Six Months of Wednesdays

WARNING:
This post contains subject matter that may be difficult for some people. I write about suicide. I would want someone to tell me before I read it...

It was Wednesday morning. A lot was happening under the surface, but above ground, for me, all was calm, normal. I woke up, took my child to school, came home and got ready to leave the house. I was excited to meet a new friend for lunch. We had lost a mutual friend unexpectedly a month before and had gotten to know each other after the fact. I was wearing one of the matching shirts I had bought for us with a saying that summed up our friend's life -- Blessed Beyond Measure --I couldn't wait to give her the other one. I was really looking forward to bonding with this sweet woman!

Under the surface of this day was the stomach twisting knowledge that at the end of the day, or at most the next day (Thursday) my husband would be home from Texas and admitted to a (much needed) rehab facility. This was at his request - he had called and wanted help in coming home and admitting himself to rehab. It had been something I had worked on privately for almost 2 weeks.Only one friend knew of the plan. If you have dealt with an addict or someone with a mental illness, you understand that many times these things do not come to fruition. Promises made during a drunken phone call are often not kept. Put mental illness on top of it and the odds go WAY down. I didn't want to humiliate my husband or myself any further with grand announcements of his recovery process. In fact, I had planned to keep it completely secret until he was done with the program.

So that was the Wednesday morning I was facing. I had talked to him by phone for hours the night before - he seemed excited and resolved to be coming home. Resolute in his recovery and coming back to his family. His girls.  All was well. I was calm, thankful to be wearing my new shirt and the meaning behind it NOW for me, personally. I truly felt blessed beyond all measure. The hurricane we had been through was going to end and.a new and better day was dawning.

I got ready and the phone rang.

It was my husband.

By the end of that phone call he would be brain dead and my world would be entirely shattered. I remember every detail. I remember the panic. I heard his last words to me and my daughter, I listened to him end his life and I listened as the police and paramedics (whom I had called on my landline) came and tried to save him. I heard it all. I screamed out to the Lord in my driveway for what seemed like hours. Somehow I called my closest friend and she got to me. I remember my pastor and several others coming to the house. I remember trying to pack a suitcase and reserve a plane ticket. The memories of that that day are vivid and run like slow motion through my mind retracing constantly the marks it left on my soul. I remember the people who were unkind to me that day.  People who I thought were family treated me so very  wrong, the nurse (when I finally got to the hospital 800 miles away at 11:00 that night still wearing that shirt) who talked to me cruelly and mistreated me until she heard the truth. I remember all that because I am human. My flesh is just always going to revert to that part of the story first.

But my spirit cries out differently.
My spirit remembers all the miracles of that day and the next day and the next day and the next day. They are so numerous you might think I have made them all up. I could not because only GOD could do what He did on that Wednesday, October 24th. He was not caught by surprise at 9:00 AM or10 or 11 or 5 PM or 11 PM, or Thursday or Friday or Saturday. One day I will write it all down for the world to see what He did for me, for my child and ultimately my husband. I say it all the time...BUT GOD! 

Today marks 6 months since THAT phone call. My mind will follow the time line, just like I do every Wednesday. That's why I hate Wednesdays. I think today will be harder, who knew April would line up on the calendar just like October.

All this stuff is hard. Hard to write, hard to read, hard to live. I don't want to leave either of us without hope. Below are the verses that I kept close to me in the hospital, the ones that I whispered to him for four days -- the ones that helped me know that no matter what occurs on this earth, we are never separated from God. You can face anything if you know this fact in both your head and your heart. I always knew it in my head...four days in Texas taught it to my heart. If you don't know it - I would love to talk with you. There is hope - there is love and it is yours! Your story does not have to end this way.

Romans 8:37-38
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels nor demons, the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

#SSSB
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