One day I was driving around town doing errands, when the strangest feeling came over me. For the life of me, I could not identify exactly what I was feeling, but it was overpowering enough to stop me in my tracks.
Sitting at a red light, grasping the steering wheel with both hands, I concentrated hard. Suddenly, in a flash of understanding I realized I was feeling Joy. Overwhelming, wonderful, bubbly, spilling into every part of me – Joy. It had been so long, literally years since I had felt any kind of happiness or joy, that I could not recognize it at first. Most people will never understand that, and I am so glad for that. But those of you who get what I’m saying, I pray that your Joy will return in a rush of cleansing healing. Just be prepared to be completely confused at first!
How strange it must have been for Garen to bear witness to me coming back to life. To have a front row seat to my light being rekindled, however dim it may burn some days. With all the hurt and betrayal piling up in our marriage I think Garen felt very intimidated, very insecure. Suddenly I was no longer a passive, uninterested party in our union, but a wildcat, hissing and spitting and fighting like mad.
I wanted that feeling of Joy to permeate EVERYTHING. But with the constant fighting, feeling so unloved at home, it was difficult. So I began to fight back. Garen began to hear, “I don’t accept this. It’s inappropriate. I’m worth more than this.” To say he didn’t like it is a deep, bottomless pit of an understatement.
Fearing my newfound confidence would walk me right out the door and away from him, Garen began to undermine my burgeoning mental stability. Not in any tangible or grossly abusive way. It was the self-preservation of a desperately unhappy man who was afraid of losing more than he already had. In some weird way it showed him that he did in fact love me and he was going to fight to keep me, he just went about it the wrong way at first.
One day, right before RCIA classes began Garen said he thought he would go with me, to see what this was all about. He saw Timos and I praying the rosary. He saw us healing from deep, ugly wounds and he wanted to heal too. So he tagged along to the first few classes. By the third or fourth class he was in it for himself – he was going to convert to Catholicism.
Garen was different from the very first class. It was almost like God reached down, grabbed him by the front of the shirt and jerked him onto the straight and narrow. Suddenly Garen was engaged and interested in something. He and I had something to talk about and discuss. And he believed. From the very beginning Garen believed. His heavy, broken heart had come home at long last. And that is when our marriage began to heal in earnest. There would still be some pretty gnarly emotional bruising, but now there would be remorse and atonement, which kept us moving forward.
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