Suffering Together
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[4 Comments]I'm not sure how long Jeramy and I sat in the hospital parking lot. It might have been fifteen minutes; it could have been forever. The bitter cold of Colorado winter wrapped its arms around our silver Jetta, scattering ice crystals on the windows. Maybe on a different night they would have been beautiful to me.
For me, any response to the world would have been a welcome relief. I hadn't been able to carry on a normal conversation in weeks. Often Jeramy would catch me staring off into space, but when I "came to," I could explain neither where I'd been nor what I'd been thinking. As far as I can remember, I only thought, breathed, and lived pain during those hellish days.
St. Stephen's loomed in the not-so-distant foreground. It was one of those seventies-style concrete hospitals that looks more like a communist tenement than a place of healing. It was a psychiatric hospital.
I had been placed on a 5150, a psychiatric hold for people who are a danger to themselves and others. The social worker who did my intake evaluation told Jeramy that, based on her 20-plus years of experience, I was suffering from the most severe level of postpartum depression possible. At least they let Jeramy drive me from the ER to St. Stephen's. Still, he had to leave me there—alone. Not until years later did he tell me that he wept for the entire 40-minute drive home.
Neither of us knew what to do. Neither of us felt the comfort the Bible promises for those in pain. Neither of us could pray with any conviction of hope. We knew God was there, but he seemed distantly cold. The pain was wreaking havoc on our marriage.
We were Christian authors, a pastor and pastor's wife, a couple who wanted to honor God with life and marriage. We were in agony. Up to this point, we didn't understand what it meant to suffer together, and—to tell you the truth—we didn't want to learn how to let God walk us through the valley of the shadow of death…together. We would have traded what authors have deemed the "gift of suffering." And yet we would have missed the very things that have shaped our marriage and ministry in the most powerful ways.
An Era of Pain
It seems as if every marriage is hurting during these difficult times. Several of our closest friends are facing financial ruin. Husbands and wives are looking at one another across the dinner table, wondering how their relationship dissolved into an endless string of loveless, lifeless days. Two couples we're close to are going through divorce and custody battles. Infertility is robbing those we love of the joy they desperately want to experience. The children of our friends are straining their parents' marriages with choices to live alternative lifestyles, to cohabitate—seemingly without guilt—to stridently abandon the faith of their youth. The death of loved ones, the news that it's cancer, teen pregnancy, horrific violence in elementary schools—it's hitting everyone we know. We live with the constant awareness of deep suffering.
Related Topics:
Marriage Struggles, Mental illness, pain, Suffering
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Ronda
I feel whatt Kate said and went through that period too.I believe it resulted from my husband not having a relationship with God.I too went through post partum depression and we grew apart and, for years, struggled through many issues. Our change came when we both got to realizing that our fulfillment comes to us individually first and then flows over to our marriage. Though marriage is made and blessed by God and is the most effective tool for teaching humans His love and plans for His children, it is secondary to our individual relationships with Him. When I stopped seeing my husband as my source of happiness, peace, fulfillment and instead saw him as a partner, the other half of this whole, that Christ was trying to save too, then I began growing as an individual and a wife. My advice to hurting wives is see your husbands as souls God is longing to save and the enemy is bent on destroying.Put away self, seek God and His righteousness first,and ask Him to use you in your marriage.
Lynne
I, too, was hospitalized after a "major depressive episode." Unfortunately, my spouse blamed me and shared his anger with those at my place of ministry, destroying any chance I had of returning there. To this day, 4 years later, he blames me for being "weak and selfish". But the Lord has given me strength to see myself in a healthier light. The Holy Spirit has given me the determination to care for my health so that I can continue to live and thrive and serve Him. I can only pray that someday my husband will accept the reality of my manageable illness, and stop blaming me. whether he does or not, I will walk in victory - because I am glad to be alive!
Kate
I agree with what is said in the article. But what if your spouse is unfeeling, indifferent, unloving (he admits all this) and you find yourself fighting through the struggles in your marriage by yourself? It's like single and married.
Carole A. Bell
Although Jerusha has not given us a formula to make suffering go away, she has spoken from her heart to tell us how to suffer together. Yes, this is hard stuff, and yes, it is easier to stay at the office a little longer to avoid the pain. However, those who learn how to suffer together get the chance to grow together and to watch their own love blossom far beyond what it would have been.
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