Five weeks before my due date, God gave a jumpstart of grace. I was reading Genesis 29. I wrote in my journal,
"There is no one with whom I can discuss these traitorous feelings, feelings which haunt me on an almost daily basis. I tried with Eric once. His comments, I feel, served to sever most bonds of trust and friendship between us. It was such a big deal for me to even verbalize these wicked thoughts. To have Eric just blow them off as stupid was...terrible. This has been my biggest struggle these past eight months - and it has been a HUGE struggle, second perhaps only to my despair prior to conversion. My inability to communicate with Eric about it has really driven a wedge between us. Now I feel like our marriage is almost in a hopeless state of despair and apathy. A crappy marriage makes for a bad pregnancy, at least in my case.
AND YET:
- Children are a blessing from God.
- God has given THIS child to ME at THIS time in my life. God does not make mistakes or have timing which is off.
- My ability to love and mother New Baby is not to be a reflection of my relationship with Eric, my own abilities, or how emotionally stable I feel. My ability to love New Baby must instead be in response to God's love for me.
- God loves me! God has promised to sanctify me. God has promised to never leave me or forsake me. God has promised to give me the Holy Spirit in abundance.
SO:
'This time I will praise the Lord.'
God, please supply the grace I need to do so!"
Oh my! If I had words to tell you of how He did! God opened my mouth so that I could talk. (That sounds stupid unless...well, unless you know me as only Eric does.) I talked! We cried. We confessed. We apologized. Eric comforted. Eric loved. Eric asked. I made myself - gut-wrenching though it was - tell him things. I talked! God gave grace. Eric was gracious.
"Lydia, I love you. I don't hate you or think differently about you because you haven't been able to love the baby." What? Grace amazing!
I was pregnant! We were going to have a baby! We talked! God was healing our marriage. And now we had names for the baby.
{Part Three coming soon...}
3 comments:
How beautiful! Is there a greater thing than grace? Wonderful, wonderful story and what a testimony to how a godly marriage can weather the storms! So well written. Thanks for being so open about this- can't wait for part 3!
Katie
Lydia,
God is certainly good! Not having read your blog yet, I was just thinking and thanking God this morning how He has blessed our family through the years. We have seen the results of His gracious acts of kindness in numerous ways that we all know about. Even though Randy and I pray on a daily basis for our family, we may not know of the struggles we are all going through. What is important is that our heavenly Father knows and cares. Sometimes I have had a hard time expressing my love to you as I should. I just want you to know that I love you uncon-ditionally and I'm so thankful for you being my daughter-in-law and the mother to my grandchildren!
I love you and Eric so much! I'm so thankful things like this can draw us closer to Christ and to each other! What wonderful grace!
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