When the Spirit is Quenched Love Dies 

These last two weeks have been the worst two weeks of my life, without a doubt, and I’ve had some really bad weeks. Even the two weeks of hell in the northeast this time last year, while sitting at my mother’s deathbed with my siblings who never  liked me, and going through it all alone, were not as bad as these past two weeks. 

Having been served divorce papers at the only happy place I had left, the food pantry where I volunteered,  now they don’t want me back, there is just no end to the heartache and tears. I think they may have been more embarrassed and made uncomfortable than I did.  I mean really, to serve divorce papers at a church in a food pantry, that’s dipping pretty low.   I’m left adrift out in this stormy sea in my dingy, and the tempest and waves are overwhelming my little boat, and I’m sure it’s going to capsize.  That’s exactly how I feel.  It’s dark on this black ocean,  even the daylight is dimmed with black storm clouds, and the nights are filled with teardrops falling like sheets of rain. 

You know those storms when the rain is coming down so hard, and your windshield wipers are on high, but can’t come even close to clearing the windshield enough for you to see 20 feet in front of you, and all you want to do is pullover until it lets up. That’s where I am, but I can’t pullover, I’m on the a roadway with no shoulder to cry on.  So, I cry out to GOD, and I asked Him, what happened?  For the past several days, I’ve had flashbacks of a different time in my life  when we younger, in our 20’s and 30’s and the things we used to laugh about.  Those flashbacks have felt so real.  And I’ve remembered when my husband did love me.  It’s been so long, I almost forgot, that at one time, he really did love me.  I was secure, I trusted him with everything I had, I knew in my heart, he would never leave me, or desert me, and we would grow old together.  Then something went so terribly wrong. 

I lay in here in bed, crying, my children can hear me bawling my eyes out, the same way my mother did when it happened to her back when I was a teenager.  I hated listening to that, but I can’t hold it back like I had been before this.  I’m so lost and confused, and I can’t sleep.  So, tonight, I let my mind drift into the past, because I wanted to find out what went wrong, where it went wrong.  There had to be some kind of event that so traumatized my husband that he has become the polar opposite that he was to me.  When did the love die, I asked GOD.  Sadly, I realized when it died, and that was February 2014, that’s when my husband’s heart for me and our marriage completely died.   It had been dying ever since the stroke in 2010, the fatal blow, though, was prostate cancer.  That was the very end. 

For the next couple of years, he kept accusing me of hating him, when that was never the case.  He kept telling me that I made him feel like he never measured up.  I always tried to encourage him, but the more I encouraged him, the more he felt like he didn’t measure up.  My exhortation of him only made matters worse instead of making him feel better.  He gave up on life.  He gave up on love, he gave up on us, and he gave up on GOD.  From there it was a steady slide down that slippery slope from love to indifference and now to hate. 

I lay in my bed, crying at night, because I miss my husband, the one who loved me.  I can see him in my head, and I can remember him in my heart, but he is gone, and he’s never coming back.  He has died inside.  I keep asking GOD, how did this happen?  I asked Him to show me in the Bible someone who lived through this, and immediately, King Saul came to mind.  The Bible says that when King Saul had reached a certain point of drifting from GOD, that the Spirit left him, and then a tormenting spirit entered him, and it dove him mad, literally.  I’ve been reading in 1^st Samuel, as of late, and the difference between the younger King Saul, and the older one is like night and day, and that is exactly what happened to my husband.  I’ve pleaded with GOD to bring back the “old” younger man, but GOD has refused.  He has the power to restore my husband, but for some reason, He is not going to.  This devastates me. 

I know that GOD has a reason for everything He does and does not do, and even if we cannot make sense of it, someday, we will be able to see His purpose in it.  Right now, I’m drowning in a sea of hated which used to be an ocean of love, an ocean I never saw turning so dark, so black, so full of doom and gloom.  The man that is living inside the body of my husband now, is NOT the man who lived inside his body for near 30 years.  I don’t’ recognize that man living in his body, he is a complete a stranger.  I used to know everything about my husband, how he thought, what he thought, and now, I know nothing about him. 

The thing is, I’m not sure who it is that he hates.  I think that he hates himself so much, that he has projected that hate on to me.  I think he hates how life turned out, that he’s found a way to blame GOD and me, instead of accepting GOD had a different plan than his dream life.   I  think that he feels like such a failure, that he needs to blame someone for his failing, and that has to be me.  I think that he doesn’t see what GOD sees, not a man who failed, but Christ’s righteousness covering over our short-comings, but he is tormented by a demon that continually tells him what a failure he is, who doesn’t, hasn’t, and will never measure up.  He has given into that demon, and stopped trying. 

The LORD has shown me that he gave into that demon a few years ago, giving that demon complete control over all his decisions from there on in, and each year, like King Saul, he has drifted further and further away from the love he used to have for me, his family, and his GOD, and the dreams we had for our family.  In his eyes, GOD has let him down, and that deep disillusionment in GOD was because what he thought he would get never materialized. That perfect job that he dreamed about for years was never was dropped in his lap, and his anger at GOD about began to so grieve the Holy Spirit, the he slowly just let himself die inside.  He grieved a dream that died, and then his heart died. 

That demon of disappointment, discouragement, damning him has oppressed him so much, so strongly that it has overpowered the Holy Spirit living in his heart.  I know, one could say, but that’s impossible, isn’t it?  I would have thought so, until I read that verse, about quenching the Spirit. That means it’s possible to so quench it so much that it is almost as if it was never there, like the love he used to have for me.  I had forgotten that there was a time in his life when he did love me with all his heart, but his heart died when his dream died.  

One year ago today, my mother passed away.  This is a horribly sad day for me, because not only did I lose my husband when his love died, but I lost my mother, also. It was then that I found out her love had died for me a few years back, the same time my husband’s love for me died.  My mother sided with my husband, she always did like him more than me.  Another thing that drew my mother was that my marriage failing reminded her too much of her awful time in her life when the exact same thing happened to he. She had avoided talking to me for the last couple of years, and pushed herself away from me, because talking to me, watching me go through this hell brought her back to hers, and she didn’t want to go there, anymore.  I don’t blame her.  The two people I loved the most in this world I’ve lost over the last few years, my mother and my husband.  Tell me, how much pain does it take for GOD to make it stop?