PAIGE
I just felt trapped. I felt trapped in a bad marriage, a fake façade, and health care responsibilities to someone who was still critically injured no matter how bad his choices were. Not that there is ever a good time to have marital problems, but this was particularly untimely because we were on a waitlist to move to Building 62, an outpatient building across the parking lot from the main hospital. It was the next step in our independence. In Building 62, we would not be under the constant supervision of nurses and doctors, which would add the stress of me being in charge of allocating Josh’s daily medicine and blood thinner injections. Knowing the outpatient opportunity was approaching, Josh was pushing himself to hit benchmarks in physical therapy. He needed to prove proficiency in wheelchair transfers to and from the floor, the bed, the toilet, the car, and so on. Those things still had to be done despite what was going on between us.
But all the progress in physical therapy left little time for mental healing and even less time for the health of our marriage. How would we move from full-time care in a hospital to living on our own, I as an amateur nurse and he a double amputee suffering from PTSD who’s grieving the casualties of his platoon, when we were having marital issues? I spent quite a bit of time at the Fisher House thinking about our marriage and where to go from here. I have literally given up everything to be here. I don’t have a job anymore. I don’t have a home anymore. Where else am I going to go? What else am I going to do? Despite all this, I still feel obligated to be here. I still love him, but how are we supposed to focus on Josh’s recovery and deal with this? Therapy. Yep, Josh and I signed up to sit in a room twice a week with a counselor to talk about the ins and outs of why we hurt one another. The first two sessions were terrible. Verbalizing how it felt to work so hard to keep Josh from worrying about things back home and how I constantly stressed about his safety made me resentful. Josh, in so many words, expressed that his fear of this reaction out of me was a huge factor in not being more forthcoming. He feared my judgment, which made my love feel conditional. I scoffed at this notion (which validated what he said), so we spent several sessions arguing and crying. When the sessions ended, we put on our Miss America smiles and went back to being a war hero and a loving wife for family and followers. This was exhausting in itself and really wore on me as the weeks went on.
Our counselor allowed us to argue—mostly me projecting lots of anger on Josh while he meekly rebutted that he didn’t feel loved or accepted whenever he admitted fault. Our problems stemmed from all the things we didn’t say, and I think she knew that we were never going to find a solution if we couldn’t verbalize all the problems. When we had truly grown tired of arguing, I learned several big truths about Josh, things he believes that I didn’t know he believed. He also learned several big truths about me. I was amazed at what I learned about him in therapy. It might seem obvious that I didn’t know a ton of what he went through as a soldier simply because he couldn’t tell me, but I actually was pretty floored by aspects of his opinion on these topics. These big truths were all rooted in themes like respect, serving one another, forgiveness, building and breaking trust, honesty, and disappointment. There were things in Josh’s life that greatly disappointed him that I never knew about, while there were other things in his life that brought him great joy that I didn’t know he cared about. Sometimes memorizing Josh’s coffee order or knowing what brand of deodorant Josh prefers made me believe I knew who Josh was. Really, all that proves is that my husband is a creature of habit. Memorizing habits is not the same as understanding who someone is. I know some men aren’t great at providing information on how they feel, but this is why prayer is so important. Therapy showed us that we had no idea how to communicate with each other. From that point, I prayed God would grant me the discernment of a very best friend—knowing when to pry, knowing when to let something go, and knowing when to revisit when he is ready to talk.
Being in counseling uninterrupted by constant rounds of hospital staff, visitors, and appointments allowed Josh and me to get away from the chaos and make a recovery plan. While it was hard and embarrassing to confess our marital problems to someone, it was the first time we broke the cycle of being angry, going our separate ways, and reconvening when we were tired of being mad. The direction we received from a caring, third-party perspective was invaluable for breaking this cycle. Our therapist created a space where I was free to be upset and wounded without feeling guilty that I wasn’t physically wounded so I could walk out and face the rest of my responsibilities. I gradually learned that it would never be the will of God for me to bottle up feelings and resent my offenders. I was meant to grow and mature by getting to know what a bulletproof marriage could withstand. No, I didn’t let Josh off the hook, nor did I completely trust him for a while, but I did participate with the intention of continuing on in our marriage even though I didn’t think I had the strength. Neither of us was able to make those resolutions without help. What Satan schemed in
