depression medicine. But no medicine could take away the feeling that my entire body was burning up. My skin felt like it was on fire. I remember thinking, God really does purify us in our trials.