Robbed

I had accepted that I was going to have to let him leave.  It was what he wanted, and it was killing me to live unwanted.  I tried to mentally prepare, but there is no amount of forethought that actually helps you watch your husband pack a duffel bag or say goodbye to the kids.  There is nothing that holds you when he walks out without saying goodbye to you or that holds your world together when the driveway alarm sounds that he’s gone.  No amount of mental preparation sits beside you on the floor as you fall apart, with your kids around you, trying to comfort you when you should be comforting them.  “Breathe, Momma.  Breathe.  We’ll figure it out.”  

That sweet ten year old boy didn’t know how right he was.  It’s the people still at home that have to figure things out when someone leaves.  Old ways hurt so bad that for a while, rather than face them, you just find new ways.  New methods, new routines, new normal.  Eventually.  

Bedtime seemed the hardest.  My husband had always been a wonderful father.  Very involved in the boys’ lives from the moment they were born.  Helping during the night when they were babies, getting them in bed when they were toddlers, night-time routines as they got older.  After moving here, we would all gather at bedtime in the younger two boys’ bedroom.  There was usually some amount of wrestling or shenanigans among the three boys – and often their dad too – while they tried their utmost to delay actually going to bed.  Eventually, they would wind down, and we would pray.  The younger two would wait in their beds for goodnight love while the oldest went to his room on the other side of the Jack-n-Jill bathroom.  I would hug and kiss one while my husband did the other, then we would swap before going through to the oldest son’s room to give him love.  

My baby boy developed a hug/handshake routine that we would do at bedtime.  After he went through that routine each night with my husband, they would sing “Jesus Loves Me.”  Every single night of that child’s life to that point – for six years, my husband sang “Jesus Loves Me” to him.  The first night my husband was gone, I tried.  I tried, but we all cried.  The youngest was a wreck, which wrecked me.  I just couldn’t do it.  I could not sing that precious song anymore.  

I could not get myself together to work for days.  I was a disaster. My fourteen year old went on to a camp he had scheduled with some of our friends.  That was ordained by God because I think it would have forever altered him to see me in the state I was in those first few days.  My younger boys could be distracted with Vacation Bible School or friends taking them to play or swim.  They had sad moments, but they didn’t see or understand my pain like the oldest would have.  The ladies from church ministered to us with food, presence, and prayer.  Likely housework and laundry too because I don’t recall doing it.  I don’t recall much of anything.  I was in a fog.  Stunned that I was having a baby in approximately six weeks, and my husband had chosen to leave.  

There were a few times over the next few weeks that he seemed to question his choice.  Calls, tears, words.  I was hopeful that I had been right – that leaving would bring him back and that he would recognize the immense love and grace that awaited him at home, but words and tears did not produce action.  And I needed action.  I needed to know that if he came home, it was not only for the kids but for me also.  I did not want to ever feel again the way I had felt the seven months prior.  I needed to know with certainty that he wanted no other option more than he wanted to be home, even if it meant hard work, and that he was willing to work with me.  I needed confidence that he would not leave again.  I wasn’t sure I could survive it a second time, and I was not about to subject the kids to that pain again, no matter how much I missed him.  And I missed him badly.  

I missed the man I had met as a freshman in college.  The man who remembered my name after one brief meeting and called to me across campus the next time he saw me, at just the time I needed to feel less alone and homesick.  The man who later made a home with me, when we married after being friends for years and dating along the way.  The man who led missions and gave his life to ministry.  The man who knew me in a way no other did and, with me, brought children into the world.  The man who taught our children about Jesus and said from the pulpit that the most loving thing he could ever do for them was to love their mother well.  The man who for years, I thought, did love me well.  Who allowed me to be weak when I felt like the world was on my shoulders, who had listening ears and strong arms that held me.  For almost twenty years, they held me, but then, in the worst pain of my life, he was no longer there.  Physically or emotionally.  I was alone.  And hurting.  And robbed.  

Robbed not only of my husband, my kids’ father, the life I thought we had or the future I imagined, but robbed of the arms that held me and a friend I’d known for half my life.  

“The thief comes only to kill and steal and destroy.” John 10:10