Dying to self with out myself Dying . . .

I have given up so many things for becoming a mother. Sleep, cigarettes, drinking(except a glass of wine with dinner now and then), partying, swearing and any other manner of activity that may hurt my gorgeous gift from the Lord, my son.

The change has been so severe that at times I feel like I am watching myself die day by day. I was sitting in a restaurant with my husband and his friend. They were both having beers and more beers and it was just assumed that I would be the designated driver because I'm the mother, the nursing mother so naturally I would be the responsible one. Looking at my husband get up and leave with his friend to go have a cigarette while I took care of the baby I was incensed! What makes him think that he can just assume that it is fine to carry on like he is not a father and like we are not back together again! Why does he carry on smoking knowing that Joshua is watching his every move! How dare he act like nothing has changed? Like our two year seperation isn't over and that our son has not been born. We have graduated into the next bracket of human development, why does he act like he always did? I was pushed to distraction and complete disconnection. We went house hunting and I didn't want to see any of them, I didn't care. What had I come back to? Someone stuck in the old days and this woman I didn't recognize at all and wasn't sure I could be her! Internally, I felt like part of me was dying. I wasn't sure I was entirely ready for her to die but I knew that there was nothing I could do about it, she had to die if I was going to be for Joshua what I needed to be. However, would the man in the smoking pit with his friend still want me, this new me I was fast morphing into that even I didn't recognize? Why would he like me, I was pretty sure I didn't.

I looked in the mirror in the bathroom of the restaurant after I had changed Joshua's diaper. I don't even look the same. My eyes are puffy and wrinkled from not enough sleep. My cheeks had become jowels due to the glorious state of post pregnant weight not coming off but in fact accumulating as perpetual exhaustion leads to desperate eatting measures. My hair was thinning because of hormonal something or other adjusting. My neck even had wrinkles and there are rolls where my beautiful abs used to be. I even feel physically overlooked by my husband and why not? This is what he has to look at! I would look past me as fast as I could.

I sat there in the car as we drove around looking at these houses, houses I didn't really see as I jostled Joshua and daydreamed of the old days. How I longed for the carefree me that I used to be? The Dani that would have been in the smoke pit with her husband joking and laughing right along with him. The one who could tell a story with just the right mix of swear words to make the crowd double over in laughter. The woman who could party the night away dancing and drinking the whole time with her husband and friend. Were we not going to be friends any more? Had our friendship lost its basis? Was it down to a partnership? A child raising survival business spear headed by myself and my husband?

I had tried to connect over the Lord with him, talk about the Bible and things the Lord had been teaching me, but he seemed to have very little to share. There was always crickets on his side of the conversation. This scared me, he was supposed to be the spiritual head of the house hold, was I going to always flounder for a male to talk about the Lord with and scripture with? Was there always going to be no one to excitedly share praises over learned lessons and scripture epiphanies?

So I started just talking about Joshua, I don't have anything else to share. I can only talk so much about the same topic no matter how wonderful Joshua is. I don't want to have one sided conversations about the Lord and I can't relate on any of the other topics anymore. I don't talk politics or people. I don't care about music bands or who is the up and coming singer. I don't even watch t.v.! Dani, pre-mommyD is dead. How do I let her die without myself dying with her?

Who is myself? What did I become while Mark was fighting for our freedom? I love to write and read the word of the Lord. I love to go to Calvary Chapel and hear all about the Lord and sing praises to Him. I love hiking and camping. I love dogs and I love babies! Most of all I love the Lord. That is a good way to describe me, someone in love with the Lord. Mark is no longer my idol, as he used to be. I know that I am very different from the woman that Mark married. And for how different I am, he appears exactly the same as the man I married, so what does that mean?

If Mark seems the same to me and I am extremely different, did I trick him? Get him to marry someone he has nothing in common with but I thought that we did and now I am holding him back. Perhaps expecting him to become something he is not and is not destined for? That is unfair, so I expect nothing. I expect him to remain Mark now and forever. I pray that the Lord gives us something, some kind of friendship even if it is so extremely different from the looks of the past. I pray that the Lord brings me a girlfriend I can talk with about the wonders of the Lord. I pray that the Lord keeps Mark safe and that Mark continues to be the wonderful man that he is and that Joshua gets to spend as much time with him as possible between his daddy's buisness trips. I pray that Joshua's Mommy, this woman I have become meets Joshua's
Father again on the level of intimacy they had before they were called Parents.

When people say that children don't save marriages they are absolutely right. They challenge them, they make sure that the spouses don't stay in the same place or at the same level. But the in between levels are so hard! I feel like I'm reaching across more miles than when I was reaching to Iraq! How can that be? Time and communication and prayer takes care of everything and it will this too but God help us in this level of the game called Life!