I am feeling like such a huge hypocrite today. Who am I kidding? I have been feeling this way for months! I have shied away from even writing here… the pain was so harsh, the shame so deep. So today is the day that I pull back the curtain… Brace yourself.

PTSD is a monster.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  The one demon that we cannot seem to conquer, to break free from.  Although our reconciliation is a miraculous thing, there has not been much of a happily ever after for us yet.  Not for lack of trying though, I assure you.  After three very intense overseas deployments, my husband is scarred.  He is changed.  He is at war inside himself.

The result… Our family is often at war with each other.  My marriage often feels more like a war zone than a partnership.  And for the three years since his last return home, I have had a front row seat to the dark progression that is Post. Traumatic. Stress. Disorder. All of which has come to an impossible “head” within the last 72 hours.

The choice… To have to choose between staying in my marriage and protecting my children from the war zone is an absolutely impossible choice! They do not understand any of this. They just feel the fear, the hurt, the chaos that seems to surround us for now.

The solution… I am hopeful that there is an existing solution. An answer to all the pain. For all of us. After many hours of prayer, tears, pleading, and weeping, last night my soldier finally agreed that this was a problem bigger than us both.  He has finally agreed to go for “help.” After an unbearable ultimatum.  I hate ultimatums. But I had to give him one.  Either we go for counseling, for healing, together…TOGETHER… or the children and I would have to move away.

My fingers still shake from saying…writing… thinking those words…

I am so raw today.

My face is swollen.

My eyes ache.

My heart aches.

I am grasping… clinging… death-gripping the very hope that we may finally be on our way out of this dark pit.  This place of horror and pain that has consumed the man I love.

I am begging you to pray with us. I am asking for your compassion, your prayers, your encouragement. Not your judgment, condemnation, or criticism. Please pray for true healing in the very depths of my husband’s heart and soul.

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