Reminiscence of First Love

This is what I thought during my contemplation and reflection.

We have been married for 14 years plus and going to be 15 years. We have been going through up and down in life together, sick and health, thick and thin, good and bad together.

 Just recently, we fought a lot here and there over the trivial matters.

The expectation bar was getting higher and higher and when we didn't get what we want from our partner, we felt hurt and thought that our partner didn't love us much.

When I first met hubby 17 years ago, he's such a humble and kind boy. He was in between job hopping, his finance was not stable and so was I.

We were not thinking much about money, as long as we were able to eat, enjoy the time together, we were happy. 

We talked a lot and almost everything under the sun. What attracted and impressed me were his patience, kindness and humility. He always listens and sometimes gives me advise that I never think of. He's very gentleman and caring.

I remembered what my mom said when I told her about his current situation. My mom told me as long as he's responsible man and same faith with you, it's alright. Both of you can build the family from the start together. That's why I decided to marry him even though he has nothing on his name.

After that, we had kids and no helper and I decided to be a stay at home mom, taking care the kids while he's a sole breadwinner to provide for our family.

Things are not always bed of roses. He had his struggles in his careers, he faced many challenges, "almost" dismissal etc. While I had my own struggle as stay at home mom. Taking care the household chores alone, three kids with no helper were not easy. Despite, I was given the opportunity to manage my small businesses when my youngest kid was still baby.

Both of us have grown to be more mature in life through different kinds of trainings. Even though sometimes we didn't feel each other's contribution and support directly but we knew that we supported one another in different ways.

3 years ago, God gave us blessing by letting me back to workforce to help in family's finance.

His way was very amazing, I was given a flexibility to work at home and still able to oversee the kids and was given good remuneration beyond our expectation. As I have been trained over 12 years to handle the house chores alone, I felt very easy to do the job.

Of course, it's not because of my own strength, but God provided everything I need for the works that I did. Things have move fast and few months ago I was promoted to different department and given pay raise 50%. That's another blessing from God.

When I received the pay rise and our wealth accumulated, I felt that I should be humble and live low profile, thus I decided not to splurge on physical appearances or appear in social media to get the "likes" and "followers" or "admiration/adoration".

My mission is clear, I just want to get the job done, helping the company to grow and profitable and wealth accumulated for paying our new house and kids' education.

As for him, it's the opposite of my mission.

He felt that he didn't have any confidence/self esteem in the past 12 years because of the financial status. And now we had wealth accumulated, his confidence is up and care about physical appearances, what he wears, what people think etc. He is now into social media as well.

This is where things started to deviate where our mission starting to be different.

He's easily getting emotional when he didn't get what he want from me and thought that I am selfish and never think about him. He wants me to change as he also change for my sake.

On the other hand, I feel trapped. I no longer able to share my feeling freely anymore, I can't give him any critics afraid that he took it differently. When he said sarcasm to me, I just kept quiet and ignored it.

I just felt that he's lost.

I wanted to help him, but I didn't know how. The more I talk, the more things that can go wrong.

Thus I only can pray to God to give me grace, strength, courage and wisdom to walk this journey with him and I pray so that one day his soul comes back to God, longing for God's love because I know that only God's grace and love that able to bring him back.

I always love him even he's gone astray and what I want is just his soul come back to God. He can hate or hurt me or make me as a scapegoat and I take that as privilege to bear the cross.