“Tonight on the drive back to my sister’s, for one moment ... one brief moment, I actually thought about divorcing my husband. It was the only way I could think to stop his family from hurting me anymore.”
Had truuconfessions.com existed in 1994 that would have been my early morning Christmas confession.
That Christmas we had traveled 500 miles to spend time with our families. For two and a half years, we had lived in a neighboring state from where we grew up. We would fly back “home” often to visit family but that Christmas things were so different for us.
We had experienced several very sad and painful moments in 1994. In February 1994, after a one and a half of marriage, we happily decided it was time to start our family. But God had different plans for us. We suffered two first trimester miscarriages and one preterm birth that ended in death. Our son was born at twenty-one weeks in October of 1994. The miscarriages occurred in March and December.
Christmas that year, for us, was not the happy occasion that it had been in the years past. We stuck with our tradition of spending Christmas Eve with my husband’s family and Christmas Day with my family.
Christmas evening we arrived early at my In-laws home. Most of the extended family was not there and not arriving for a couple of hours. My sister-in-law and her family were there as well as my mother-in-law and my father-in-law. I did my best to put on a happy face, but I was in so much emotional pain.
After all, had my son not been born early, I should have been in our home 500 miles away. I would have been about seven months pregnant and my Doctor did not allow his patients to travel after seven months.
Physically my body was a mess. Six weeks after my son’s birth, I became pregnant accidentally and had an incomplete miscarriage. So needless to say, celebrating Christmas was not really at the top of my list.
I sat alone in the living room trying not to cry. Thinking of my family who currently were gathered at a cousin’s house fifteen minutes away. Wanting to be with my mom, my sisters and wanting the comfort they could give me.
Sure, my husband’s family was my family too. But it was not the same. I didn’t have the best relationship with my sister-in-law. My mother-in-law and I got along great the four years my husband and I dated, but once we married and moved away, there was tension between us. Even today, I still believe his mom and sister blamed me for our move, though the truth is, that my husband chose to take a job out of state (and they know it).
Knowing that his family was still a couple of hours away from arriving, I asked my husband if we could go to my cousins for an hour or so. He spoke with his mom and we started to leave. As I was putting on my coat and walking to the door, my sister-in-law entered the room and angrily asked where we were going. When we told her, she flew off the handle. That started a huge argument between my husband, his mom, and his sister. I did my best to stay quiet, speaking up only once or twice. Many hurt words were said. Some directed at me. The argument continued until the extended family began to arrive. The rest of the night, I did my best to just grin and bear it.
At the end of the evening, my husband sat down with his mom to clear the air and I worked in the kitchen with my father-in-law. As my husband and his mom worked things out, my conversation with my father-in-law went from great to horrible. He misunderstood something I said and basically told me, “Don’t let the door hit you in your ass on the way out.”
