Fear of Abandonment, Continued...

My second-to-last post about Fear of Abandonment was widely read (at least for my stuff), resonating strongly with many of you, and empowering a few.  So, I wanted to check in with you and update you on me.  If you're still standing in it, swimming in it, or sinking in it, I just wanted to let you know that you're not standing, swimming, or sinking alone.  'Cause I am, too.   

It's been a rough couple of weeks.  I could give you a thorough account of the few steps forward and the many steps back, but I want this to be fruitful for us, so I'm fastforwarding.  The latest development for me is a counseling appointment scheduled for next week.  First ever.  I am feeling excited, mad, hopeful, hopeless, and humbled about this.  

Recently, my husband recommended we "table" conversation on this issue.  It didn't feel great at the time, but since then I realized that "tabling" something can be progress.  The verb "table" means "to postpone the consderation of".  When two people are coming from two different places and speaking two different languages about a subject they disagree on, it is nigh impossible to feel like you're accomplishing anything, but insanity. 

In chess, I would call it a stalemate.  No winner.  New game.  If only.  

But, it's not chess.  It's my life and my marriage.  It feels like I'm standing inside the door of my heart and home, with my hand on the doorknob, and tennis shoes on my feet.  Despair is standing on the welcome mat on the other side, peering through the window, waiting to be invited in.  And I want to run.  

Physically, I hate running.  I abhor it.  But, emotionally, I feel like I could run forever. 

I just read "Understanding the Las Vegas Killer", and was intrigued when it said, "He once owned 27 residences in four states...".  And I realized he was a "runner", too.   If I actually ran when I wanted to run, and had money to buy actual places to run to, I shudder to think how disconnected I could be from life in one place and from the people who live there.  Blech.

This is why "tabling" is a good thing.  You can't table something, if you don't come back to discuss it.  It doesn't allow for one-way tickets.  It implies taking more time to work at something that isn't working.  

We love to say "Timing is everything."  If that is true, and I think it is mostly true, in that it is critically important, we need time.  A continuation of time.  Not five minutes, not two weeks, but as much time as it takes to get back to good.  And this is one of the many places my husband is better than I am.  He is good at being a grown-up, and being where he's supposed to be, and doing what he's supposed to do, while I'm listening to a broken record that no one else can hear, and wondering where can I run to?  

So, I think of all of the couples I've met who have been married over fifty years and how many of them say none of their married years could be described as easy.  And I think of one woman, in particular.  She was married to an alchoholic for sixty years.  When I asked her how many of those years she would consider good, she said, "The last ten."  Her husband finally stopped drinking when his grandchildren came on scene.  She and her children learned how to love him in those last ten years, which was a real blessing, because it meant they could miss him when he died.  And they do. 

So, in this case, and in mine, and maybe in yours, it is good that "Nothing stays the same." 

May God and time and change be with us, and may no one sell us a one-way ticket.  Amen.