So I Married a Gay Man.....

My first anxiety attack happened during my second pregnancy.  I thought I was having a heart attack.  It was a stressful time but I learned some coping strategies and I managed.  I had very few attacks over the next decade or so.  They started back up again two years ago.  I was stressed about work and my husband was having a mid-life crisis (was.he.ever - I had no idea how bad it would get before it got better).  There was a period of time when I was having a panic attack every night when I tried to go to sleep.  Every night.  I made some career decisions that eased the tension in that arena and they subsided.  Then came the disclosure about my husband's same-sex attraction.  Now it was really time to panic!  They came back with a vengeance. If you've never had a panic attack, first of all thank God for your many blessings, and then imagine this: you are going about your day and all of the sudden out of nowhere your heart star...

Soul mates - it's a term I have loved and hated at different times in my life.  On the one hand, I hate the idea that there's "the one" out there that's perfect for me.  Because, what if I don't find him?  Or what if I make a mistake and choose the wrong one?  It sounds like a foolish fairy tale to me.  And maybe like an excuse to cut and run when things don't end up how I imagined.   On the other hand, I like the idea that God knew exactly who I should spend the rest of my life with.  This looks less like a fairy tale and more like a refiner's fire.  Long before I knew about my husband's SSA, we read a book together that I loved,  Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy? by Gary Thomas.  The subtitle says it all.  Marriage has made me grow closer to God.  And what if this is what being soul mates is really all about?  A mate for my soul, not my flesh.  Someo...

A lot of things changed for me last September.  A lot of things changed in me, too.  The best change has been in my prayer life.  I have never felt like I had a strong prayer life; it's been the weakest spiritual discipline for me.  Also, I'm not a morning person.  I'm a sleep-as-long-as-possible person and a need-several-cups-of-coffee-to-get-started person.  But all of that changed in an instant. The morning after my husband disclosed his SSA to me, I woke up suddenly very early in the morning with an urgent need to pray.  I prayed and wept for about half an hour.  The next morning was the same.  And the morning after that, and the morning after that...  and it hasn't stopped.  I don't need to set an alarm.  I don't go to bed earlier.  God just gently wakes me each morning with a reminder to pray. As this became a pattern, I needed to find a place to pray.  I didn't want to wake everyone up (from the weeping)....