Amanda-Leigh and Strength

My husband received his ninety day chip in Celebrated Recovery last night. This was no small accomplishment for him. Being ninety days free of adult pornography may make some readers have mixed emotions. This is also natural for a wife. There have been times when I have been angry at my husband for having to leave me on Sunday nights for a recovery group and then a twelve step group on Thursday. This is when I feel cheated and robbed of having the man I believed in at home with me. When I feel this way, I don’t tell the world how disappointed I feel. I get worried about being a selfish person or having mud thrown in my face about marrying into this conflict.

Despite having these feelings, I am very proud of my husband. Growing up in New York, my husband’s father abandoned him as a small child and his mother passed away when he was five years old. My husband did not have an active positive male role model in his life. My husband does have an uncle, but he beat him up for eating a batch of pancakes when he was starving as a child. I do not believe this uncle was a positive influence on my husband. My husband has long since forgiven this uncle. I still have hurt feelings over the situation and don’t really see things the way my husband does. I do not like to think of any person laying a hand on my husband except an encouraging pat on the back.

Yesterday morning, my husband and I listened to the traditional service of our local First United Methodist Church on the radio. The sermon from Pastor Mike was about his early days of seminary. He spoke of remembering an elderly lady who looked after the students. She baked homemade cookies for him to share with his sweetheart. This woman’s presence helped several young college students who may have been home sick. Semesters passed and the Pastor returned to campus. This elderly woman was nowhere to be found.

The woman’s sudden death was announced by the college. She had passed away after suffering from a stroke. The funeral information was then announced. At the funeral, a completely different image overshadowed the friendly elderly woman these college students had come to know. In her early years, she drank, and had a child she neglected. The child was taken from her. After a few years, the woman turned her life around. She began to see the world through the eyes of a mature adult. She turned to Christ. Granted, this did not make amends for the woman she had been. She did not get her child back nor did she have the happy ending of being a good mother. She did, however, set a positive example for young college students who needed nourishment with their emotional needs. As an elderly woman, this woman became a surrogate mother to college students who were hungry for knowledge and inspiration.

The Pastor spoke about being disappointed in the past being brought up on this woman’s early life. Why was this information necessary for a funeral? Why should these impressionable young college student be made aware of the woman being abusive to her child along with self-destructive? Perhaps the minister felt the desire to teach about a woman who experienced hardships in order to become the woman these students knew in later years. Part of a clergy’s role is to comfort those who suffer. If these college students knew this sweet elderly woman did not lead such a romantic life the students imagined, she would seem more real. In this particular situation, the larger than life image of a grandmother figure was shot by the grim arrow of Cupid’s realism. The minister probably wanted these students to realize that not every elderly person lived the American dream of being married and raising children in cozy suburban housing areas known as Levittown.

One thing I love about my husband is his Eye of the Tiger attitude. Recently, my husband’s medication has been acting up again. He has to go to the doctor today to speak on a telecom screen. I am praying something can be worked out. I would like to see my husband be stable and live the life God has for him. I do not know what living with a mental illness must be like for him. I am sure things are not easy. When we watched the news weeks and months ago, almost every act of deviance was blamed on a person with mental illness. A mental illness must have made the person behave so terrible. After awhile, this began to affect me as well. Great, strong men like my husband really do not have a fair chance in this world. There are too many negative stigmas about the illness instead of the person.

The person and the addiction can be compared in this light as well. This morning, I woke up to read where former country singer Mindy McCready died of an apparent suicide. Yesterday morning I woke up to cheery church bells ringing in the valley. This morning I woke to read about a thirty-seven year old mother of two small children committing suicide. The article featured McCready's troubles with verbally abusing her son, battling with prescription drugs, and alcoholism. No recovery worked for this woman. She did not come to terms with her self-destructive ways. This leaves other people with the difficult task of trying to explain to her small children why she committed suicide and abandoned them. My heartfelt prayers go out to the family, friends, and fellow fans of Mindy McCready. I enjoyed listening to her music when I was in my twenties. I find myself that McCready's life did not change in order for another young person to testify about years later. I believe this woman could have changed her life around, attended a trade school or college, worked, devoted her life to great causes, or anything positive. I believe this woman could have moved mountains if she had chosen that path. 

 As much as I try to understand why a person commits suicide, I am unable to. I am like the child in Maxine Neely Davenport’s story Saturday Matinee. In the story, a small child wants an answer why her father shot himself and dies. She asks her grandmother, who was his mother. The grandmother becomes upset by her granddaughter’s persistent questions and reaches the point of breaking. The best answer the grandmother can find is that her son was not made for the world. The mother side shone above realism. I do find this beautiful and I still get teary-eyed when reflecting on this relationship.

I am able to sacrifice nights my husband leaves for Celebrated Recovery. This is the time my husband spends reaching out to fellow men who are experiencing problems. My husband has built positive friendships and received spiritual guidance. My husband has friends to call when he is weak. My husband has more hope than he did. My husband prays for those he loves and cares about. My husband and I are closer now than we were in early November. I am able to trust my husband more today than I did at the time. This is an area I still am working on, and my husband realizes this. Nothing great happens overnight. Small steps are actually big ones for me when dealing with my own recovery. We are getting there. We don’t need Dorothy’s red shoes anymore to take us into a fantasy. I have realized that reality is not so bad as time passes.

I close this morning with Psalms 23. Please take comfort in these words the way I do  I look forward to writing again on Wednesday morning. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon to see about a lump inside my stomach. I am a little nervous but the Bible says a person should not worry. I try not to. God will be by my side. This I know. Be careful outside today. Please continue to be strong men and women. Perhaps somebody else can be greatly inspired by your strength.

"The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

  He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,

  he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right path
    for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me; 

your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows. 

 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever" - Psalms 23 - NIV

The Power of an Imagination

Everything seems to be going better in my home. After having a headache last night, I feel better this morning. I was able to communicate how my husband’s constant obsessive worrying about medicine affected me. When my husband worries, I feel stressed out. This has been happening since we went out to eat on January twenty-third, the anniversary of my last battle with a blood clot.

Over the past few months, my husband has been taking a sleeping medicine known as Klonopin. Recently in my husband’s recovery group, a man joined for his addiction to Klonopin. My husband described the man as having bruises on his face because of fights. The man’s wife left him because of his verbal abuse. This woke my husband up. My husband was heading down the same path with me.

Since being off of Phentermine, my husband has been a bit obsessed with my recovery. He blames himself for blowing me up last year with food. Things did get worse in my marriage since the twenty-third. I told my husband to call his doctor or we were going to part ways. I was feeling stressed out, moody, agitated, and not wanting to be at home much. Since the temperatures outside were low, I could not go outside.

One afternoon – I believe Friday – my husband called one of his friends in recovery to discuss his behavior towards me. The man told my husband to concentrate on his own recovery and let me deal with mine. There have only been one or two times my husband has gotten out of line since this talk. Each time since, I have put my husband in his place.

Yesterday was a prime example. My husband had an eye appointment. When my husband is alone, he has a tendency to dwell on the negatives of everything. This is part of his mental illness. My husband was worried about his liquid Trileptal would be switched to the pill form and approved by his insurance. He was worried about having to go back to a psychiatric hospital if he had a relapse. My husband worried about everything under the big bright sun.

I told my husband to have faith in God. I told him other things as well, such as being proud of how far he has come in recovery. I wanted to lift my husband’s spirits. I did put my husband in his place but in a nice way. I do not need to be mean to get my points across. My husband knows I love him and want the best for his life. He thanked me for putting him in his place. Being appreciated is something I look forward to.

Living with a mental illness is not easy for my husband. I believe my husband is worried I will leave him. One of his male friends from college in New York kept going inside hospitals. At the time, the man was married. He would take his medications at different times of the day or he would forget. Eventually the wife became tired of this behavior. She moved to Atlanta with their young daughter and filed for divorce.

I married my husband for the man he was. I did not see my husband as larger than life the way I did with another in my younger days. I did not paint my husband out to be somebody I wanted him to be. I saw my husband’s compassion towards his church and love of friendships. My husband seemed real to me. My husband loved me for me and did not panic about little issues with my physical disability. My husband has poetry from his college years that I love to read. His poetry provides me with hope.

Last night, my husband told me Hastings has begun to buy records. I told my husband he should keep his family records. As he was going to walk away, I pulled him closer. Maybe I was having a moment of break down. I usually don’t become sentimental over things like this but I was last night. I told my husband I do not have anything materialistic from my paternal grandmother. The only connection I have to my grandmother is a love of the criminal justice system. We also attended the same college. We have dark brown hair. We both love to smile and laugh. We love people.

Other than that, I do not have anything else of my grandmother. When I read Saturday Matinee by Maxine Neely Davenport, one of many of my grandmother’s younger sisters, I am able to have more of a connection with both women. I know Grandma would be one proud big sister if she were alive today. My grandmother has several wonderful sisters, a brother, a sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, and greats. My grandmother is inside of us each day that passes.

My grandmother is no longer in our my world through material possessions. Grandma is in my world through my imagination. When I was younger, I used to imagine what smelling Grandma’s clothes would be like. I wondered if she looked in her mirror each morning as she applied lotion and make-up for work. I wondered what clothes Grandma wore to work each day. I do know that Grandma was a lady in every way. I like to think about the woman Grandma. This did not seem real to me in my early years. In a young person’s eyes, a grandmother is romanticized. A grandmother can do no wrong or suffer from any pain. A granddaughter would love to take that pain away from her grandmother so she could live longer.

As a thirty-three year old wife and mother of a small Chihuahua, I see Grandma in a new light. I wonder what Grandma would look like in the clothes I pick out for her to wear. I am sure she would look lovely in a light pink sweater with white jeans. I am sure Grandma would smell good in perfume. I am sure she would look beautiful wearing black sandals inside her home. This is the image I see of Grandma. I imagine Grandma in modern times instead of the woman she was thirty-years ago. Grandma was one beautiful lady, and in my mind, she still is. Grandma had a glow that showed the radiant woman she was.

I do not know if Grandma liked dogs. I am sure she would love Luigi, her great grandson. I am sure Luigi would lay on Grandma’s lap the way I used to for hours at a time. I imagine Grandma would play hide-and-seek with Luigi and act silly with him the way she did with me. I like to imagine Grandma kissing the top of Luigi’s head with her angelic lips. I imagine Grandma smiling down at me as I am by her feet admiring her shoes. I imagine Grandma’s smile the way I do writers composing great characters in stories. I do not believe any great writer could have ever written Grandma’s part in this world to be the way she was to her youngest granddaughter.