When Life Is Hard and Marriage Hurts {Rising Above Unhappy Times}

Honestly, the memories are still fresh.

They’ve long passed and healed, yet they’ve left scars.  Not scars that remind me of pain, but scars forever reminding me of the power and hope of a God who saves.

Life was upside down. Our once chaotic, yet predictably peaceful existence as a family of four had disappeared in a moment.

We had stepped into the world of international adoption and fallen deeply in love with a little girl God called a Schumaker long before we’d ever seen her face. We didn’t know it, but our little Schumaker had suffered the unimaginable and the trauma and neglect had taken its toll on her mind and body.

Classes. Books. Counselors. Doctors. We did it all in preparation, but none of it touched the depths of the battle we were about to fight.

Malnutrition, PTSD, RAD, Marfans, PANS, PANDAS, Scoliosis, Strabismus.

Raging that consumed most of the day.

And months of sleepless nights blurring and overwhelming an exhausted mind.

“I’m sorry. This little girl is the most complicated we have worked with. We don’t know the answers. You have to understand, healing may never come,” said doctor after doctor.

To which I cried out,

“God, this wasn’t what we signed up for.”

As we ached with love for this child God had gifted us, we grieved for her wholeness and for ours.

And we coped in the only way each of us knew buy nolvadex united states how.

I think we all do that.

We develop our individual coping mechanisms to deal with unhappy times. Part of that is our unique wiring and another part is a byproduct of our upbringing.

It makes rising above the unhappy times hard to do. And it’s why so many marriages fall apart when tragedy strikes. It’s often why marriage hurts.

To finish reading our personal story of rising above the unhappy times, follow me over here to my friend, Crystal Twaddell’s blog. She’s a precious hope-giver who relentlessly pursues the heart of God and in so doing, blesses me abundantly.  I’m honored to join her as she shares hope and encourages others in their commitment to marriage.

If you’d like to infuse more hope into your life, consider joining the Searching for Moments Community. You receive access to the Library of Hope filled with resources to encourage you through the day-to-day. Because I am currently in the midst of both participating in Crystal’s marriage series and hosting a marriage series here as well, I will be adding fun new marriage content to the Library of Hope! Don’t miss out!