MOTH3R MAY I?: How I lost MYSELF!

I lost myself. I lost myself when I became a wife & mother. Those things happened when I was 22 so for my whole adult life I didn't know who I was. Those two things became my whole identity. The problems occur if you lose the things that make your identity. When my kids were in elementary school I had an identity crisis. My husband refused to have more kids and my kids were growing up so fast! The only answer for what I wanted to be while growing up was a mother. This was a long time ago (kids are now 19 & 17).

I transferred my identity to being a wife.

My husband was gone a lot though as a truck driver.

During the intervening years I slowly started disappearing. I lost most of my personal like & dislikes, ambitions, goals, and dreams, and I didn't reappear when my husband was home either. I just adopted his. This caused problems in our relationship to the point that my husband was ready to call it quits. This hit me out of the blue as we had gone through some hard things (problems with the kids & health things) but we weathered through them, we rarely argued and all my goals were my husband's goals. He did not communicate his unhappiness. I was devastated. He agreed to counseling but all appointments had to be made around his convenience so they were few and far between. He made life changing decisions without discussion. e.g. He left for three months to go to school on the other side of the country to facilitate a career change. I was devastated all over again. How could we work on things if he was gone? Would he come back? I had breakdowns weekly and would scream and cry on the phone with him. He spent a lot of time trying to reassure me from thousands of miles away, which didn't make any sense because he was the one who wanted to be out. I was angry enough to let him be out too.

I was angry with God. I trusted God When my 13 year old son had charges against him; I trusted God when I suffered an ischemic stroke at the age of 36. What more did he want from me?! I lost my faith, I didn't even want to go to heaven any more because I was so mad at God I definitely didn't want to spend eternity with Him. I contemplated how it would be preferable to spend eternity in Hell, eternally separated from God. My husband came home. He acted like everything was fine now. I couldn't trust him. He started searching for a new job in his new field, with all sorts of promises he wasn't going to be able to fulfill.

I contemplated leaving my husband. Instead I cooperated with uprooting and moving our children cross country.

I was terrified. I didn't trust my husband, I didn't trust God, the only choices I had were going along with the move or torpedoing my marriage. I figured leaving would always be an option, but once left the chances of reconciliation are greatly reduced. I started praying again, because I didn't know where else to turn. It took me 5 months to find a job in our new home. Our daughter who was 16 at the time of the move and going into 11th grade really struggled with the transition for so many reasons. Our son hasn't fared much better he was 18 and graduated high school prior to the move, but still hasn't found a job or figured out what he wants to do with his life. I asked my husband what had changed, how could everything be fine for him now. How could I trust we were okay? (Still trying to reclaim my wife identity.) Short answer for him was Godly counsel from trusted Christian Friends. But I couldn't help but wonder if that kind of thing would last.