i’ve got you

Jan 6, 2024

When I was little, my dad was my world. He left when I was 12 and a giant, man-sized-dad-hole was left in my heart. Subconsciously, I tried to fill that hole with boys. All sorts of boys. All sorts of kissing. All sorts of emotional entanglement. All sorts of dangerous situations (not that I wanted the dangerous situations…they just came with the boys). By the time I was 14, I had already gone steady with one boy for a year, and then was ”promised,” ring and all, to another boy…four years older, who I thought was super cool, but was really, super controlling, super angry, super charming, and super abusive. Other boys, some good, some not-good-at-all, came after that whenever I would work up the courage to break up with the ”promised to” boy. Eventually I dated a kind, wonderful Baptist boy that healed my heart in lots of ways because he wasn’t dangerous or controlling or abusive. He was good. But being with him meant leaving my faith. And that was something I was not willing to do.

After telling God I would never get married, He sent me Richard. It’s been thirty years of love. Thirty years of healing. Thirty years of me learning to trust men. Thirty years of trying again and again and again.

With all that emotional entanglement with boys when I was young comes a whole lot of crazy dreams. When we were first married, they were constant. I had no idea whose arms I was in or where I was at when I would wake up in the morning. When I realized I was with Richard, I would full-body-sob…in gratitude that I woke up in a place of safety…and in anger and embarrassment that I couldn’t get these other boys out of my dreams.

As time went on, the dreams became less frequent. But they were still there…scaring me, hounding me, disorienting me. Last night it happened again.

The miracle is Richard. All I have to do is cry out, “I need you.” And he knows what is happening and reaches out and holds me in his arms with the words, “I’ve got you.”

Those words. Those actions. That love.

It is everything.