what did you just say to me?!?!?!

Well, monday morning here I am :) Kinda some deep stuff running through my short haired head this morning. Something I keep thinking about is something that was over 10 years ago coming up here on aug 18th is Josh and my 10 year anniversary!! Along with that comes many memories. Many seem like a different life. Many are not like other stories of happy dating memories and beautiful newlywed years. Im actually having a small anxiety attack just writing these first lines. You see I tend forget these things or shall I say block them out. But lately I look at my husband and think "who is this man i married?" "what is going on, is this my life?" so let me explain this. What got me thinking was that we were thinking back to while we were dating over 14 years ago and saying why we started dating each other. Then he said "ya, you are not the same person you were before cancer" which of course being a women sent off a small lioness in my mind ready to attack into a small sermon about how mean that was, but then I realized it was a compliment. :) We only dated 8 months in high school before I graduated and then 2 months later I was diagnosed with colon cancer. From that point on and for 13 more years to come our lives have NOT been the same. 18 year old dating couples shouldn't have to visit one another in the hospital, travel to other cities for surgeries and worry about if that person will make it to the day or not. Then after 4 years of dating we have the most amazing wedding, bc we are ready to move on. "ok, trial over, lets move on" but the problem early on in our youth is not having the know how to work through any of our soul issues, just cover them up and move on. Josh was not a christian at that time but God was working on his heart. And we just had all our marital issues on hold, we just had to many other "issues" to work through. Our first two years of marriage I would just freely give away to anyone who asked. Its kinda like our youth got stolen, our independence was taken away from my cancer and then we rebelled against that but did it on our own terms. We had no idea what we were doing. We fought like cats and dogs and had no idea how to love under non-traumatic circumstances. But God had a plan, and 10 years later I am allowing myself to see that. One time that sticks out in my mind is when I said something to Josh in what I thought was my normal tone/voice, and he got really mad and later said that I was extremely sassy and disrespectful. I answered that was just how i talked :) who knew, that wasn't actually the way I talked but I was completely unaware that there was anything about myself I would need to change to be in a marriage. No seriously!! We had 80's videos for our pre-marital counseling and im pretty sure laughed or slept through most of them. Then not to far into our marriage, new jobs, new town, began more surgeries. Our rebellion against working on our marriage and our lives together was again put on hold. And for probably 8 years after there just has always been some reason for us to put that work on hold. But wow, to look at what God has done individually in our lives is beyond words. When I look back to myself before I had cancer I was a typical rebellious teenager, one who was given Godly principals but did not get how that applied to me or my life. Now that i look back at cancer, hard marriage issues, hard personal issues, is nothing- i mean NOTHING compared to what God has shown me in how He loves me, how He can use me for His glory, how He can change me lovingly and how that was for my own good not just for my marriage. You see I talk to my husband now with a respect I didn't know i had in me. I deal with my kids with patience i didn't know existed. I though all that stuff just came to you when you got married and had kids. But now I realize that until I completely gave it to God and started using his principals in marriage and in life He engraves in on your/my heart. The difference between knowing Godly principals and living them.
I always knew when i woke up from surgery my super hero josh would be waiting for me, what i didn't know is that in the years to come with my scarred body, scarred and bruised soul that he would still be here loving me and patiently waiting for me. Now trust me he has his own story for personal growth, i'll let him blog about that someday:) But this is my story, I have to relive it so I can see that he made a choice. I used to be bitter that he was such a super hero bc our lives at home didn't feel like such a love story of a 18yr olds to stay together through thick and thin. I thought he would look to much like the bad guy to break up with a girl who had cancer. Here's what he says about that--- "i was given two options: to stay with you and live through a forever life changing event, sickness, and emotions- or break up with the woman I love and forever feel a gap in my life." --- turns out the life changing events have been hard, so hard- but eternally amazing!
I love that Im not the same girl I was before, I love who God has grown me to be and how I continue to see his plan. We seem to want to hold onto who we were bc we are scared. Scared we will have to do too much changing. We are afraid that WE can't do it or change what WE need to. Truth is WE can't do it, thats what faith is. Faith in Jesus Christ changing us into who created us to be. We all at some point in our lives have a decision to make. Until we give our lives to God our souls are dead, we need Jesus to breath life into them. We are created to need him! Before then we can't change because we can't see how to. Oh how i wish i had 10 or probably 50 pages to give more detail into how much work He has done in my life. And thank God for being the third party in my marriage, I can't imagine we would ever have made it even 10 years if He was not.
So I will continue to learn how to love my husband but I will not try to go back and be the person I was when we where dating, I don't ever want that pre-cancer Laura back: this is who I am this is where God has brought me and I'd rather be here in his arms STRONG then on my own WEAK!!!
may God speak to your inner most heart today and remeber that we can't let go of hurt until we let God deal with it, let Jesus' blood cover it.
laura