Mood Swings

Man, I feel like I am going through some weird hormonal crap right now. I don’t think I usually have what you would call mood swings or anything. I’m usually pretty calm and even keeled. I think I still am on the outside though for the most part, or so people say. I’ve been told that I need to start expressing how I feel more, I guess I’m kind of weirding people out with how calm I am. I’m not calm though, inside I feel like my heart and stomach are constantly flipping around and my head is just a whirlwind of thoughts. I just feel this ever worsening tightness in my chest and clammy feeling on my skin. Everyday it feels like the world is closing in on me and I feel this overwhelming need to just run away.

I think I struggle with expressing this because I couldn’t express my feelings for the past 6 or 7 years. When this first started happening, I quietly cried myself to sleep for like 2 years. Sometimes I would wish that he would hear me and ask what was wrong but he never did. Then it got so bad that I was just crying whenever and he just ignored it, never asked what was wrong unless he was asking if I was just drunk again. Finally I learned that crying was a waste of my time and all it did was make him mad when he did notice, so I stopped. Eventually it got to the point where I was only crying when he would get me so angry that I couldn’t take it or when I knew I was completely alone, but it was very rare for me to cry.

I’ve had to completely control every emotion that now I don’t know how to let it all out. Then I end up balling my eyes out at inopportune times, usually when I get tired. I think I am learning how to let it out a little though. Pretty much anytime I feel the presence of God in a strong way, I end up crying like a baby. Still though, when I get around my husband, I feel myself put up the walls and close off my emotions again. It’s like I start to make progress on letting out some emotions and then the second I see him, I backtrack all that progress. It’s driving me crazy because I thought I had this figured out. I felt that this was coming to an end and that I could take a deep breath soon.

My anxiety was on high alert last week, everyday I felt like it was getting worse. I fasted for a few days trying to prepare a little for what I felt was coming. I wasn’t asking God for an answer anymore, just strength to deal. I ended up finding out how to give everything to God. It was something that I was having a lot of trouble with because I didn’t know how to do that. I kind of thought that it was a passive thing, that he would just take all the pain away. Turns out it’s actually a very active thing- every time a bad, anxious, overwhelming thought comes into my head, I literally tell God that I’m giving that thought to Him. I’m giving Him power over every second of my life instead of just once a week or once a day.

Before, I was getting mad at myself for feeling this way because I thought I was disgracing God every time I had a negative thought. I’ve learned though that I can be broken, that I can be overwhelmed, that I can be a shattered person and God still loves me. I just have to give every thought to Him and let Him take care of it and trust that He will. Being broken is ok, it just means that we get to be completely rebuilt by God and made awesome. Rebuilding takes time though and it takes dealing with the pain of getting rid of your old self, it takes failing and trying again, falling and getting back up, and most of all, it takes trusting that God will make something amazing out of you if you just let Him.

Remember that part where I had to control every emotion though? I’m used to having myself completely controlled on top of being controlled by my husband. Just trusting God and giving Him control is extremely hard to do. I have like zero trust in people these days and that is something that’s going to take a very long time to get over but I am learning how to trust God, at least a little. I say that because I think He’s asking me to go out on a limb here pretty soon.

I do want a divorce but that thought scares the ever living crap out of me. I have no idea what my husband will do when I tell him that I am divorcing him. When I don’t give him another option. I am worried that I will see a part of him that I’ve never seen before. I’m also worried that I’ll live with regret for the rest of my life. That I never gave him another chance and maybe he was actually trying to change. That I just threw away everything that I had worked for, a marriage, a nice house, my finances, everything. That the stress of uprooting everything will lead to the quickened death of two of my very old dogs. That I won’t be able to find a place to keep all my dogs or that I will, and one of them will get out and run away. There is so much that I am so scared of when I think of actually leaving my husband at this point. However, if I go back, I risk something way worse which is my sanity, my freedom, and my relationship with God.

When I was driving to go see my husband this weekend, I was think of that story in the Bible where God delivered the Israelis from slavery and brought them to the promise land but they were too afraid of the giants that lived there and wouldn’t fight for it. So instead God caused them to wander the wilderness for a time in attempts to change their hearts and minds. They wouldn’t do it though, they wouldn’t break out of that slave like mentality and take their promised land. So they wandered the desert for like 40 years and I think everyone who was over 20 when they first saw the promise land died while wandering the desert. You’ll have to look it up, I’m going off a sermon that I heard the other day and a Veggie Tales episode I saw a long time ago.

Anyways, I have been mulling over this story for a while because I want the promise land, I don’t want to be too afraid and miss my chance. Now I know that now days the promise land isn’t all milk and honey, but it’s freedom and it’s a true relationship with God. So I was thinking of this and all of a sudden a thought came into my head and I just heard “I already showed you the promise land, what are you waiting on?”. It was like I found the missing piece of a puzzle and all of a sudden it all clicked into place and made sense. All of a sudden I was just crying and I couldn’t stop, I finally let all of my emotions out and it was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I knew at that moment that I needed to end this relationship, that I was living with a slave mentality and I needed to take a hold of the freedom that I had and take back my life.

I had been waiting on God to give me something, just anything and I finally got it. I finally listened and I got it. So you would think with this kind of revelation, I would have gone strait to my husbands house and told him this was over…. but I didn’t!

I got there and let him talk me down again! I finally got an answer and I ignored it. He was so smooth talking, he was going to fix this, he’s hurt me and I deserve better and now he’s going to give me what I’ve always wanted- a loving and attentive husband. He’ll go to therapy for as long as it takes, we’ll build a new relationship, we can rebuild each other and I just have to trust him one last time. I argued and tried to explain why I can’t trust him and he had something smooth to say every single time. By the end of it, I was just tired and I wanted to leave. My brain was foggy the entire time but at one point, the word promise land jumped into my head clear as day and I ignored that also. I left feeling defeated, confused and exhausted.

The next day at church though, I went up for prayer near the end of the service. I hadn’t talked to anyone about this so I just said I needed help. The pastor prayed over me and said that I am not my husbands savior. That God does not want me to save him, that my husband is in God’s hands now and all I can do is be loving and give him to God. That I’m not a slave to him anymore, that God is breaking the chain. I felt the walls I had put up the previous night, break down again and I unfortunately cried my eyes out in front of everyone.

God wants us to get to the promise land, He wants us to listen to Him so we can taste true freedom. He wants to show us what He has in store for us but we have to trust Him. I never knew how hard that would be though to put everything on the line and trust Him completely.

So now, my husband is pressuring me so hard to come back, he’s using everything that he has to break me down and get me back. I feel like my judgement is completely blurred now. I often wonder if I’m being paranoid and he really just wants me home because he is changing. Deep down though, I know what I heard and felt this weekend was true and I am going to have to make the decision real soon to either listen to God or listen to my husband. Obviously, I want to listen to God but our minds have a funny way of deceiving us. Stay tuned…