Anyhow, Sunday came and I woke up slowly with a tremendous sadness beginning to press down on me. I had a dream that was extravagant and full of joy, yet when I woke up I realized that I was still in a depressing situation in my own life. I crashed mentally and emotionally and instantly I began to feel angry and bitter. I don't want to share many details so let's just say the word, GRUELING comes to mind! I'm sure in future blogs I may write a bit more detail so as to give more context but right now just trust me that I have been brought to my personal limits and beyond. My husband was next to me in bed and I started crying...it felt like deep dark waters flowing through a dank cave. As I began to share what I was feeling, I could see his face drain of the simple joy he was feeling, thinking it was going to be a simple day of just being together.
Our lives have been squeezed by uninvited circumstances and the trials have been like waves crashing over us repeatedly. I remember one time when swimming in the ocean, I got caught in a current that kept pulling me down. Every time I tried to swim to shore the currents grip was relentless and each wave that came just crashed over me and kept pulling me back until I was unable to fight it anymore. Thank God my friend Daniel was about fifteen feet from me and as I screamed his name before I went under again, he heard me and within a minute I felt his arms reach for me and he pulled me to shore. That's how I've been feeling for a long time now. As I shared with my husband how I was feeling, I could sense a wave of bitterness crashing over me. He looked so helpless and I could see that each word I spoke was taking him down too.
He had to leave a while later to take care of several errands due to the fact that his 87 year old mother is in a nursing home trying to recover her strength after having pneumonia on top of her COPD. He took his brother Kevin with him who is handicapped and living with us. Brian (my husband), had to do a litany of things for his mom and on top of it, she is not a happy person! It is a grueling job to try to help her because she makes everything miserable and negative! She is like a strong under-tow that pulls you down. It was five years ago when she moved into our home and brought all that with her! Thankfully, she now has an apartment at an independent living complex but Brian still has to deal with her daily and it's brutal! We both understand her frustrations and fears but she won't let anyone comfort her and she never sees anything in a positive light. So, off he went, carrying his own dismay at the day that was ahead, and I, home alone, doing projects and thinking about the mornings events.
When life becomes so overwhelming, we tend to focus on our own pain and lose sight of our partners feelings. I experienced a paradigm shift in my thinking and I am so thankful that God enlightened my mind with some fresh truths! I finally realized that Brian and I are both feeling downcast and overwhelmed and it's not just me that was suffering. I, as a woman, can't help but "feel" everything that happens and I HAVE TO TALK IT OUT WITH SOMEONE. My husband, as a man, feels all those same things but DOESN'T need to talk about it. I saw things so differently for the first time and I texted my husband these words, "I'm sorry. We're both suffering. I love you." In less than a minute he responded, "I love you, thank you." When he got home I had had a long time to think about life from his perspective, so I purposed it in my heart to love on him more with acts of service, which is his love language.
The book, The Five Love Languages, has been a tremendous blessing to me and to the many I have shared it's wisdom with! Dr. Gary Chapman has narrowed our love languages down to five specific categories, Acts of Service, Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Receiving Gifts and Physical Touch. Brian's is acts of service, therefore, he says, I love you, by doing things for people. Give him a list and off he goes! It is very hard to love someone by speaking "their" love language because we all want to love using our own language. Simply because, it's easier and we also like to use it as a teaching tool to show others how "we" want to be loved! I'll use Brian and I as examples, My L.L.(Love Language), is Quality time and Brian's as I said, is Acts of service. I loooove when I can spend one on one time with anyone! One of my favorite things is to have someone here in the morning so I can sit over coffee and just talk and listen! Brian hates that, and what he loves to do in the morning is to make a list and go knock it off. He will show up back at home and show me the list with each item crossed out and say, "Look! I did blah blah and blah blah and got blah done and dropped off blah..." and all he wants is for me to smile and say, "Thank you, you're a blessing!" By doing all that stuff (acts of service), Brian is telling me, "Look how much I love you!" On the other hand, my way of saying, "I love you" is to devote time to sit, listen and be with him like at dinner time. Chatting across the table is not Bri's strong suit and by the time he's done with his day, he's ready to crash and go silent. I prefer to share and help by being there for people on a one on one level. I'm more comfortable in an intimate situation. He's a server and an emotional avoidant, whereas, I'm an intimate person and a persuant. Do you see? He avoids, I pursue. I need intimacy, he needs a list. Sure it's enjoyable to have someone serve you constantly but behind all that serving, is there a person who's intimidated by intimacy? I, on the other hand don't like to say, I love you by doing chores. We don't enjoy speaking the other persons L.L. but in order for a relationship to thrive we have to have not only a teachable heart but a servants heart.
So, to understand this full circle, the way I need to love Brian is with acts of service, in order for him to hear "his" L.L.! So, making him dinner, doing the laundry, picking the veggies from the garden...are all big "I love yous" to Brian! On the other hand, as much as he doesn't care for taking dips into the emotional pond, he'll sit and listen to me when I need an ear, comfort me with hugs, he even keeps the lights on when we get in bed so I can see his eyes as we talk (he can talk in the dark, I need to see his eyes), and he learned to ask me, "How can I help you right now?" which gives him an act to do and I still get the talk time.Whatever your L.L. is, especially in regards to marriage, a great lesson learned is that you can't train your spouse to love you by speaking in your language, you have to speak to them in theirs for them to understand how you need to be loved.
So, as our day came to a close, I realized that neither of us were feeling loved or safe during these tumultuous times in our lives because sometimes when fear and fatigue take over, we begin to mumble in a language that no other person can understand, only God. I've learned to step back, and now, think of the other person before I try to go have a pity party for myself. 2nd Corinthians 6:10 reads, "Sorrowful yet always rejoicing!" That scripture makes more sense to me now and I'm sure that as I run the last miles of this life, that God will keep revealing deeper truths to me. Not just to give "me" more peace, but to bring peace to those around me too! I'm finding that the circumstances that I thought were so crushing, only appeared that way because I was only seeing "me" in them! Jesus doesn't usually pull us out of our situations but actually enters into them to guide us through to a wiser realm. I'm not only blessed with a Savior that will never leave me but God gave me a husband that cared enough to learn my love language! I just have to respect his attention span and not go on and on till his ear bleeds :) Neither of us are ideal, but I wouldn't trade him and he hasn't traded me yet, so I'm rejoicing! Even though our situations remains the same, our hearts keep learning and growing and that's really all that matters. That night after we put all those problems to rest, I leaned over and whispered in my husband's ear, "We're in it together, not separately." He gave me a tight squeeze and held on longer than usual :)
James 1:2-3, "Consider it pure joy, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything! This weekend I learned that loving and understanding your spouse from their perspective frees them up to feel safe and all kinds of love comes back to bless you! Speak without being offensive, act without being defensive :)
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