Infectious Disease

There were a lot of things about marriage for which I wasn't prepared. I could write a book. One of them goes to the core of who I am as a person, and that is that I'm incredibly empathic.

I recently started reading a book entitled Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much.The author postulates that for people like me, weight loss is more than just calories in being less than calories out. She claims that because we spend so much time absorbing the energy of the people around us, it causes us to be less able to lose weight.

The book was a little out there, I'll admit. I didn't read the whole book because she was asking for some pretty serious commitments of activities to which I couldn't commit. I will say that the premise was out there but I could relate.

I mention all of this because being empathic especially has an impact on my marriage. My husband is my best friend, the father of my children, the person with whom I'm spending the rest of my life. It would be insane to think that our moods wouldn't collide, intersect and mix together.

I am by nature an optimistic person. I will admit that over the past 5 years, my nature has taken quite a pounding. It's been an unfortunate series of events on all sides. The one thing that has saved us as a couple has been our mutual trust in God. We know that, no matter what, He is absolutely in control.

The problem is that we are two mega-control freaks. We know that He is in control but we are freaked out that we don't know the details, that there's no overlying blueprint to our lives that we can see, touch, feel. It has dogged our good natures at every turn. Specifically during the months of August and September, we struggle and grapple with what is going to happen to our family.

Every year, I do my best to shield my optimism against Brian's pessimism (he would say realism). It is mostly a losing battle, one that is waged in in my heart and mind. My mood this month has been in good shape because I've been working out and eating well. I am struggling to get enough sleep and that has worked against me. I am also struggling to get enough spiritual feeding.

And that is when doubt and fear creep in, slowly, subtly, peeling away the shield I have up. Today has been one of those days, when I am feeling low and discouraged not because of circumstances in my life but because of the circumstances in Brian's life. True, there's a lot of intersection. True, we are working toward common goals that are seeing common setbacks. The point is that I am not required to be discouraged by the contract of marriage.

It's a tough thing, to keep one's identity when married. Tougher still when your lives have been battered by multiple storms. I know, in my heart of hearts, that everything is going to be okay. It always has been. I'm not joking when I say that in the times we are most desperate, things just show up for us. It has not always made sense but it has always been on time (not always ours, but on time in a cosmic sense).

So it is that I find myself close to tears. My heart is breaking because I can't erase the doubt and fear clouding my husband's heart. I want so much to help him get past his fear. I want so much to help him see the future that I see for our family. I don't know exactly what it looks like, but I know that it resides solidly in God's hands. I don't depend on my husband to pay our bills. I don't depend on my husband to meet all my needs. That would be so completely unfair to him. I depend on God. I see God as the provider.

It's a tough thing to grapple with at midnight. Perhaps I'll sleep on it and see how we're feeling in the morning.