For my husband of seven years and me, nothing seemed familiar. Every step was like walking on quicksand. At best, we could see in each other's eyes a glimmer of the person we once vowed "forever" to. But the glimmer wasn't nearly enough.
If I now realized that I didn't know then what I was saying "forever" to, did that count? Or was saying "forever" at the age of 21 God's gift to us before we allowed cynicism to touch our daily shores?
It was Advent. But I felt as if I was walking through the desert, more like Lent.
Inside I was saying, "I give up. I am tired of fighting. I am tired of trying to talk--only to end up in screams, or worse, cold stares. I am tired of lying next to a stranger at night, tired of the loneliness that comes from living in separate worlds under the same roof."
The list of things that brought us here seemed endless some days, short others. If we could point to the one thing that brought us to this point, what would it be? As is often true, the one thing we can point an accusatory finger to is normally only the surface, the symptom, of the actual disease. Was it one act of betrayal? Was it the painful realization that he hated me for ruining his life? Was it the fact that I blamed him for our struggle?
In reality, it really didn't matter. This was our desert. And the sand we threw at each other made it hard to see. The sun of anger made the heat unbearable.
