So a small part but yet a significant part of Leisha’s and my story was exposed this week. For sure it has been a surreal experience. We have had to re-live something that we are really way past and as a result questions have come to the forefront in my mind and here is one answer…
To do what I did to Leisha for so long, an underlying element was I didn’t see all of her. I didn’t see into her. I have seen this expressed several different ways in the psychological world. I was stuck in trying to see into me where I only saw a lot of pain that ended up in anger that expressed itself in how I treated her. Even though I really wasn’t angry AT HER, she bore the brunt of it.
(The below all occurred towards the middle of July 2014)
Well inside of me I am done with my sabbatical. I began to sense this a couple of weeks ago. Funny how, at least for me there was more like a sunrise in realizing this rather than a moment. But now that the sun has fully risen I know it fully. There is a side of me that is wishing our vaca to Anna Maria wasn’t scheduled as well as it not being so long, 2 weeks in a beach house on the beach, on the nice side of the island facing west but… Scheduling that and the 2 weeks away came out of the same thought processes of taking a sabbatical, so I will complete the journey, as difficult as it is, I will do the hard work of crossing the finish line !!!! (har har)
Doing our video on my abuse to Leisha was a little rough because I was forced to think through all of that stuff again. So I took a sabbatical at home to process my fathers death and was in a way asked to process my anger in a very visible way. Surprisingly I trust what happened.
I try to create songs and I am somewhat successful at finishing a song now. I post them to FB and I don’t get any responses to them, so maybe not so successful at creating something others like. That really is ok, because what I create is mostly messing around on a canvas of sound and what I end up with is just that, something that I stumbled upon, stumbled through…messing around, but it shows me, me on the inside…
So I sat down recently and began to stumble around again, after about 2 hours I hit upon something. I saved the base of it and began to stumble around in it. I saved it down as “I Was Saved”… As I kept messing around with the melody and some backdrop textures I kept getting more and more emotional about it. I thought I should rename it as I was Saved From Anger, maybe I was Saved From Rage, I finally named it I dream of Things. There is something about this one. I dream of a day that I can look back on my days of Anger with full awareness I have overcome.
There are only 3 people who REALLY understand what I am delivered from. One of them is Leisha and she knows the most but even at that, she only knows from an outside view. No one knows the depth and breadth of deliverance except me.
From Leisha’s personal journal date Feb 13, 1995
Revealed to me Sept 18, 2014
Less than 1 year after we were married.
Less than 1 year after her mother passed
less than 4 months after our twins died in the hospital on her stomach.
In business together for 1 year and 1 month.
It reads :
Tomorrow is our first Valentines day without mom. Ron & I have no money & Sherry isn’t holding up her end of the bargain. I thought we had made some changes when we talked on New Years Eve. But tonight we are getting into another argument that makes no sense. Ron’s anger intimidates me and that is not right or fair.
When he gets really angry about something trivial I know its because of how hard he is working and the hours he keeps. I also know it is never resolved when I think it is. The other shoe almost always drops.
When he is like this he thinks he does all the work. There is no use trying to talk to him or reason with him. It seems is that all he wants is for me to admit he is right. Tonight I feel I am at my wits end. I don’t know what to do. If I get to the point where I am crying he gets angrier.
The story continues to unfold of Leisha and I journeying out of our past. This week was the most poignant and difficult for me since I asked her for forgiveness in November of 2012. You see we have been seeing Bob Hamp as a counselor most of the summer. It started out as me going to see him after my fathers death to pre-process any potential deep grieving. I was afraid of going off the deep end so to speak…. I finished that end of June, we did our video through Valley Creek which stirred some things up. Leisha has had some things going on in her for near a year and we decided it was her turn to see Bob. She did up until the second week of Sept. Not a lot of sessions but some very meaningful sessions. Then he asked us to begin to meet with him as a couple. On our first session he thought it was best to begin some exercises together and we gladly followed. Know that with what I am about to describe I am still gladly following and so is Leisha. We have complete trust in where Bob is taking us, he knows what is in our hearts for our futures, he made a commitment to me to navigate us through some things albeit I am not sure he knew when he said that he had an “inkling” this week would occur. Maybe he did….just no idea, but he said what he said about navigating, it stirred me deeply and I am going to hold him to it !!!! 🙂
The Pastor couple that started our Church, Keven and Lisa Evans left us behind in a sense a few years ago to start a full time mission ministry in Shanghai China. We attended a yearly dinner gathering the other night, its called Cultivate Leadership Partnership. We have thrown some money their way and I mean thrown as in, ok we should probably do this and at the same time admitting our hearts were not really caught up in it.
They played these videos of testimonies of many people who have crossed Keven’s and Lisa’s way. Two things really really stood out to me.
One the deep depravity of any spiritual awareness. China is hundreds of millions of adults trying to make their way purely on their own senses and know-how, it’s the result of decades of a Communistic Atheist Culture (Thank you Chairman Mao). This is yet another piece of history I have read fairly extensively on so I got that part before but, I had never really seen the results up close.
More than half the testimonies focused on re-stored, healed or at least on-the-way marriage relationships.
I left telling Leisha Chinese are sooooooo different than me in so many other ways except this one thing. A history of a messed up marriage full of tension, frustration, debates, arguments, lack of patience, demandingness. And I did this to myself in a country that has sooo little atheism in reality. But yet, our marriage has been so restored, so redeemed, we have come so far and we are not done yet !!!!
When I look back over the past 3 years I see so much Jesus and the works of the Holy Spirit in both of us, that is in itself proof of this complex, mysterious Trinity we worship and have tried so hard to put as Lord over our lives.
I now want to give so much more just for that one reason, help that cause of restored relationships that were broken just like mine because I applied so much of my silly thinking. I guess you could say I can relate !
All of that hit me hard, it really moved me deeply.
This is Leisha’s and my anthem right now. Several times in the last month I have been on the back porch with her, played this song and just looked into her eyes with tears running down my face.
David Gray “Please Forgive Me”. We are going to the David Gray concert this Friday night and I am going to this concert pretty much to hear this one song live ! (trying to figure out how I am going to get her to look into my eyes as I sing this to her yet again)
I have hidden all of my blog post on my struggle with Anger. I have been made whole in so many ways in regards to this I am letting this part of my old man die… sort of. I can get to the post if need be so I am not deleting them yet but I might as I move forward. Do I have work still left to do, yeah we all do but I am moving on past this.
