First Time I FELT God

In 2010 my husband wanted to leave our 6 year-long marriage. Don't go getting all sad, every single marriage goes through their rough patches. This was one of ours. In hindsight it may have been a mid-life crisis on his part, I have no idea.  All I know is that at the time I was drowning in little babies and probably wasn't being the most doting wife I could have been.

Either way, it was early one morning when my husband called me a few minutes after he left for work. I could tell something was wrong and kept asking him if he was ok. "I'm fine." was always his answer. But duh, I'm a girl and we know better.  So, he called me and told me that he wasn't happy in our marriage and he thinks he should move out. Our babies were little then, two and four. I was getting our son ready for preschool and changing the baby when he called. I remember hearing the words, "I'm not happy and I think I should move out." And everything moved in slow motion. I swear I heard a footstep I took resonate in my head.  He told me he loved me, but didn't know if he was in love with me and that we were too different. That he would come home that night and collect his things. I hung up the phone and in the nano-second where I should have freaked out, what felt like warm water fell over me slowly. From the top of my head, down to my toes this "water" fell and from within me I heard, "This is how it is meant to be." And I took a breath and was calm.

The "water" gave me peace.

I was able to dress my baby girl and get both kids to their little pre-schools.  I came back home to mentally revisit our conversation and re-play my marriage to see how we could have gotten here. Had he said this a year before, or a year and a half before, I would have understood. Two babies under the age of three is a lot and I was not the best version of myself. I need sleep and I do not do good when I do not get a full night's sleep. So you can imagine I was quite the grump for a few years.

Had he wanted to leave then, I would have understood. I would have wanted to leave me too!!!  But now, I thought we were fine. We had just gotten back from Italy a few days before and it was a romance-movie-perfect trip. We went just the two of us, toured Venice, Rome and Tuscany. It was beautiful and romantic. To this day I don't know what happened in his head to go from that to wanting to leave.

In the weeks and months that followed my husband and I went to therapy and learned how to be better as a couple. We readjusted our schedule so I could feel like I was getting a little break from being "mommy' 24/7, which also allowed me the ability to store up energy to have to pay attention to the needs of my husband.

I know in that mess I felt God for the very first time. In hearing the words, "this is how it is meant to be" I don't think God was telling me I was meant to suffer. I think that was just as a reminder that everything is used for our personal and spiritual growth. 

We are meant to go through storms.

The storms, however are not meant to break and destroy us.

They are meant to open our eyes to where we NEED God in our lives, and oh boy do we need God!

This was meant to familiarize myself with our Maker. To serve as a hint that I'm able to hear and feel him. To show me that WITH God, I can make it through ANYTHING.