13 days of Hell (Days 9-11)

THURSDAY( May 4 2017)

After driving to Biola to get a name of a Psychiatrist to see if I have a personality disorder of some sort I stop by my office at FLC. This whole week I'd been on the phone with various bridesmaids, best friends, mentors, trying to get answers and help from any thing and any one. While at the office, I write to everyone on Facebook that the wedding is postponed. I tell our photographer and event planner it is postponed. Full of despair, I begin to cry, thinking, "What is my life? How did I get here? How did I get here??" I was sobbing. When I get back to my car it won't start. It felt like a spiritually slap in the face of God saying "stop crying! You're still together"! Somehow I start getting filled with a hint of hope when my car won't start, it's bizarre.

My brother picks me up to take me to Bay Cub to teach pilates. I get into a convo. with the ladies and it turns out EVERY SINGLE WOMAN IN MY CLASS WAS DIVORCED. The Spirit tells me how there's no way to know if you're marrying "the right guy", all you can do is choose to love the other person every single day and seek God to bind you together. There is no perfect formula to avoid divorces. Only a perfect God to seek and put our identity in. That night, I begin to read some HW for school on attachment theory and realize how trauma I had in my childhood has destroyed my capacity to trust men and grow a healthy attachment to a romantic partner. As I read the stories of other patients, I read my own story. I didn't have a personality disorder, I had very real pain and trauma from my childhood that was ignored and not dealt with.

That night, Patrick came over and I shared with him what I had learned and how both of us suffered from very unsafe attachments because of how we were raised. We both were overwhelmed by how much we related to these studies. Of course no parent is perfect, everyone has some inner healing to do. This just happened to be our time to realize what the root of our problem was, and it wasn't each other, it was ourselves and how we use our various defense mechanisms in moments of conflict. My anxiety was beginning to make sense.

FRIDAY (May 5 2017) That morning we go out to coffee and have an incredibly healing conversation for this first time in months. We just start talking about dance and I was so relived to talk about something other than "us" and our "problems". I was still feeling a little bit of anxiety. Still didn't feel in love, but was beginning to feel a tad more safe, and was starting to enjoy him. That night I have a dream, and in big letters I see "Mrs. Cook" and then I wake up. That's all it was.

SATURDAY (May 6th 2017)

Patrick picks me up so I can sit-in for the very first time on one of his rehearsals. He heard me when I said I felt disconnected from his life and created a way for me to come and watch their run-through. For the first 4 hours, they were rehearsing so I went to a coffee shop. I was still feeling anxious about marrying him, so I called my mom. I told her how I was feeling but that I also saw us married in the future. I also shared how I couldn't bring myself to cancel our honeymoon Bungalow I had booked. As she prayed with and for me she prophesied that the anxiety I was feeling was just a distraction. For the first time ever I was in the safest place ever to actually feel my deep pain and emotions that had been hidden for so long. That God is actually preparing me for a large ministry opportunity. That this isn't about me and Patrick but the work of the Kingdom. That God is allowing me to be broken down so I could be built up stronger in him for this new mantel he has for me. Just like muscles get torn and then built back up stronger, my foundation was being torn down so it could be built back up stronger in Jesus. As she said this it felt so true. I was filled with relief and joy. Maybe Patrick and I really were going to be okay, and maybe we really would end up together and married.

He picks me up to watch his rehearsal. It was so fun! I loved getting to meet everyone and see what they've been working on. I finally felt apart of his world. All the people he had been speaking of had faces and personalities I could understand. He also shared how much he enjoyed having me there! He also said that he had never invited any girlfriend or person to a rehearsal before. I was like OH- that makes so much sense. Here I was thinking that all his other girlfriends he didn't mind taking to work because they were professional dancers themselves and he was just embarrassed by me, when really he just had never done this before. He never included his previous girlfriends in his work life, but stayed very independent in that sense. It was a beautiful moment of connecting with him. I was starting to feel even more "feelings" for him. Feelings that had been so dead and gone for so long.