Reality...

...it's not that I haven't been honest on my blog over these past months, or years, I'm not really sure how long I've been blogging.....but the things I blog about are true and real and from my heart....it's that there are subjects and circumstances that I just avoid bringing to my blog. I'm not sure why....maybe it's out of a sense of privacy, or respect, or maybe it's me hiding behind a facade that I have it all together. This morning I'm here to say...I soooo don't have it all together.

Things feel like they are coming apart at the seams....and I think maybe they are.

Here's the reality of what I am struggling with right now. One thing is my marriage and one is my job.

My marriage....I met Vern in 2001 after (during, really) a very difficult divorce. I had been in a mariage for nine years with a man I met in church, I served with in church and who, on the surface, everyone thought was a good, solid Christian man. The man I went to church with was not the man I lived with. And in all honesty....the woman he went to church with was not the woman he lived with. I didn't know how to respond to the issues between us with anything other than anger...so our home was a war zone. We fought it out and hung in for nine years, wounding each other more and more deeply as the years went on. And, I might add, wounding my sons with the anger, stress and tension that hung thick in the air in our home. I ended up on the psychiatrist's couch and on three different antidepressants to begin to lift the fog of despair and hopelessness that had engulfed my very being when that marriage finally ended.

It was during this time that I met Vern. There was a sweetness about him that drew me to him immediately. I was disillusioned with God, and Christianity , and church......and I clung to Vern like a port in a storm even though he wasn't a Christian and didn't even believe in God. We were inseparable from the beginning and fell head over heels in love...well at least that's what I thought. When I married him I did it in virtual secrecy so that I wouldn't have to listen to the warnings and cautions of my friends.

So anyway...fast forward to now. We have been married amost five years. We don't really fight much. But we don't talk really either. We live together separately. There is no companionship...unless we are out doing something. I will say that....Vern is a great companion to go someplace with. But as soon as we get in the door at home, all companionship ends. The television comes on and I am once again completely ignored. There is no affection and we are celibate.

I have begged and cried and gotten angry over it...all to no avail. I have tried to be a better wife so that I am not somehow pushing him away....but I am finally realizing that I am not the cause of Vern being unable or unwilling to love me.

I know that there are wives who live in these loveless marriages for years on end and they do it with grace and peace and contentment...but that's not me. As hard as I have tried to convince myself that I can be completely fulfilled in the Lord...it's not happening. There is a hole on my heart that grows a bit larger with each passing week. I am struggling so hard to try and avoid having that hole fill itself up with biterness and resentment....and I seem to be failing at it.

So all of that is leading up to this...I told Vern this weekend that we either get some counseling and BOTH try to build a solid marriage...or I am filing for divorce.
I realize that's harsh and possibly even sinful...but I am done being married all by myself.

And I am frightened and feeling oh so very vulnerable right now..that's the reality of it.