My personal journey toward finding God in my marriage

In November of 1998, I looked into the eyes of my newborn daughter and fell in love. My whole worldview began to change. My whole life I had intended on working, sending my children to daycare, advancing my career, and providing my children a “rich” educational experience through the myriad programs available. I could not picture myself at home, nor could I imagine how children would benefit from a mother who felt jailed in her surroundings. As much as I respected stay-at-home moms, I knew that was not the life for me. But then, I didn’t really know what it was to be a mother, either. I did not know the pulling at the depth of my soul at her cry, the sensation of not knowing quite where I ended and she began as she collapsed into me to nurse, nor the inexplicable joy of watching her respond to my caress.

I sat on my bed pondering these things as I realized how foolish my previous notions of motherhood were. I had no desire other than to be with her, nurture her, and protect her. I no longer viewed hearth and home as a prison cell, but as a calling. And I was ready to answer it.

Just then, my husband stormed into the room, disturbing my peaceful reflections. As he ranted about some fool at work, I slowly realized that he had just walked out on his job. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. This time, however, I had no patience, no words of affirmation, no thoughts of consoling him to restore the peace of our home. My dreams had just been shattered, and with them went my temper. All I remember saying was “Who is the bigger fool? The old guy who can’t get the procedures straight? Or the man who walks out on his family’s only source of income while his wife is home on maternity leave?” That and something about not wanting to see him again until he had a job that could support us.

But even as he left, and even as he returned several hours later with the news that he had reconciled with his boss, I knew that I would not be able to depend on him to supply our needs. I looked at my daughter and as much as I longed to be with her, I knew that her physical needs were going to depend on me returning to work. And I was bitter.

I don’t know if it is possible to really explain the depth of the betrayal I felt at that moment. Genesis 2:24 says that a man shall leave his father and mother and “shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” One flesh, but in that moment, a terrible blow had been struck to that bond and I felt as if my very flesh were being torn away.

My husband suffers from depression and I have struggled with exactly how to deal with his mood swings and sometimes unpredictable behavior. I remember the day we told my parents about his diagnosis and gave them a brochure from the hospital. My mom looked at it and said, “I was worried it was cancer. At least this we can deal with.” Now it sounds horrible, but at the time I disagreed. Cancer I understand. Abnormal cells begin to grow exponentially, spread and eventually take over the body, killing it slowly as the disease progresses. Depression is like a cancer. It takes hold of its victims, takes over their lives, and has a profound effect on loved ones who look on helplessly. Except you cannot see it and it cannot be cut out.

When my husband talked, I could hear the depression talking. But it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Despite all I had read and all I knew about the disease, I still wanted him to just “snap out of it.” To stop feeding the disease with the lies he allowed himself to believe about himself and those around him.

Believe it or not, this article is not about depression. Nor is it about my husband. Our marriage hasn’t survived for thirteen years because my husband was able to conquer this disease. We aren’t still together because I am a fount of forgiveness, grace, and submission. If this story were about me or about him, I would have filed for divorce the day he walked out of that job. As Dave Harvey says in his book, When Sinners Say I Do, marriage does not succeed because of how compatible we are or how much we love each other. It succeeds because of what we believe about God and hence ourselves.

In Ephesians chapter four, Paul is speaking to the church at Ephesus about how we should behave toward fellow believers. But how much more do his words apply to the marriage bond?

“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph 4:1-3, KJV)

At my core, I am a people pleaser. I cannot stand to feel like I am not meeting the expectations of those around me or that someone is in any way unhappy with me. Despite knowing better, I frequently picked up my husband’s depression and made it about me. I wasn’t a good enough wife. I wasn’t patient enough. I wasn’t a good enough house keeper. I wasn’t doing enough to create a peaceful environment for him to let go of his depression and see how much he was loved. It didn’t help that when he was in a depressive state, he frequently lashed out at me about these very things, placing the blame for his discontent on my failings as a wife and mother.

Many tears were shed and many desperate supplications were prayed as I somewhat frenetically attempted to be the perfect wife keeping a perfect house in the hopes of gaining the approval of my husband. In my frustration, I would pull away, seek distractions and found even simple tasks difficult to keep up with. The more pressure I felt to be perfect, the more I ran from it and the more my duties in our home suffered. Over the years, he slowly learned to cope and to manage his depression. He came to Christ and began to recognize both his responsibility for his own behaviors despite the depression as well as the beauty of grace and forgiveness. His depressive episodes became less frequent, less intense, and much shorter. But I still carried many wounds from my side of the battle and was sometimes surprised at just how hard it was to forgive and let those wounds heal.

Until one day I received a phone call while doing dishes. From the tone of his voice, I could tell he was struggling. I returned to the dishes, muttering to myself how tired I was of this cycle and how frustrating it was to continually be thrust back into the same position. I snapped at the children, yelled at the dog, and attempted to bring the house into a state that would somehow head off the criticism that was inevitable. Needless to say, by the time he got home, the house looked worse than it had before, all the children were arguing, and I was on the verge of losing my temper.

In that moment, I realized where I had gone wrong. For our entire marriage, I had made all of his struggles about me. I had invested all of my happiness as well as my sense of purpose and well-being in him. As all things are in this world, it was a shaky foundation, prone to being washed away in the floods of life. As I escaped from the turmoil into my own mind, the Lord gave me a verse.

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 1Corinthians 10:31

And therein lay my struggle. I looked at the dishes in the sink and realized that I needed to do them to His glory rather than for my husband’s praise. My husband walked in, huffed at the state the house was in, and left to put his things away without greeting. But for once, the action did not feel like knives piercing my very soul.

As I shifted my eyes from my husband and on to God, I stood in full recognition of how far I fell short of God’s standard. But alongside that understanding came the knowledge of grace and the sacrifice Christ had made for me. That was something that could not be shaken by any storm, no matter how severe. And slowly, I learned to forgive my husband for present and past hurts. I felt the scars slowly torn away so that I could again cleave unto my husband and become one flesh.

Check out my article on page 6 of the new flipbook edition of Heart of the Matter Magazine.

Dana Hanley is the imperfect wife of her imperfect husband who has been very supportive of her sharing her personal struggles in dealing with his depression. She now stays home and homeschools her (soon to be) five children. You can visit her at www.principleddiscovery.com.