The Weight of the World

Some days the whole committing-myself-to-one-person-for-the-rest-of-my-life thing still frightens me to my core. Not because I doubt Chuck’s faithfulness. But because I doubt my own. I have never been a fighter. I have been a “flighter”. I run from my problems until they go away. When I get sad, or depressed, I curl up into a little ball, blocking myself off from the world until I can summon up the energy to come up for air.

 

The man who calms my fears and decorates a mean Christmas tree.

It’s sick and unhealthy but it’s the only thing I know. And it’s particularly problematic because I’m a hyper-sensitive person. No, really. Sometimes the ugliness and sadness of the world literally leaves me feeling crushed. I hear stories of little girls being raped of their innocence and I feel physical pain in my heart. When I know a family member is hurting and suffering, I’m completely unable to be happy in my own life- no matter how perfect it may be.

 

 

And so Sunday night, I arrived home completely worn down from an 8-hour traffic-filled drive that allowed me way too much time with my thoughts. I was emotionally, mentally and physically broken. When Chuck got upset with me over something completely trivial, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I collapsed into a heap on the floor of our basement sobbing for nearly an hour. The suffering of my family in their own respective ways, the stress of drama with my in-laws and the never-ending stream of consciousness surrounding when I’ll ever be ready to be a mother just crushed me and I begged Chuck to leave me alone to my overwhelming sadness.

 

I don’t like to think of myself as someone who is overly dramatic. Rather, I think it stems from years of keeping everything bottled up inside. The trauma from living in an abusive home left me paralyzed and I refused to allow myself to experience any type of emotion for fear I would never ever recover. In college, my friends saw me as this unfeeling, unemotional robot. Which is not my personality at all. Chuck was the person that broke down my walls. And once he did, I just haven’t stopped feeling. It’s hard, but sometimes I feel like it’s essential. Someone needs to cry and hurt for the millions of people in this world, who are similarly unable to allow themselves to feel. Someone needs to carry the burden of this broken world- for it is the only way it will change.

 

So as I lay curled up, mascara streaming down my face on the cold, dirty cement floor- Chuck did leave me alone. For some time, and then, like he knows to, he came down and held me. He forced me to verbalize my pain and he talked me through it. I sobbed into his chest, leaving puddles of tears on his t-shirt. And then I returned his kindness and allowed him his opportunity to be similarly vulnerable and tell me his pain.

 

It’s times like these when I know we belong together. We are both such imperfect, flawed people. But we have found the one person who can look through the brokenness and just love on each other. I am indescribably thankful that God has blessed me with the person who is able to relieve some of the burden of carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.