As a 20 or 30-something person, I grasped the expression, "Hindsight is 20:20," marginally, at best. After all, at that age, I knew how to raise everyone else's children (having none of my own), I could handle a household and a full-time job (same answer), and I could get dinner on the table every night, from scratch (see contents of previous parentheses). I was perfect ... -ly blind to the realities of life in the long-term. I had some struggles, but they remained more at a social level, not at all very personal, very important or very deep. As newlyweds, my husband and I argued, but over the unimportant issues, loud and long. I needed to be heard and loved. He needed to be understood and respected. Neither of us understood ourselves or each other. Love is most definitely blind, and not fully able to assimilate to new ways of life and thinking when the shiny part wears thin.
Then, life hit. I miscarried our first baby after the first trimester (baby stopped developing at 9 weeks, so not so physically traumatic as emotionally so), miscarried another after the first month, and fell into a season of infertility probably brought on by stress. I worked with children at school all day and saw infants and toddlers each weekend toted around by their smiling parents at church. I hated. I seethed. I felt emptier than anyone on the earth. I had a hole in my life that couldn't be filled. Most of that hole was in my heart and mind, and it lacked God.
Later, I interviewed for the perfect teaching job in the perfect school and did not get the job. I tried and tried again. I couldn't imagine going on with any joy, what with all the goals in my life shattered like the piece of Corelle dish ware (it is breakable, by the way -- it shatters into shards so small you will find them for years, even after you move to another house) I threw to the floor during an argument with my husband.
To top those injustices, I took a job in the same school working for an unqualified/uncertified librarian in an environment I felt at home in, only to find myself on the outs with administration because of the attitude of the unqualified librarian and her reports about me riddled with lies and stories that caused people to feel sorry for me, which only fueled the pseudo-librarian's fire.
No one on the outside knew these things. My husband did not know these things. I tried to keep troubles to myself, with his job stress already plucking the thinnest string on his high-anxiety personality.
And so, life took a gargantuan turn comprised of several detours I couldn't have anticipated and definitely didn't want. I began to focus on conceiving a baby we kept somehow making mistakes on, turning intimacy into a chore. I began to have a shorter fuse on my temper, and worked at my school job like a rat trying to race through a confusing maze with no chunk of Swiss at the end.
I never raged at God. I never spilled my troubles. Instead, I picked up every day, trotted into school like a normal person and went through all the right motions. I agonized over conceiving a child, took my temperature daily hoping to capture the good graces of those few ultra-fertile ovulation days, and "had sex" every other day. In our late 20's, my husband and I had quite a bit of zest for it, but when it feels scheduled it has a hollowness to it no one but a can't-conceive-a-child woman can bring to it. Women are controlling creatures, when allowed to their own devices. Thank God, He has the power to redirect us, break us or ease us into a better path.
Twelve years and two children later, life looked nothing like it did at what felt like a critical time in my life. It was worse, in fact. My husband never quite forgot feeling like a sperm donor, after I had made intimate moments so mechanical and lackluster ... unintentionally. I felt love and devotion for him. He was mine, and he put up with even my worst traits.
And then, he didn't.
The most important aspect of all of this is that the hindsight part, the ability to even tell the story and to know how I was then, come from hindsight. In the thick of it, I reacted or went with a flow that didn't follow a godly direction. I relied on my human skills and not at all on the divine influence of the One who created me. My husband and family suffered at my inability to discern what was most important, at my intensity of making things as perfect as I thought they could be and keeping status quo on emotions and needs, mine or theirs.
I had no idea that the following verses make a difference. They sound pretty, but after that, what of it?
EVERYTHING is of it.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.
~~Philippians 4:6-8
For the rest of the story, please see Part 2.
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