Another Life Changed

I can’t speak for my husband but he did comment on the extreme change I went through. Something along the lines of “what in the world happened to my wife?”. His coming to my baptism meant the world to me and our son enjoyed it too because he asked if Daddy was going to keep coming with us. After telling him this, my husband agreed that he’d come give this church thing a try, for us.

My husband has his demons. My take is that he spent a good part of his life looking for wholeness or escape in the wrong things. Nothing too horrible mind you, I wouldn’t have dated him if he was a raging drug addict or anything. My family went through enough of that with my brother, I learned to stay far away from all of that business. My husband did have a tendency to overindulge and deals with anger issues. He’s a terrific man but he’s broken just like we all are if we’re honest about ourselves. There were times I thought our marriage wouldn’t make it but God knew what he was doing when he put two of the most stubborn, obstinate people together. Neither of us was willing to give up and I am so thankful for that.

So anyway, December 2015, my husband went out for drinks with a friend and as would happen at times (much less often than his younger days, in his defense), he got wrapped up in having fun with his buddies and stopped paying attention to his intake. It was obvious when he got home because he acts like a super annoying goofball. I like to take advantage of his weakened state by making him listen to music I enjoy. Might as well get something out of it right? My husband continued to drink at home which I was kinda giving him side-eye about. We were playing around and dancing while youtube-ing music videos. Our son wanted to play and rough house so they were enjoying some bonding time but when you are drunk you aren’t as aware of what you are doing and they played a little too hard and our son got hurt. Nothing bad, but enough to knock the wind out of him and make him cry. It was really like the air had been sucked out of the room as well. I got angry and chastised him for not paying attention and pointed out the role alcohol had played in the incident.

We calmed it down, moved to listening to Christmas music and I got our son ready for bed. I noticed that ever since the rough house moment my husband was just sitting on the couch, head in his hands. I wasn’t sure what to think but I asked if he’d be okay til I got our son tucked into bed and he said he would be. While lying in our son’s room I could hear him replay some of the more religious Christmas songs, “O Holy Night” and “Do You Hear What I Hear” I believe were the ones. When I came out, he was still sitting the same way, hadn’t moved at all that I could tell but he had tears coming down his face. This is something that NEVER happens so I will admit to feeling a tad freaked out but I went and put my arms around him to try and find out what was going on. He didn’t really have the words, best he could say was he was having a “crisis of faith except crisis wasn’t the right word”. For some reason, it started to click with me a bit and I asked “Are you finding yourself somewhere you never thought you’d be (Faith-wise)?” And he said “Yes”. It was that night, following what turned out to be a wakeup call and listening to that music that the Holy Spirit came to my husband and he opened his heart to Jesus.

Later, he said “You know they say you don’t find Jesus at the bottom of a bottle but that’s exactly what happened.”

Jesus will come to us through our weakness, He will use that to make us new and show us just how desperately we truly do need Him. He knows our biggest weaknesses and shows us the way out.

- But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  2 Corinthians 12:9