Part II: A Movie, a Dream, and a Pamphlet
My husband, Rob, and I had no idea the turn our lives would take with a toddler and a newborn. Two days after our son's birth, my husband found out that he was being promoted to manger in his department.
Two weeks after that, our newborn become colic. He cried most of the time and it was very difficult to hold. He moved so much I thought I was going to drop him. I tried placing him in a bouncer and we purchased a baby swing. They were only short-term fixes. His crying returned. He only slept for short period. I was exhausted and felt guilty for not spending much time with our toddler.
I become overwhelmed and so did my husband. Instead of dealing with what was really going on, we saw our home as the problem. So, we begin to look for another home. Nothing seems to be good enough, so we settled for a house being built. It seemed fun to get to design it. It was really a distraction and just added more stress to our pile of stress. Our home sold quickly and my parents were kind enough to let us move in with them for a few months while our new home was being finished. Our son was still colic and nothing seem to help. Rob was either at work or at the new house helping do projects to save us money. I feel alone in raising our children.
I thought things would change moving into the new house, but only new problems replaced some of the old. We had a new house, my husband bought a new truck, and I even started attending my parent’s church. Our son laughed for the first time when he was eight months old, but he was still waking up crying several times at night, some times for over an hour. I would try to console him. My husband would sometimes try as well, but nothing helped. I had to let him cry himself to sleep and it was killing me with guilt. I told my doctor that I was stung out and he mocked me, saying, “isn’t that want drug addict say.’ On top of it, my husband was struggling at work with his new responsibilities, which caused husband and I were fighting more often and that was affecting our toddler.
I grew up hearing that God has His reasons for everything, yet I was feeling like He had tied a rope around my ankles, connected to it a wild horse and sent it running just to seeing how much beating I could take. Mostly though, I felt like a horrible mother and a bad wife. So, horrible that I thought life would be better with me not in it. I thought about taking my own life several times. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was suffering from severe depression and sinking farther into it. So much so that I grew mad at God for not taking my life in exchange for my son’s. I didn’t understand it why I was still alive. I really believed I should not be.
By October, our son was finally starting to sleep more. One night, my husband asked if I wanted to watch a movie. At first, I wanted to. We hadn’t spent much time together and we used to watch movies all the time. But he said he was going to walk to the movie store (back when we could rent movies in a store). It could longer than I expected, and it was getting late.
I was tempted to go to bed anyhow, but I feel God telling me to watch the movie. The name of the movie was Premonition. It was about a woman who has a vision that her husband is going to die. That night I had a dream where I was talking about my husband in the past tense in a black dress in front of a crowd of people many who I knew.
The next morning, I remember it, but brushed it off and went on about my day. Yet, over the next month, I had several more dreams. I saw my father-in-law in tears. I saw my mother-in-law yelling at me. But the one dream that got me was when I saw my husband in a casket. I also had dreaming of him dying in several ways. I begin to wonder what was wrong with me. I begged God to make them stop but they kept coming. Finally, I asked God why I was having those nightmares. When I quieted my mind, I heard him say, he is going to die and I want you to stay with him until he does.
”My reply went something like this, ‘What? No, that cannot be true…I must have heard you wrong. Those dreams were just a coincidence. I mean, logically speaking, they started after watching a movie about a wife who foresee her husband’s death. Plus, I have always had an overactive imagination.’ God told me that he would send me a sign in February to confirm what He said.
For a while, I was baffled by the second half of what God had told me, “I want you to stay with him until he dies. ”I knew that we were having problems in our marriage and I thought we needed counseling and I believed my husband needed help with emotional management and stress, but I never thought about divorce until the following month. In January, my marriage was crumbling. Rob was yelling at me and our children. We were fighting about everything from how the bed was how money was being spend. I ask Rob to go to marriage counseling with me, but he refused.
By the end of January, I bumped into an old co-worker of mine. We were talking about life and my husband came up in the conversation. She told me that he was being emotional abusive to me and our children and I needed to leave him. She warned that I could be held responsible for my kids emotional abuse by staying with him. Her words scared me into seeking out a free consultation from a divorce attorney. Then that night, when I came home, Rob was fighting mad. I finally had enough. I took the kids, I told my husband that I needed some time apart, and went to my parents.
During our separation, during February, he called me to asked me if I had told my parents about his night terrors. (My husband had nightmares where he would think about death and he bolt out soul-shrieking sound and sometime jump out of the bed and ran across the house.It was terrifying to hear and watch. After he calmed down, he would crawl back into bed and hug his arms around me shaking like a child who had a horrible nightmare. I had tried to help him and when he refused to let me, I begged him to seek help, but he refused. So, I did speak to my mother to ask if she had any suggestions. I didn’t want him scaring our children. After a time, I knew God has trying to get his attention through those, but my husband wasn’t a religious person, so religious counseling was out of the question and he refused to go to church with me. ) I asked my husband why and he mumbled something about a pamphlet that he found on the front door. He said that he would talk to me more about it when I dropped off the kids for his weekend.
When I got there, he had cooled off and throw the pamphlet in the outside trash bin. But I was upset, I told him that if he was going to make such a fuss, I needed some more information. So, he pulled the pamphlet out of trash. (It was just on the top of the trash bag.)I was shocked the pamphlet was titled, “A Man Never Knows His Time” The pamphlet was from a local church and I was read it as my husband ripped it out of my hand and threw it back in the trash. I know that it was about accepting Jesus because we don’t know when we will take our last breath.
Deep in my soul, I knew that wasn’t a coincidence. It was February and it was about death. God was making good to show me proof of His promise. I don’t think it was a coincidence that my husband found it either. God wanted him to find it. If I had not left, I would have found that and keep the message to myself. But God used my absence to reach out to my husband. You see, He was convinced the pamphlet was regarding his night terrors and I believe God has trying to speak to him about that. God was trying to show him that He loved him and Jesus was the answer to his fears regarding death.
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