A New Journey

I named this blog after one of my favorite qoutes from the Bible


Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.


And as I wrote it I foolishly thought that my house was built on rock, we have education, marriage, faith and common-sense. That illusion of strong foundations has recently been shaken and I feel so foolish to have been blind to it for so long.


I always knew that D sweated from the face when he was a little flustered or nervous and that it bothered him but I never knew how much untill this week when he confided in me that he wanted to go to the doctors and wanted me to go with him. He has a condition called Hyperhidrosis which means extreme sweating caused by social anxiety and an extreme fear of embarrassing or humiliating oneself in public. 


It was only once I started to help him write a diary of how much he had been effected that day that I realized that his whole life is controlled by it, his entire day is devoted to avoiding and preventing it, he loses huge chucks of time to it and avoids things he wants to do for fear of it causing sweating. He said he doesn't know how he can gain full time employment once he grduates next summer and has been trying to think of jobs that won't require social interaction and that he is so worried about it that hes even thought of suicide as a solution to his 'problem'.


I feel so guilty that in six years he caused me problems of depression just by loving me and yet I have failed to even see the scale of his and that in some ways I have made the burden of his worry's worse by pressuring him to become a provider. He is the thing in this world that I care about most, more then my family, more then me, more then being provided for or being able to have children, of all these things the one thing I fear losing most is him.


My journey with God is noway complete, I have still yet to find a church and a home for my faith, but I do now have and feel strong in it. But now that blog is about a new journey the one which D and I have begun to take which is the curing of this thing that blights him.

Praying Away

Coming togther and asking for help had solved our first two tests but the third was for me alone, it was not a practical problem that could be solved it was inside me, resentment, anger, self-loathing, blame. I had harboured these sort of feelings before, they manifested and turned inwards creating depression.

But this time I had the tools to deal with these feelings, I prayhed for D and myself, I prayed for forgivness for my wrongs and those who had wronged against us, I prayed for my heart to be filled with His love, strength and forgiveness. Slowly they faded, the more trivial first and then the more hurtful, but most importantly with His help these feelings did not turn into depression as they had before.

When I first started this journey it was sparked in part by D remarking that I struggled to deal with things because I had no faith, I now knew he meant. I have the faith to turn anger into forgiveness, resentment into understandings and weakness into strength.

Coming Togther

One evening after begging D for his support we argued for the first time, this was scary as we had not argued before but finally we agreed that there was a problem, we needed to fix it and had to do it togther. Working togther we mananged to get the noise team witness enough for our neighbours equipment confiscated and then noise stopped.

Was it a conisdence that this problem started on the first day back from honeymoon, that it had only been resolved once we came togther or had it been a test, a test to bring us togther?

If that were a test then maybe our other problems were too, maybe D's Mum was not part of our wedding because she was not going to be part of our married life and this was something we had to deal with. In our new found closeness we began to talk, the extent of her neglect was revealed and I agreed to completely leave his contact with her up to him and not pressure him into seeing her as I had done throughout our engagment.

I stopped fearing that there was something not right with him for not wanting to see her, and that our future children would do the same to me. I also knew that it was up to me to give him all the love he needed and make sure he felt it everyday.

A Man's Castle

The loud music from our neighbour continued and I was going to work each day with only 1-2 hours sleep, I began to wake up with headaches that would get worse as the day continued, these turned to migrains and then just the same migraine rolled over from day to the next.

Getting up at 6am I was more effected by the noise then D who got up at 8am, he wanted to ignore the problem and I just couldn't. Soon I began to call out the council's noise team to witness the noise so they may be able to stop him but I never asked D or even considered his feelings towards this and everytime I reached for the phone he would get upset.

This was not just my home but his too and as the saying goes 'a man's house is his castle'. I hadn't considered how invaded his castle must have felt by a couple of strangers with clipboards coming into in the middle of the night, how helpless he felt watching me struggle and the feeling of being a husband unable to protect his wife.

Instead of considering these things I thought he didn't care, I thought him selfish, and once again felt alone.

Our Third Test

The next week we attended a dinner my farther was throwing for all of his friends who had helped at the reception, setting up, packing up etc.

Unfortunately it transpired that they had all been greatly offended by D's mothers boyfriend and their friends during the course of the reception and I spent the whole evening listening to how terrible my wedding was, how terrible my in-laws were, how badly they had been treated by them and by the end of it just felt like complete wreck and that my wedding had been the worst ever.

This, all of the feelings everyone felt, all of the blame I felt, all of the anger I felt towards 'them' D's mother, boyfriend and friends engulfed me. And it kept on spinning round in my head the lies she had told, the promises she had broken, why she hadn't turned up, the wedding gift she promised and we didn't receive and with time more emerged, that her boyfriend had stolen our wedding present from D's grandmother, to fuel the turmoil.

Although not a definable event this is what I refer to as our third test and not only was the most destructive and hardest to overcome, it was also the less shared of the three.

Our Second Test

If our first test started on the first day of our marriage, the second started on the first day back from honeymoon after we came home from a couple of nights at a hotel.

On the first night we were aware of some loud music from the flat downstairs but we were on holiday and didn't have to go to bed early, each night it got gradually worse but we just stayed up later and blocked it out.

By the time Sunday came and we were preparing for our first day back at work the loud music had escalated into a what can only be described as a rave lasting untill 5am. At 6am I got up to go to work and this continued every night.

Our First Test

We made our vows and became husband and wife, sealed with rings and a kiss like those in the movies when the man spins the woman around and she flops in his arms to the cheers of everyone who came to witness us marrying.

After we signed the register and turned around to view everyone seated in the church our vicar Farther John called for our parents to come up to alter. Three parents stood up and came to the alter, our vicar asked again as we searched the pews for D's mother before his Aunt came up linked arms with my farther and we processes out of the church and into the yard outside.

From the alter to the churchyard all D could do was repeat the question 'Wheres my Mum'. Outside everyone surrounded us throwing confetti and various members of our families came up to have their photo taken with us. But as we smiled, D was just squeezing my hand and repeating that question until his sister finally told him that she wasn't there, at that moment he stamped his foot on the ground and shouted a profanity that, thankfully no one but us heard over the cheers and applause from all of our guests.

We stood in the baking sun for what seemed like ageses until the photographs stopped and heat of June felt unbearable in our formal clothes and we turned to make our way to the cars and head for the reception. Just as we turned D's mother appeared and thankfully we managed to get a photo with her.

This was our first test