In Retrospect.

The word God gave me for this year was "Tender" and "Truth". What I am writing is part of my healing, and it is TRUTH. I started writing on this blog in February of 2018 in an effort to recover from the most difficult season of my life. Well, a difficult season. There have been a few. December 2016 through January of 2017 topped off what had been a really horrible year. In December of 2015, what I thought was a period, turned into 4 months of continuous heavy bleeding. I did not have medical insurance, and I tried everything I could think of to stop this bleeding. After a lot of prayer, I realized that I had a deep wound from a family member. My ex-husbands younger brother had accused me of having a "Jezebel Spirit", and instead of telling me in person, he and his wife blocked me on facebook and refused to talk to David or I for over a year. This was incredibly painful to me, as I alway felt very close to their family. I spent several months in counseling completely crushed, not knowing why we had been rejected so severely and suddenly. When David confronted his brother, the issue was revealed. I sought spitiual counsel, but deperately felt that I would find some healing in an apology. After Ethan apologized to me, I stopped bleeding within a few hours. I considered this to be a deep spiritual and emotional wound that manifested in the physical realm. In March 30th of 2016, while I was heavily bleeding, David had an affair with a woman at his work. He came home and showered, got in bed with me, I had no idea what had just happened to my marriage. April 26th of 2016, Truett had a grand mal seizure lasting over 45 minutes. It was dismissed as a freak indcident, we were reffered to neuro. May 24th of 2016, David's mother died as the result of a surgical mistake, his family asked us to move out of the home we had been renting from them for several years. We were told this by his father, at the burial. We were given a few days to leave. Everything we owned was tossed into vehicles, trailers and our 5th wheel and hauled out to Beulah, near David's work at Crystal Mountain. June 1st 2016, we move with 3 children into our 5th wheel. David worked 8am to 5pm at Crystal Mountain coordinating weddings and 6pm to 11pm, sometimes later, at Copper Falls Restaurant in Traverse City. We were trying to save enough to fix David's credit and buy a house. In August, I found a 730 square foot house in Cadillac with one bedroom. We bought the house on land contract. I loved that little house! Finally, things would get better! The first night in the new house, Truett had another grand mal seizure, we were refferred to University of Michigan Neuro, and Truett was put on medication. In November, something felt off, like there was something between David and I in our marriage. I asked David to go with me to talk to our pastor and his wife. Nothing came of the meeting. We moved into a larger house in Cadillac, 3 blocks up from our tiny house. David's biological father moved into our tiny house. David tells me he wants another baby now that we are settled, I agree, knowing it usually took me over a year to get pregnant. I consulted with our geneticist at U of M to make sure this was a wise idea based on Truett's gene tests. He had no concerns. Here is where things really took a turn. In December 2016, I had to take Truett to U of M for overnight testing. The weather conditions were horrific, but I needed to get Truett there. He had 3 specialists he needed to see, and he had had another seizure in November. I went off the road 3 times on the way down state, and I got right back on the road. It took over 5 hours to get there. After all the testing was done, the Neurologist came in and sat on the bed. She told me Truett's diagosis. ESES epilepsy, electrical status epilepticus during slow wave sleep.Truett had spike waves in his sleep 88% of the time. In the same breath she also said I needed to get him diagnosed with autism, as he would need an intense amount of support. She asked us to stay another night to trial valium. The valium brought the spike waves down to 30% and we were sent home to see if Truett would improve over time. On the way home, I met Jaxon's mom to bring Jaxon home with me and surprise David for Christmas. A few days later, our van was stolen out of our driveway, leaving us with no car seats and one vehicle. Jaxon shared some details about his life at his mothers house that convinced David that Jaxon needed to stay with us permenantly. He called her and told her she would not be returning him. So our house inherited another child full time. I enrolled Jaxon in school, and we celebrated Christmas. January 1st, I found out I was pregnant with our 3rd child. My sister came to visit us and help me during my first trimester. January 24th, David and I went to our dating scan to see what our due date was, I had calculated it as Sept 4th, 2018, Labor Day. I was 10 weeks, almost in the 12 week safety zone. During the scan, the technician told us that the baby had stopped growing. My body hadn't realized it yet. A doctor was brought in to explain things. I was speechless and shocked. I had been a casket for weeks and thought the entire time that I was pregnant. Worse, David and I hadn't told anyone but my sister. So we had zero support. The thing about keeping the first trimester very private is that the only way you can share that you've had a miscarriage, and need help, is by telling people "I was pregnant, now i am not" right before you were planning to announce the pregnancy. 2017 was supposed to be better. We had a house, Truett had a diagnosis. I was pregnant. Not so fast. When we left the obgyn office, I asked David to take me to church. Our pastor prayed with us. I went home to tell my sister the news, David went to work. I spent the afternoon putting all my maternity clothing back in storage. The next day a had told a few friends and they said I should come to church for the evening service. Baby hadn't passed yet, and I knew I was going to need some strength to get through that part. David and I went to my dad's work at to tell him the news, and have him tell my mother. They didn't know I was pregnant. During the evening service, David felt compelled to tell me about the affair he had committed a year previous. He explained it as God "made" him tell me. So we left church, so he could confess in privacy. In detail, I heard of what occured on an evening in March 2016 while I was at home, doing dishes, laundry, nursing Pearl, putting the boys to bed. I was being violated, and I had no idea. I remember it was so bitter cold that night as we drove home from church. I had never felt so weak and taken advantage of. My body fooled me, my husband fooled me. I was just a vessel. I asked David to stay out of the house, I went inside (I was worried my sister would try to kill him). David went to the store, came back and stood in the front yard, with a bouquet of tulips. I took them and looked at him in the moonlight. I said "I forgive you". He left, and I went inside and took a pill to make me pass the pregnancy. The next morning, I passed what would have been our 3rd child, alone, in our bathroom. My sister brought me a box so I could bury this tiny tiny person, and say goodbye. Minutes later, David pulled in the driveway to take me to meet with our pastor...again. Our pastor was kind and loving, but he even seemed like he was at a loss as to how this should be handled. He recommended more specialized and professional help. David left for work and I went to mom's group. How I did all of this, I do not know. I honestly think I was in a state of shock. Disbelief, disconnect and disassociation. That night David came to the house and dug a hole in the frozen ground. We placed the box and the bouquet of tulips in the hole, covered it with dirt, and said goodbye. David left and I went inside to bed. I cried begged God to show my why on Earth all of this happened to me. The next day, David shared that in addition to thee affair, he had used drugs many times and had driven home from work drunk and high many times. He also told me that he had been to a strip club with his co-workers several times when I thought he was at work. He told me that when he had teeth removed a few years before, he got addictive pain killers, when we agreed he would not (due to his history with drugs and addiction). A few days later, my sister left, and we consulted with the pastor who married us. His advice to me was simple, do not allow David to move back into the house until we had worked through this. David was staying with is brother at this time. He would come to the house to help put the kids to bed and get the boys to school in the morning. We tried to talk about things, I hoped that the mountain between us was gone and we would finally have an intimacy in our marriage that we never had. I tried to heal, very much alone. Having a miscarriage was a forgotten thing. We barely discussed it and most of the focus went to our marriage and what David had done. I shoved down all my feelings about losing our baby, healing physcially and emotionally from what my brain and body had just been through just didn't feel like an option. I prioritized David, our living children, and our marriage. In May, tulips grew over the baby's grave. David had decided he was a boy, and we named him Jedadiah. Two weeks later, February 12th, is what I would mark as the day everything went back to normal. I went to the doctor and my hcg levels were back to normal, my body no longer thought I was pregnant. David took me out for Valentine's Day. When I went to drop him off at his brothers, all of his things had been bagged up and set by the door. His brother had decided to confess his own infidelity to his wife (apparently inspired by David's confession), and they wanted space to work through it. So David and his bagged possessions came back to our home. I told him this was not what we agreed on and he needed to move into our tiny house with his dad. His dad hadn't paid rent once since he moved in, so I felt it was fair for David to stay there. He simply said no. Just as the pastor had warned, life went back to normal, and I didn't put up a fight. I again felt very taken advantage of and unhealed. Life took over, Truett was officially diagnosed with autism and daily therapy began. Jaxon was struggling with the transition into our home from his mom's, and I needed to be present for everyone. Meals, laundry and homework were my responsibility and I continued in counseling, but simply accepted defeat and sadness. What and island I was on, I was certain no one had ever been in my shoes before. I did share with a few friends, who mostly responded with "WOW". What could anyone really say? I felt I needed space to heal, David rejected that request. My hands were tied. David and I went to professional counseling for a few months, which did not help at all. David began to say things like "well, you were bleeding at the time {that the affair took place}". I started to feel blamed for what happened, and a root of bitterness formed.Even personal counseling wasn't helping, my counselor was even speechless as to how to start unraveling things. Now things felt like they had before, but worse, and compounded by the struggles within our home (Truett's disability, evicting David's dad, replacing our stolen van). Now there was something else between us, my bitterness, anger and resentment toward David, no only for taking advantage of me, but letting everything go back to the way it was. I removed my emotions from our relationship, and began to function for survival and duty only. I felt a major opportunity was missed. My day to day life became incredibly hard as Truett's medical problems and behavior became more complex and difficult. I learned to detach my emotions from people and events. This was something that I had done before I met David, but did not plan on practicing or experiencing in our marriage. I fought against it for years, but in 2016 and 2017, it settled in for good. In 2018 we moved to Bremer street and I was pregnant with Harper. During this time there were several incidents where David would drink secretly or drink too much and try to drink. I told David several times that I wanted to separate, expressing that I felt a divorce was something I was seriously considering. He would remind me that I had no money, no income, no vehicle in my name and no where to go. He was right. My family and faith community all continued to encourage me to pray for him and stay with him. Throughout this entire time, I prayed every day for our marriage, for David, and that I would feel some kind of love for him again. In my heart I didn't feel like he loved me at any point in our marriage. Even his major gestures were void of real change or intimacy. Things would seem like they were the start of a change, and they were not. It was heartbreaking to me. In 2020, we found our house in Manton. In letters we wrote and emailed to each other, we had bother stated that we didn't feel much for each other anymore and we should get moved into the Manton house "for the kids". I will never forget, David stated that he loved me at "max capacity" and he couldn't love me any more than he already did. Off we went to Manton, hauling all our "stuff" and baggage with us. Covid took the nation by storm only a few days after we closed on our house. While David was laid off, we did projects together and both of us remarked that we didn't fight one time. I think this was because we spent time together working and planning our life. Something we hadn't gotten around to much in the years previous, as we were always dealing with major events and traumas. In the short time we had been married, David lost both of his mothers, my parents moved out of state, we moved several times. We had 3 children, financial issues, health issues. There were so many buried layers of hurt and disappointment, for me at least. At the Bremer house, I was drowning in housework, Truett was constantly destroying things in our house (with a smile on his face, God bless him lol), I had severe post partum depression, and I could barely keep up with life in general. I tried to do what I could, be involved at church, womens groups, worship, read christian books, journal, ask for prayer, seek personal mentorship. The issue was between David and I, and it was never addressed properly. By the Fall of 2020, I had caught some stride in life, I had raised some livestock on our property, harvested apples and berries, and done a significant amount of design work inside the house. I started losing weight and feeling good about myself. After a very long break from church due to covid, David decided we should start going to church at Revival Center. David got involved in everything he could. David and his brother (mentioned a few times in this post), started doing outreach in the local area and having Bible studies. David was home about 3 nights a week. This left me at home alone to raise handle the kids and all the chores by myself. I would serve dinner when Truett got home, get the kids ready for bed, put them to bed, do all the outdoor chores (feed animals, get eggs, replentish bedding, fill water dishes), then I would come inside and clean up after dinner and do laundry. I would start my routine by watching Tucker Carlson and doing dishes and floors at 8pm and I got downstairs to fold laundry around 10pm, heading to bed at midnight, usually later. David would come home from whatever he was doing, and go to bed. Many times Truett would not fall asleep until long after midnight. I would watch him on the monitor until he fell asleep. Pearl had night terrors around this time, and Harper was still little and woke up from time to time. I always got up with them by myself. I was exhausted and very very angry. David would say "love you" before he left to go places and I went from not returning the empty sentiment, to just saying "no, you don't". It didn't phase him at all. I will state this, I began filling my life with objects shortly after David confessed to the affair. I started hoarding books, animals, clothing, and shoes. I couldn't be in a room that didn't have a tv or music going. I constantly had to have something filling the air and space around me. I felt so empty, I started filling my life with things that I could obtain and control. By the time we moved to Manton, David was making enough money that I could spend pretty leisurely with little consequence. I was so mad at David that I told myself that if we had financial issues from my spending, David could figure it out. He messed me up and he could pay the consequences. December of 2020, I had mentally and emotionally separated myself from David and I tried to "live my life" without him. It wasn't hard because he was never around. I had my DVR shows, my animals, 3 good friends, and I was really losing weight. I was constantly tossing clothing in a pile for goodwill and fitting back into clothes I had held onto for years after I had my kids. David and I went to bed at different times and watched tv in seperate rooms. We talked casual like friends when we did talk.