Fighting for love can become your gateway to joy

I'm pretty sure most of you bloggers who visit here has seen this post already.  But for those of you who don't blog there's a good chance that you haven't seen it.  Let me just say that I am so happy to be able to share this particular post with you.

I didn't write this post, though the writer spoke my heart as she so often does.

The reason I've copied and pasted a portion of the article instead of just putting up a link is because I want you to read it.  Many times I've noticed when I simply share a link or video many of you by pass it often times missing out on something that can bless you tremendously.

Ann Voskamp the author of the article writes about her marriage . . . in the beginning years.  I can relate.  What I also relate too though is at times thinking on these questions:

• can I count on you
• are we connected
• do I really matter to you
• will you love
• are you really here for me
• do you really care
• can I depend on you

For me, these questions are sometimes universal—meaning I ask these questions about anyone that I have a close intimate connection to.

***

"Ithink we were standing outside the back door, out by the white pickup under the Big Dipper, when I turned and said it.

Said I hated him.

The dark can make you brave.

Or a fool.

But when you’re twenty-two and think you know everything, panic can tear up your chest like this howl that has to rip free.

“I hate it when you stand there all quiet.”

He kicks the ground with the toe of his boot, drives his hands deep into his Wranglers. Does he hear me at all?

“Hate how you just pull away. Hate how you always think I’m the problem and it’s never you. Hate it, hate it — hate y…”

There. There it is, spewn sick over everything. And the moment that ugliness wrenches free, I feel released — and wretched. Ill.

I want to fling that wedding band encircling my finger and everything. And I want to somehow hold on tight.

I want him to hold me tight.

He turns his back.

How in the world did we get here and so fast and isn’t this the mad dance that drives the wedded wild? For the first two years after our vows, it’s the only dance we knew.

I’d thought I’d married the wrong man.

I don’t know how many meals I ate silent, never lifting my eyes from the plate.

I do know how the dance went: a few steps and we’d rub each other the wrong way, irritation building and intimacy falling apart. I’d discuss and he’d distance. I’d rage and he’d disengage. I’d escalate and he’d escape.

Then the icy silence sets in — all this continental distance between us shifting past each other cold in the kitchen.

He’d say he had a migraine and go to bed right after dinner. I’d cry over the sink with the water running. I didn’t know that the first law of love is to listen — listen to the ache under the anger.

No English teacher ever taught me what nearly 18 years of marriage now gives credence to: Anxiety and anger, they come from the same root word.

Anxiety, it can drive anger.

And an angry voice, it can be a cry of fear.

Fears dress up as anger – why didn’t I tell him that sooner?

To continue reading this post and to see one of my most favorite blogs. A blog that I know will encourage, uplift and give you hope my dear sister's in many, many areas of your life.

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xo, Angela blog subscription  | twitter | facebook