Sunday's a Comin'

Photo cred Kristen Haggard

If you find yourself going through a phase of life that you weren’t prepared for or that you never thought could happen to you, don’t worry, momma. Everything’s gonna be ok. I know it will. I know it will because I’ve watched the movie and I know it ends beautifully.

I’ve been where you are. Ok, maybe not exactly where you are. For example, I’ve never been to Oregon so if that’s where you are- I’ve never been there. But I HAVE been overwhelmed and alone and, well… let me take you back to Easter Sunday 2008.

There I was, my newborn baby girl sleeping peacefully one room over, wielding a metal rod that I had ripped out of the wall over my then-husband like an angrier, yet much smaller Jason Voorhees. A chihuahua-sized Jason Voorhees. As you can probably tell, not my finest moment.

I didn’t want to hurt him. I just didn’t know what else to do. After years of hearing him tell me I was crazy and I was irrational and I was making innocent situations look worse than they were, I no longer trusted my judgement. I no longer trusted my interpretation of reality. And now that my world was collapsing, I no longer trusted my emotions.

Overwhelmed and hurt and sad and disappointed and betrayed was not how I expected to feel at that time in my life. It was supposed to be a happy time full of new beginnings with the family that we created, learning how to be the best mom to my beautiful baby girl. This time was supposed to be for her. Instead, I was trying to figure out my next move. My thoughts were consumed with getting her to a place of stability. It felt like I was trapped in a bad dream and couldn’t wake up.

My first marriage was not a healthy one. There was a lot of bad stuff. The thing about emotional abuse is that it doesn’t leave bruises or cuts. It isn’t illegal so you can’t call the cops and say, “officer, this man hurt my feelin’s reeeeal bad now CUFF EM”, cuz they’ll look at you like you’re crazy. And, for me, my metamorphosis from strong, certain, self-confident to timid, weak, and unsure started so slowly that I didn’t realize the hold he had on me until it was too late. I didn’t realize it until I was left living in the shell of my former self. An ugly shell. Like one of those gross cicada shells that makes you physically recoil at the sight (no offense, cicadas… but y’all are pretty gross).

He was in the US Army and when I had my daughter we were stationed outside of Seattle, WA. I was 3,000 miles away from all of my family and all but 2 of my closest friends. He lied. He manipulated. He was hurtful. According to him, I didn’t speak properly. I wasn’t confident enough. I needed hobbies. I didn’t workout the right way or enough. I didn’t eat the right food.

Then there was the disagreement about girlfriends. He ultimately admitted that he had them, continued the relationships, and I didn’t agree that he should. When I was 7 months pregnant he told me he had been cheating on me throughout my pregnancy. At that moment, the week before Thanksgiving, I went numb. Autopilot took over.

Who I thought I was, what I thought I had all evaporated with each word that he spoke at that moment. He SAID he was breaking it off with her. He SAID he made a mistake. He SAID he needed time to grieve that relationship??? Whatddafuuuuq?!

Nothing made sense anymore. There was no logic or reason. Because you can’t apply logic to an illogical situation. And you can’t reason with someone who isn’t reasonable. But I wanted to believe him because I wanted my daughter to have a whole, together, happy family with parents who love each other. I wanted my daughter to have parents who demonstrate the way marriage should be.

Over the next few months, as I was excitedly preparing for my baby girl, I was also learning a hard lesson: actions speak a truer message than words. A month after he admitted to cheating, on our anniversary, he told me he was going away for training. Instead, his girlfriend flew into Seattle. He spent our anniversary with her. While my dad was on the brink of death from a stroke the following month, he left me at the hospital, in the ICU waiting room 8 months pregnant, to get drunk with a different girlfriend. Three weeks later, when I was laying in the hospital after having my daughter, he casually laid his phone on my bed revealing a naked pic of his girlfriend. All the while, TELLING me he wanted to work things out.

See the shat piling up? And that was just a few months worth of stinky, smelly shat. A human soul can only take so much. We all have a breaking point. And society isn’t very forgiving when we start to show signs of cracking. Not many people care to hear about what happened to get us to the point where we begin to fall apart. But a whole bunch of people will be quick to remind us why we shouldn’t show signs of “weakness”. We have obligations. We have family who need us to be strong. We have bills to pay. We have people counting on us to keep going. So we do. We pull it together. We survive. But we don’t get justice. That’s not part of the deal. We just keep going until the emotional scar tissue hardens around the cuts to protect what was once vulnerable.

My breaking point just happened to occur on a most symbolic day: Easter Sunday. It started out as a happy day. The Easter Bunny made his first visit to my one-month old baby girl. We were getting ready for church to try for some inkling of normalcy. And while my husband was in the shower, his phone buzzed right beside me. I glanced at it to see a text from his girlfriend describing what she would like to do to him in a way that would make Howard Stern blush. I went into the bathroom to confront him and he said, “It’s not like we’re married. In my mind we’re already divorced.” So I snapped. Oops.

I’m not proud of it but I did. I grabbed the metal pressure spring shower curtain rod & I pulled it out of the wall, screws & all. Then I broke it in half & cut some stuff. Like his skin. And then I told him to get dressed because my baby girl deserved to be in church on her first Easter. I was broken. I don’t know why I was so determined to go to church. Maybe because it was such a terrible moment that I couldn’t do anything else. It was the moment I knew there was no saving my marriage. The moment I knew my perfect little girl would start her beautiful little life with broken, divorced parents. I would be a single mom with the weight of her world on my shoulders.

So I let God take over. I literally let Jesus take the wheel. We both got dressed & ready to attend a catholic church I had never attended before. I’m not even catholic. I didn’t know what was happening or what to expect. We sat near the back, the baby in her carrier. And the priest began to speak.

Having grown up in Church, I knew the story. I prepared for the customary, superficial retracing of Jesus’ actions & the events that I’d heard over & over again. In my mind I figured it would be easy to go through the motions of the service & check that box so I could get on with the whole “life falling apart” theme I had going. But as the priest began to speak, I realized that his message was different. Or, maybe I just hadn’t needed to hear it in that way before.

He reminded those in attendance that morning that leading up to the Last Supper, Jesus knew He was facing death. He knew He would be facing a death that wouldn’t be without tremendous physical & emotional suffering. But Jesus faced what He knew was inevitable with a calm dignity. (Now my ears perked up. Did this priest know that I needed to hear this take on the Easter story?) Because as bad as it was going to be on Friday, and as empty as He would be & as hopeless as his followers would be on Saturday, He knew Sunday was coming. Jesus knew that on Sunday He would defeat death & everything He would have gone through would be worth more than anyone could fathom.

Until that day I don’t think I’d ever sobbed in church. Y’all, I straight ugly-cried in front of God and everybody. Sitting in the wooden pew I heard words that felt as if they were meant just for me. This season was my Friday but now I knew my Sunday would come. And if Jesus could face the terrible death He knew He was facing, surely I could pull myself together enough to walk through something far less with my head held high.

Before hearing that sermon I was too afraid of failing to leave my marriage. Divorce meant I’d failed. If I failed at that, how could I succeed at living life on my own? How could I succeed at figuring out my livelihood AND successfully raising my baby girl?

I didn’t have any money. He had us in crushing debt that was all in my name because he had no credit. I wanted to go home to my sick dad & my mom so badly but the recruiters I talked to about jobs in Atlanta told me that I wouldn’t be able to make anywhere near the same amount of money I was making in Seattle, & even that wasn’t enough to cover childcare. The word “stuck” doesn’t even begin to describe my inability to make a move. Most would probably have asked for help. That would have been the normal thing to do. But I didn’t want to ask anyone for help. I was grown. I got myself into the situation I was in so it should be up to me to figure it out, even if it meant staying.

However, I knew I deserved better. More importantly, my daughter deserved to be raised in a home full of laughter and love and happiness, not darkness and selfishness and sadness. I didn’t know how I would give her that but I knew I had to. So I started to put one foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

Easter that year fell early, in March. By the second week in April, I started a job with a company that paid to help me move home to Atlanta & gave me a job offer after only 2 phone interviews. The offer they extended raised my pay by 22%. My saint of a mom graciously allowed me to stay with her until I could get back on my feet & within 5 months I had a brand new apartment close to work for my baby & me to begin our life on our own. 18 months later I met my future second husband. (Ok, I stalked him for 6 months, but whatever.)

We gave our baby girl a baby brother. We’ve purchased our forever home, we have 2 dogs (not sure why I feel that my dogs are an integral part of that sequence but I’ve made the decision to keep them in because I love them so… you’re welcome). I’ve since increased my pay by 311% in Atlanta after moving from Seattle in 2008. Blow me, negative recruiters in the greater Seattle area! Now, no matter what life throws at us financially, I can help us handle it.

Looking back, I believe God was telling me that Sunday that I’d be ok. That sometimes life has to get worse than you could imagine in order for you have more than you ever thought possible. So now I’m telling you that you’ll be ok, too. Maybe you don’t need to hear this message today. I hope you never do. But if you do, or if a friend does, it’ll be here.

You are exactly where you need to be. You are brave. You are amazing. And, more importantly, you’re gonna be ok. If you’ve been there and survived the trip, leave some words of encouragement in the comments for those still fighting to finish the journey. Stay pretty, y’all.