Loving a Bitter, Angry Person

It's amazing how much progress you can sometimes make without realizing it. What I am writing here is just a point along the way. I've not yet arrived, but looking back, I've certainly traveled a LONG way!

Love is such an enriching part of marriage. It colors everything. Love is the oil that makes the rough places smooth, that soothes the hurt and makes the bumps and bruises of this life a little easier to take. Just as God loves us, He asks us to love each other. When we do as He has commanded, when we follow the Creator's instructions, this institution He has designed works wonderfully!

I'm a romantic at heart. I can see the romance in painting a room together, a cup of coffee without having to ask, and someone offering to do something for me 'just because.' Grand gestures make me suspicious of the motives behind them. I guess that this is because it's just easier to throw money at something hoping to make yourself look better than it is to consistently extend kindnesses.

Then again, I've also seen people that would extend kindnesses as a way of getting a free pass for bad behavior. The neighbor lady that 'just wants to help' may offer to clean your kitchen and organize your cupboards only as a way of keeping you captive long enough to collect juicy tidbits for gossip. If you are upset with her later for telling tales, she will feign hurt that you didn't think better of her after all she's done for you.

Yes, I'm a romantic, but I'm also a realist.

I know what it is to love and love well. I've had glimpses of what it is to be loved well. I am the wife of a man that cares much about how he provides for his family, and I can tell you that I love him with all my heart. I've cared for him through sickness and health. I've borne him children, learned to cook his favorite foods and read his various moods. This is the man I've grown old with. I love his work worn hands and the years of toil they represent. I love the feel of his arms around me and his breath against my neck. I long for times of solitude with him when he only sees me, and I don't have to compete with the cares of the day.

Every day I rise with the hope of his embrace.

I do not expect it, however.

As we have aged, my husband has grown angry and bitter. Mostly, he is a fearful man. Most of those fears are unnamed ones. He doesn't give them voice. Instead, as difficulties or challenges arise in his work day or at home, he just glowers and growls. He doesn't like people much . . . and I'm a people.

We don't talk because it makes him angry to have a conversation. This means that he lives mostly inside of his own head. He is an observer without context. He sees things around him and assumes that he knows how they got that way, what led to the circumstance. He determines whether this is good or acceptable and then he becomes angry. Most of the time, we blindly try to please him by guesswork. Since it makes him angry to explain things, we aren't really sure what he wants. Sometimes, we get things JUST RIGHT! That's a time for celebration.

More often, though, I miss the elusive mark. I keep trying and have become quite skilled at this 'pin-the-tail-on-his-wants' game (or is it Marco Polo?). The difficulty is that after a lifetime of convincing himself that he MUST be afraid and that he MUST be angry, these emotions have become a sort of security blanket. As awful as it must be for him to feel this way, it is familiar; it is comfortable.

The sad part of it all is that I've had to let go of my notions of what it is to be a wife and to be loved. That feminine and soft side of me has faded away and a hard, practical woman has taken her place. The woman that would lavish so many daily extras, affection and good things on this man if he would just let her, was stifled and squelched long ago.

I wake each day. I don't get my hug. I move on. Life awaits.

There are more good reasons to stay in this marriage than there are reasons to leave. In fact, you might even say that I've already been 'put away.' However, I've retained my address and my children have grown up in an intact home. They don't have to juggle holidays or figure out where to go for special occasions. There's one single address.

The truth is that as love is defined in Scriptures, I've accepted that my husband does not love me . . . and I'm not much liked or wanted in my own home, either.

How do you get up every day and face that? How do you manage to put one foot in front of another when your heart is broken, caring for someone that despises you and scowls at the sight of you?

Well, it isn't easy. It is doable however. A lot of it has to do with knowing who you are and who your spouse is.

I am a loved child of the Most High, created for His use and purpose. I am a help meet to a man that has believed too many lies about himself to know the truth about me. That's okay. Life is short. I can love him in this life, and he can come to understand truth in the next. It's not my job to enlighten him.

Are there times when I want the meanness to stop? Would it be a relief to wake each day and finally see a friendly face? Yes! So, I keep some animals around. That way, something is available for a cuddle or offers me a friendly greeting. They even seem to soften my husband a bit. I take my kindnesses when they are offered and give thanks for them. I hurt. I admit that. But life is about more than how much I've been hurt.

Life is about living and living it well. Life is about realizing that you have a purpose even if those closest to you don't believe it's true. It's about knowing you deserve to be loved, even when you are not. To do the noble thing is not to do the convenient or the easy thing. To love when it's free and easy is nothing more than the most base among us would do. That kind of love is only self-serving.

But when we love in spite of the unloveliness . . . That is a thing of beauty. It's the flower that blooms in the snow, the sparrow that sings in the storm.

My husband is angry. He does not love me.

I love him. I love him. I love him. By God's grace, I love him. And God loves me!

Mining For Gold

As we worked a boy told me how there were things he would never do the way his parents did. I listened to his noble goals and remembered feeling the same way for much of my youth.

We continued working while he talked, and I considered my response.

I held up two of the tools we were using. I told him, 'We learn so many things from our parents. It's easy to see the flaws and mistakes. For instance, you might say that your parents used one of these tools and things didn't go so well for them, so you have determined to never use that tool. Instead you will use this one. However, what seldom occurs to any of us is that neither tool is a good choice. When we choose our actions by avoiding someone's failure, we forget that there are uncountable ways to do something wrong. Often we just end up choosing another version of wrong.'

His eyes grew wide with alarm. How could any of us do better if we are only choosing between uncountable versions of the wrong way to do things?

I let that sink in for a while and then continued.

'I believe that God gives us parents not so that we can critique their mistakes. That would take us a lifetime. Instead, life is like attending a school where the subjects aren't named. Our first instructors are our parents and our opportunity is to learn from them the things they did correctly. We sift out the bits of grit and sand in search of the gold which is the things they got right. Then we build upon that and do better than they did.'

I thought about my own bitter parents. My childhood memories are punctuated with images of a mother given to emotional rages and a withdrawn, critical father. They were so often locked in their own power struggles that we children were left unprotected and insecure. Then I returned to our conversation.

'My parents did some things very well. My mother was a very compassionate woman. She would take us children with her as she drove people to church who were blind and had no family to care for them. She would take meals to others, wash their feet and cut their hair. My father had such a head for figures, he never needed a calculator. He loved the precision of mathematics, music and art. He delighted in the orderliness of creation and how a well tended seed would germinate, grow and yield an increase. Mother loved to sing. Father loved to learn. They did these things well.'

The boy considered my words. 'Do you mean that I could do things BETTER than my dad? HOW?' He seemed afraid to hope.

'Because,' I told him, 'God made you the son of a man that did some things with excellence. You have the opportunity to see those things lived out in real life. You can learn how do do them by learning from his example. Then, you will be able easily do as well as he did. With effort, you will become even more skilled at things it took him a lifetime to master. But these things only come to those that are willing to embrace the good, not just on reject the bad.'

'If you want to take a course in mechanics, you don't go to the gymnasium to find an instructor. Some of us have parents that have no idea how to train children, how to love a spouse, how to be patient, how to express love . . . That doesn't mean they weren't good at SOMEthing. You just have to find out what that something was and learn from it. There are always more things a parent is NOT good at than things a parent IS good at doing.

'Running around declaring how we will never do whatever the way our parents did is a trap. We end up avoiding a particular mistake while creating a new version of the same error. Mine for the gold and let God fill in the gaps. Trust the design of the Creator. He knows what He's doing -- even if He uses some of the most curious people to get it done.'

The boy smiled. 'I think you've got a lot of gold,' he said.

I smiled back and thought, I could have had more if I had known these things at his age.