Before, In-between, and After

For years I've complained about not having a time before abuse. There's no reclaiming me, because the only me I've ever known was fragmented. Lately though I've been thinking that I don't have an after - at least not yet. I have a before - one filled with trauma, dysfunction, pain, addiction. I have my now - this place of in-between where I'm healthier and still not done working through all the things that linger in my present from my before. I don't have an after yet - an after I grew up, after my marriage healed, after working through trauma. 

I'm in this in-between. I don't have the end of the story yet. I don't know if I get to have a happily ever after. My husband has been wrestling with what he believes or maybe more accurately what he doesn't believe. The writing has been on the wall for a long time, but this week he finally verbalized what I've known to be true for several years - he's done with Christianity. I want to be careful to not tell a story here that isn't mine to tell. This is his journey and this place that he's in, I believe that it is a good place, a healing place, even though it is painful for both of us. 

Once again I feel like I am being asked to open my hands and let go, to stop trying to control my world. This illusion of control has allowed me a false sense of security. The truth is that whatever he believes or doesn't believe, he's mine. I'm proud of him. Proud of him for being honest with himself and with me. Proud of him for being willing to let go of something he's been taught his entire life because it's no longer true for him. 

I'm heartbroken for me. I'm lost, bewildered, wondering how is this too part of my story. The two things I wanted in a husband are the two things that my husband has abandoned. (The other thing was someone who shared my love and passion for music - specifically a guitar player). And in the middle of my hurt and yes my anger (though who I'm angry with, I really don't know), I have this fierce love for him, something that I haven't felt before. I'm holding onto him not in a clingy co-dependent desperate way, but in this healthy passionate protective way. In a he is mine and to mess with him is to mess with me kind of way. 

I love him more now than I did when he was doing the things that I thought I wanted him to do and be. I'm discovering that I love who he is - even when it doesn't look like what I hoped it would look like. I don't know what my after with him is going to look like, but I think that I'm beginning to actually enjoy the discovery of the in-between.