Looking At Old Photos Is Like Sticking A Needle In My Eye

My kid is doing a collage representing himself, and he needs some pictures.  This morning I have been scrolling through recent and not-so-recent family photos.  It feels like I'm sticking a needle in my eye.

The pictures of my married life stir up anger and anguish....angrish, as I like to call it, and I'm fighting the urge to blanket my sadness with busyness and business, and I'm wondering why haven't I replenished my chocolate stash lately?


I still have a lot of pain when I look at the pictures of my married years.  Grief and mourning still surround past events and pictures and memories.

It's like the pictures are all up on the surface of a lake, where people are smiling and posing and traveling and being born and growing up, and under the water is a dark current of deceit and sadness and uncertainty.

The worst part is that during all these seemingly happy times, I was struggling emotionally, and I didn't know why.  I didn't know why my husband was working late or why he had insomnia or back pain or depression or the checked-out disease.  I didn't know why it was a burden for him to be with his kids or talk to me.  How was I so blind to my own life, I wonder?

I believed 100% that what was happening was what.was.happening. Days like today I still grieve that loss; the loss of trust and security in my husband and in my life.

Although my husband and my life are much improved with recovery, I have a residual fear that I really don't know what is going on in my marriage and my life.  While my fear unsettles me, that fear also brings me consistently to God.

In my humility, my insecurity, my mistrust of others and situations, that is where I meet God, or that's where He meets me.  Either way.  He gives me stamina, sometimes through a feeling, or a friend or a book:  I can live today, even if I don't have all the answers.  All the answers are not mine to have.  In those old pictures, when I didn't even have the questions to the answers, He knew me and was working in my life.

Could it be a blessing that I didn't know my husband was a sex addict all those years, when he probably wouldn't have been humble enough to seek recovery?  Was I spared years of heartbreak as he tried over and over again to quit?   Did not knowing help me hold things together, albeit haphazardly, until my husband could pull his weight?  Could my blindness have been for my own good?

"Squiddy Ink"

Lately I've been somewhat clenched and anxious, what with school starting and all.  I've been aimlessly picking at my face and staring into space a lot.

Change makes me nervous.  Guess why?  Because change is new and it hasn't happened yet, therefore, I can't KNOW how things will turn out, and at times I have such little faith in God.

Why do I want to orchestrate the lives of the people I love?  As if.....as if I actually knew what was best for this brood of independent souls living with me.

I loved this Anne Lamott quote on wanting to have control of other people and other stuff. [From the book "Help, Thanks, Wow]

"When we think we can do it all ourselves -- fix, save, buy, or date a nice solution -- it's hopeless.  We're going to screw things up.  We're going to get our tentacles wrapped around things and squirt our squiddy ink all over, so that there is even less visibility, and then we're going to squeeze the very life out of everything."

Wildflower, will you please get your "squiddy ink" out of here?  


Sometimes I write my prayers.... Please God, help me let go and trust You with my life and my people.  Can it be that simple?