Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Healing a Hurting Marriage: Part 3. His Story

(If you missed Sunday's post, Healing a Hurting Marriage: Part 1.The Backstory or yesterday's post Healing a Hurting Marriage: Part 2. Her Story, please read those entries first to get the context of this post - Dusk's celebratory post.)

After two years of “Bodie,” I am asked, what do I need to give my family credit for? This could be the hardest writing task ever assigned to me. Not that I have not had blessings heaped on me (and us) during this time, because we have, but so many blessings become obscured by so much heartache and turbulence. Through the fog I can think of a few things though.

I can give credit to Bodie who in his incompleteness has made our family whole. With his defects he brought strength and tenacity, a will to overcome adversity, even at our expense. In his stubbornness he has stared death in the face and said, “Bring it” while relying on us to be behind him completely and utterly dependent on God to back his words up.

I give credit to Sierra, my little baby girl who in this time has had to learn a very difficult role of being a big sister to Bodie. Bodie without a doubt happens to be one of the most difficult human beings I have ever had to contend with so Sierra, no doubt, has had to suffer Bodie as we all have. Sierra has had to live through so much anger, frustration, and chaos. She barely had time to get used to existing before being thrust into a maelstrom. Now she is a 5-year-old girl with the qualities of a leader in training.

I give credit to my wife, for having to agonize over manually pumping milk for Bodie for a year and then agonize more over trying to get him to actually drink it. I give credit to her for carrying the load of this family when I was at work trying to provide in the only way I knew how.  She earns heaps of pride for sitting by Bodie’s bedside when it appeared that it was over for him. She earns so much more for her efforts to be a wife and a mother to the rest of us even when it was clear her attention had to be divided, and she still managed to get a hot dinner in front of us every day of the week.

I give myself credit because while all this was unfolding I was able to build a studio and a storage shed in the backyard, paint the inside and outside of our home by hand, re-landscape and keep up the yard, polish the flooring twice, repair an infinite amount of house failures due to substandard non-American made product, and still work a full and part time job all while this chaos was unfolding.

Most importantly I credit our family because it is still together. Many families have walked the HLHS road before us and have seen their families end up broken or in divorce. It takes two very strong people to suffer the Lord’s testing to this extent. We bind together because we have no one else to bind ourselves to.

This time has proven to be a tempest because we have watched friends and families that once would have given us anything abandon us and those we never expected to provide support have become our rock. We remain strong because it is our will to be strong, even when faced with difficulty and spiritual warfare. We earn credit before ourselves only because any credit due was part of the Lord’s plan and the result of strength He provided to us to get to where we are today.

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4 comments:

  1. Praying that God continues to bind your hearts together! Love you!

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  2. Hey Dusk,

    Great thoughts there buddy! You guys are all awesome!

    George Landes

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  3. I love Dusk's perspective. Wow, you guys sound JUST like us. Thanks for sharing and many blessings to your marriage and your family.

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  4. Another great post. Thank you so much Dusk for sharing your story in all of this. It is always nice to hear from heart dads because your part of ther story is just as important. Sending many prayers to both you and Amy as you work on healing your marriage.

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