The Beginning of the End

For so many, that positive test is the beginning of such a beautiful new chapter. Little did I know, it would be the beginning of the end of the friendship I have with my husband.

No one really talks about how pregnancy, babies, and postpartum affect our marriages, not really. We all assume it's the sleep deprivation, the stress, the crying. We don't really stop to consider how it alters us mothers. I mean, not just our identities, which get completely obliterated, but did you realize conceiving a baby truly alters us? On a biological and chemical level. Something so miraculous in detail and so beautifully peculiar that, if I ever doubted God's existence, this single phenomenon would convict me. It's called fetal-maternal microchimera, the process of which cells from the mother and the baby intermingle through the umbilical chord. The baby's fetal cells and DNA travel around the mother's blood stream and make their way into her organs. Even if the unfortunate happens and the baby does not make it to term, the mother still carries around a part of them within her body forever.

What an incredible God we have that He etched that lovely intimate detail into our being??

However, despite the beauty of that divine biological alteration, we also undergo a more chemical alteration. A war we wage within our brains. A war capable of much turmoil.

I was the 2020 Miss Lone Star State. I was an aspiring model. I was an amateur half marathon runner —I have the box of medals to prove it. I was one of the youngest members of the Lakewood Yacht Club. Likewise, I was one of the youngest home builders in Houston. I was a badass jeep owner. I was a giver of my time and strengths to those who needed help. I was adventurous and daring. I was cool. I was confident. I was fun. I was happy.

But for the past 25 months I have either been pregnant or nursing, and I am not the same woman my husband fell in love with. I am not that of which I was before. And without even realizing, I lost my best friend.

I cannot place blame. We were first time parents and before we knew it, we were repeating the similar journey of pregnancy and postpartum once again. We didn't know the strains. We didn't know how much I would change. We certainly were not ready for the chaos that would be my own brain chemistry and what havoc that would bring.

Cha•os | noun

-complete disorder and confusion

Hav•oc | noun

-widespread distruction

I was so preoccupied with the pregnancies, and motherhood, and the postpartum, I never even saw us start to grow apart. I knew my hormones were not to be trusted, but that is easier said than done. I am anxious. I am sad. I am lonely. I am insecure. I am emotional. I am hormonal. I am depressed. I am broken.

I lost myself. And he lost me too.

He's coping the best he can with the loss of his best friend, and navigating these uncharted waters with the person who's taken my place, which more often than not looks like avoidance. And that, more often than not, triggers me and we fight. Boy do we fight. Though I've come to understand that he doesn't act this way out of spite, but more out of confusion because somewhere along the way we got off the same page.

He just wants his friend back. I just want to understand why he no longer wants to be mine. It wasn't until I accepted and processed my reality that I caught a glimpse of why God intended marriage to be covenant-based, rather than feeling-based. And truth be told, whether your new into your marriage or just celebrating 30 plus years together, God knew we'd go through times of disconnect with our spouses. If you want my honest take —when we hit these moments of disconnect, they are God-sent opportunities to dig your heels in deep, and lean on God. If we seek to reconnect with our spouse, we must first seek our loving and merciful God. It is with His strength and goodness that we will make it through this particularly hard and lonely season, and with His help, we can begin to find ourselves again.

If you can relate in any capacity, do not lose hope. In fact, hold onto it tightly. God has you and He loves you dearly. Lean on Him and trust His plan for you.