My Journey to Widowhood

Opposites Attract

Michael and I had little in common, however we had so much fun together. He was smart, knew things that most people don't (he called this his useless knowledge), and made me laugh. I on the other hand am a hopeless romantic with an odd sense of humor. He liked metal music, I despised it at the time. He watched sports on tv, and I was hoping they would make a field goal when they shot the basket. He loved to lift weights and exercise, me not so much. He liked to eat healthy, I was baking a cake. Through all of our differences, we made a perfect fit, and our love continued to grow. I look back now and in confidence know that God put us together for a reason.

When I first moved in with him, he worked in the oilfield and kept weird hours. He had to get up in the middle of the night, and had his ringtone set to Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne. Imagine waking up to that at 2:00 A.M.! I would come flying up out of the bed with my heart thumping every single time, with him laying next to me laughing.

He loved scary movies and Halloween was his favorite holiday, but he wouldn't go to haunted houses, and he was super easy to scare. I was always jumping out from behind doors, or pulling some type of prank on him. I think the best one was the time I pretended I was tired and went to bed early. He came in and laid at the other end to play XBox, so I stayed real still for quite some time, and then I slowly sat up with a Freddy Krueger glove on and ran it down his bare back. He moved faster than I had ever seen him move and was hollering like a little girl trying to get to the light switch. I never let him live that one down.

Once I made us a romantic candlelit dinner, and I think it may have been the most awkward that either of us had ever felt. That just wasn't who we were as a couple, and afterwards he said, "Can we never do this again, please?". We laughed and I agreed.

Another time we were sitting at the lake fishing and the radio said that Saturn had sold for however many billion dollars. I was appalled and couldn't understand why someone would buy a planet that they couldn't see for all that money. He never let me live that down since it was actually the Saturn car company that had sold.

I remember standing in the bedroom one day folding clothes. I was singing in my opera voice when I noticed him standing in the doorway watching me. I smiled and asked if he liked it, and he replied, "Compared to what? A root canal".

He had a friend who would come over on Sunday's and watch NASCAR. I didn't care for it so I would shut myself in the bedroom and watch tv. The friend got them each a ticket to attend a race, but when it came time to go, his wife was in the hospital. I agreed to go with Michael although I wasn't looking forward to it. Once the cars started whirling around the track, I was hooked, and we attended multiple races over the years. Me cheering for Jeff Gordan because Michael didn't care for him, and once he retired, I chose Kyle Busch because he didn't care for him either. I made sure that I wore t-shirts, hats, bracelets- the whole nine yards to aggravate him.

We were all about having fun together, until we weren't.

Over the years Michael started to drink more and more. He looked forward each day to getting home from work, pouring himself a whiskey and Diet Coke, and playing his guitar. I felt as though I was doing all the work at home, and we began to argue about it. We had bought a small building that was detached from the house for him to play in. I no longer enjoyed the sound of his screaming guitar playing metal music and it started to get to me. One Saturday afternoon he was out there playing, drinking his whiskey, and smoking cigarettes, while I was caring for Logan and burning leaves in the yard. I got myself worked up, stomped out to the building, and swung the door open. I told him that I was tired of taking care of everything while he played guitar and got drunk. He jumped up, grabbed his guitar off of the stand, walked right past me out to the burn pile, and threw his guitar in the flames. We were screaming at each other, me in disbelief that he had done it, and him yelling "Isn't that what you wanted? Are you happy now?". Once he sobered up we were able to talk about the situation and came to a resolution that he could play for an hour or so in the evenings, and a few hours on the weekends, however he needed to make more of an effort to spend time with Logan and I, as well as help out more around the house. We went and bought a new guitar, however nothing was resolved. He went right back to playing, drinking, and smoking in the building for as long as he wanted while I did everything at home.

In June 2014, I asked him for a divorce. It wasn't because I didn't love him. There was never a day in our relationship that I didn't love him. The reason I asked for a divorce was because I did not want my child raised in an alcoholic home, and I wanted a partner, someone to share in the responsibilities of life with. He wasn't the man that I had married. I felt as though his drinking took time away from me and our son, and in his eyes, he wasn't hurting anyone. The way he saw it, he wasn't in the bar or out running around. He was home, and he just couldn't understand that not only was he hurting himself, but also Logan and me. The thing was, we couldn't go anywhere in the evening time and that bothered me. He would get up early to go to breakfast and shopping on the weekends, but if it got past noon he didn't want to go because he was already focused on pouring that drink. He cried when I asked for a divorce, said that he would work on his drinking, and asked me to give him one more chance to do right by us. I reluctantly agreed. He slowed down on his drinking and spent a little more time with us and a little less time playing his guitar, but I couldn't get him to stop drinking.

As that teenager with the boyfriend that I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, I remember praying for my future husband. It was a strange feeling planning a life with my boyfriend and feeling like my heart was also elsewhere. I felt like my future husband needed me and my prayers for him. Even though I didn't know him yet, I felt deeply that he was having troubles in his life. When I would pray for him, I felt such emotion. I remember sitting on my bed at 17 years old crying for someone that I didn't even know who they were or what they were going through. I would pray for my future husband and then receive an overwhelming feeling of peace. I continued to do this for months. 

One night Michael was telling me about his childhood, how his stepdad did not treat him well, how he moved around from place to place and school system to school system, and I started to cry. I was 3 years older than him, and I told him that was around the age that I had started praying for my future husband because I felt that he needed me. We both sat in silence at the realization that the person that I was praying for was him, the very one that I knew that I was going to marry the night that I laid eyes on him.

That's God.

Looking back, I also believe that maybe I was being led to pray not only for the teenager that he was and the things going on in his life then, but also the man that he would become and what was going on in our lives at this time.

I told him to save the drinking for the weekends. Pick Saturday or Sunday to drink all that he wanted to, just not every day. I begged and I pleaded. I repeatedly told him my reasoning and my feelings. I was depressed. I was lonely. I was a single parent in a two-parent home. And I was confused. Of course, I wanted my marriage to work. I loved this man with all of my heart and soul, but was I willing to stay with him at the expense of my happiness?

I convinced myself that he would eventually see things from my perspective and change if I just stuck it out. I had it in my head, that he loved me so much that he would wake up one day with a completely new way of thinking and realize that I was right all along. I thought that if I just focused on the good times, created special moments for us as a family, and stopped harping on him for drinking, he would change.

That didn't happen. It seemed that nothing that I tried would resolve the situation. I prayed that God would intervene and lead us through this part of our marriage. I wanted my partner back, the man that I fell so deeply in love with and felt led to.