Archive for August, 2012

Day T-27 and Counting…

Posted: August 5, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Saturday, July 10, 2010

Tomorrow I’m picking Ceecee up and we’re going to have tapas night at her place. I went to Spain one summer and loved the food, so since I’ve been back, I’ve learned to make all kinds of Spanish tapas. I pair them with different Sherries and we haven’t done it for quite some time. I’m so excited that I started making some of the cold stuff today so it will be ready.

Tonight she’s letting me take her to Branson to eat at Famous Dave’s on the landing. Things have gotten better again and we haven’t really talked about what happened Tuesday morning. I’m just trying to show her that I’m changing and trying to love her in the way she needs to be loved. I know I used to be too needy, so now I’m working on getting my needs met by God, so I can just give to her without needing anything back.

It’s so frustrating, though, to have so much love that I want to give and not to be able to give it. I’ve never known this kind of love, but now she doesn’t really want my love. The verses that I wrote down about love, I’m still saying every day, but now I’m turning them into a kind of a prayer and declaration of faith. I dont’ just say the verses out loud. I put our names into them and speak them out as prayers.

Yesterday, I went to my first counseling appointment. It was amazing. I spent the first 45 minutes thinking it was a total waste of time and money and the last fifteen just completely blown away. He sat at a computer and just asked me questions off a list and I didn’t get to talk about anything I wanted to talk about. He was asking me about my childhood and how I got along with my Dad and all this stuff and I was thinking that this was a stupid idea to come here. Then he just kind of connected the dots with everything I had told him and I’m pretty sure my mouth must have dropped open.

I don’t know what any of it meant, but he sure showed me a picture of myself that made me realize that I do have some issues and some things that need to change. I was pretty eager to make the next appointment and I really want to talk to Ceecee about it, but I’m afraid she’ll just think I’m trying to tell her that I have an excuse for why I was the way I was, or that I’m all fixed now because I went to counseling once. I called Joe and told him that either this guy is really good or really lucky or God just directed the whole conversation.

Day T-29 and Counting…

Posted: August 4, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Thursday, July 8, 2010

I got my bike fixed today and it only cost me $25. Today I rode 15 miles and it was pretty sweet. I don’t know why, but I have it in my mind and spirit that me doing the triathlon is somehow going to have an effect on our separation. It doesn’t make sense, especially now that Ceecee is concentrating on her marathon and probably not going to even be in the triathlon, but I have this mental picture that when I cross that finish line, something is going to break and she’s going to come back to me.

I dont’ know if anyone ever saved his marriage, or won his wife’s love back by running a triathlon, but I believe this, however illogical it might be. I’m going to do this. The triathlon is August 14th, the weekend before school starts. We definitely need to work this out by then or it’s going to really get complicated.

Speaking of school, a teacher friend of mine took me to lunch today. This is the second day in a row someone has bought me lunch and been there to support me and let me talk about my marriage. I told him about the vision of restoring the house and he had something really cool to add. He said that even though the original house looked really great, it wasn’t entirely adequate in the way it was built and that it didn’t just need to be restored, it needed to be added on to and rebuilt correctly.

Day T-30 and counting…

Posted: August 3, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Wednesday, July 7, 2010

One of my friends picked me up last night and took me out for some beers and wii bowling. It helped get my mind off things for a few hours.

Yesterday afternoon, I got out my Bible and began writing out every verse I could find about love and marriage. Then I just started saying them out loud. I also realize that evil is working in this situation and that I need to fight for Ceecee. She probably doesn’t even realize what’s happening, but she is in spiritual darkness and is blind to the fact that she’s being led astray.

I can’t let the things she said yesterday affect me. I have to stick to the plan, which is to love her and show her how much I care. I’ve realized that I can’t change her. I can only change myself and pray to set her free from the things that are holding her back.

This morning I was at the gym and listening to worship music while I was on the treadmill. I was thinking about how much I wished I could go to another church that had really dynamic music where I could just get lost in worship and not worry about people looking at me and knowing what was going on. It was crazy, but my friend Adam called me up out of the blue and asked me if I wanted to go to North Point with him this Sunday. I told him that I did. That was God answering a prayer before I even prayed it!

Today, I emailed Ceecee a comic from “Love is…” that showed a guy playing a guitar for the girl and the caption said, “When he changes his tune.” Then I went to the pharmacy and bought her a care package of vitamins, sports creams (she has some shin splints and muscle soreness that’s affecting her running), a new heating pad and things like that.

She likes receiving gifts. That’s her love language from the book, “The Five Love Languages.” My selfishness has been part of the problem in our marriage, so I want to show her that things are going to be different.

I told her I wanted to stop by and bring her something and she said I could, so I just came to her loft, gave her the care package and told her it was just because I just wanted her to have it. I didn’t try to talk about the other morning or ask her for anything. I just gave it to her, told her I cared about her, and went on my way. I think it surprised her.

In the past, it wouldn’t have been like that. I would have obsessed over what she said and made it into a huge deal that just would have ended up making her feel guilty. I wanted her to see that I wasn’t there to get anything, but to give her something. It was really hard to just leave, but I felt like it was what I had to do.

Afterward, I met Angie at a deli in Republic to talk about what’s going on. She’s having a really hard time with all this because her real Dad abandoned her when she was little and I’ve been as much of a “real” Dad to her as a step-dad could probably be. I just wanted to bring her up to speed on things and also she if she had any insight.

Anyway, it turns it she was the one who signed me up for Mort Fertel’s emails. Apparently, after I called her crying that day and we both realized that this was really as serious as it is, she found a brochure with his website on it and signed me up. She and her husband had their premarital counseling through him and she still had a video series or something that they had bought. I told her how much it was helping and how it seemed like God Himself must have been the one sending them.

I also called a behavioral health center and talked to them about me going in for some counseling. I told them that my marriage was failing, but I think I may be experiencing some PTSD symptoms going back to the tornado of March 12, 2006. Our house outside of Republic was destroyed by a tornado that went through the house while we were in it. It was a Sunday night and we had already gone to bed when I woke up and immediately knew that a tornado was about to hit our house. We didn’t have a basement, so we called the kids and crawled into the hallway, where we laid on the floor while the house was pretty much ripped apart.

I never understood it, but things were never the same after that. I was never the same. Some friends of ours thought we might have PTSD and recommended that we go for counseling, but we never did. Now, I can’t help but wonder how much that event changed me and if that’s really when I started my losing my dear wife. Anyway, I made an appointment for myself and we’ll see what happens.

Day T-31 and Counting…

Posted: August 2, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The pain this morning was unbearable. Not from my ribs, unfortunately. That would have been easy to understand, but it was what happened at the loft that devastated me beyond what I could have imagined.

It rained yesterday and Ceecee called me and asked me to pick her up last night after work. I took her home and I wanted to stay. I don’t think she really wanted me to, but she felt bad about having me drive all the way to Springfield at that time of night, so she said it was ok if I wanted to.

Then I told her about my conversation with Kevin and Deb’s offer to talk to her. She didn’t really say much, but I could tell she was resistant to the idea. She always has been against going to counseling or anything like that. She always says, “I’m not talking to some stranger about our problems.” I told her they aren’t counselors, just two people who have a story. Neither of us wanted to turn it into a fight, so I left it alone.

In the morning, she pretty much told me good-bye again, with no indication that anything would change and I was having a hard time with it. I felt like I was trying to win her back and she wasn’t responding at all, so I brought up the subject. She said she no longer had those kind of feelings for me. She said that she cared about me, but that she was too hurt by everything that had happened and she didn’t know if she could feel that way anymore.

I asked her when I had lost her heart. She said she didn’t know exactly, but that it had been some time. I told her that I didn’t feel like I had really had her heart for years and I couldn’t understand why. Then she told me that I had had her heart completely since we had lived in Missouri.

That was kind of a shock to me. We moved here in August of 2005 and I thought that our marriage had been rocky since before that. She said no, that while we were in Republic, that she would be proud of me while I was playing the bass in church and think, “that’s my guy.” Then she said that she didn’t think she would ever feel that way again and that I needed to go.

I left there completely broken and devastated. Just two days ago, I felt like maybe we were about ready to get back together! I cried until I had no more tears and called people just so I wouldn’t have to feel alone. What am I going to do if this doesn’t work out?

Day T-32 and counting…

Posted: August 1, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Monday, July 5, 2010

Ceecee and I went running in the morning together on the south creek trail. It’s a really pretty place in Springfield that goes through a huge park called Nathaniel Greene Park. She has to work today and we don’t have any plans beyond that.

I called Kevin, the marriage guy that my friend Joe told me about. We just had a brief conversation where he told me that they just invite people to come to their house and listen to their story and then, if they want to talk more, they help people work out their problems. He said that his wife, Deb, is really good at talking with women and getting them to open up and that she would be glad to talk to Ceecee anytime.

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