Secondary Drowning, when you've already been rescued, but you still feel like you can't breathe and they still have to pump your lungs...

Today is mother’s day, and I really could have used my mother today, but she wouldn’t answer her phone and even if she did I doubt she would have helped me much. So I’m just gonna blog this all out tonight before I go to bed, if ya’ll don’t mind. Mostly I want someone to hold me and tell me I did the right thing and didn’t make someone else’s life harder or that not only did I not make a mistake but that in making the mistake I might have helped someone instead of feeling like I hurt them. I know there isn’t anyone that could tell me that anyway, but what the heck, right?

This week I got a match on E-Harmony. Nice guy, father of two, taller than me, strong Christian. I initiated the match and he was game. Good. He did indicate he was a widower, and that it happened not that long ago, but being unsure of the circumstances initially I kept an open mind. So we started the process. Questions exchanged, lists exchanged, more complex questions. By then I knew what I should have seen in the beginning. His wife died after a very long (3 years) hard battle with cancer and she had only been gone 8.5 months. It was approaching mother’s day, his kids who were once home schooled were now getting ready to be home from public school for the summer and his step son (her son) just got married. This man was hurting, grieving and was looking for a replacement part. Not in the sense that his wife was replaceable, but in the sense that he is hurting in ways hopefully most of us can’t understand and he wants it to stop and he wants it to stop for his kids too and he was probably sitting alone one night after the kids went to bed and got a little desperate for the grief part to be over. Can anyone blame him? I’ve watched similar things before in my loved ones. I could see it here.

So I called my Dad. My dad, the Divorce Recovery Counselor, my best friend and my best advisor. I read him everything and I asked him what to do. He said that no one can truly know where someone else is, but that this man was not ready and that while Dad knew I had a big heart, a desire to rescue others and a real heart for parents and children that had been “left behind” because of what happened in our family, that I was not the person to get involved with this and I needed to close the match. So what did I do?

I used the question space to explain to this man, whom I don’t know, that from my own personal experiences I knew his kids were not ready for this and that he and I could not date, BUT… if he wanted a friend, we could e-mail. Obviously this was not what my Dad told me to do.

The man replied, jumping on the bone I threw. He asked me how long it took my dad to heal. He asked how he would know that his kids were ready. He asked what he could do to get through this. He asked if I could be his friend and would I talk to him. He thanked me for my honesty and concern for his kids. He asked me what I would need to know to know that he was ready. I believe that what he was asking me was what would he need to say to convince the next match that this was a good idea, though I doubt he knew that was what he was actually asking. Now I saw what my Dad was trying to tell me about the desperation that comes in being lonely. Now I knew I was really in trouble.

So, this morning I went to speak to my pastor. This is a great man who himself has suffered loss. I told him everything and I confessed my error. He blessed me for my intention and told me the same thing Dad did. He told me to close the match, though he said I could explain why and suggest the man talk to his pastor and or a counselor to deal with his grief. So I came home and agonized over the letter. I sent it and he replied and closed the match for me.

I am so conflicted right now. For several reasons. One, what if I hurt this man? Two, what if I judged him, and judged him incorrectly? Three, if I did this right, why do I hurt? Four, is there any possibility I was simply running away from attempting a real relationship be picking someone who was in a bad place so I knew it wouldn’t work and if so what does this say about me? My physics teacher in high school used to call me Madonna. He said I purposefully picked people who were unattainable to love because that way I insured that I stayed “safe” and “pure.” If that is the case, the other questions are worse, because that means I added my issues to someone who already had a full load. To be fair, as soon as I figured out where this man was my interest in him as anything other than someone who needed help evaporated. Frankly that is what I like about E-harmony, you can be objective with out getting your heart really involved. When things don’t work you are disappointed, not heart broken…

I won’t post what this man wrote to me, that wouldn’t be fair, but I can post what I wrote to him as a final letter. He replied with thanks, again for my honesty and integrity and said he would pray about and think on what I had said. A close friend says that what I wrote this man was good, and fair and kind, but I still feel torn. This is my letter.

I appreciate the fact that you replied. I can also appreciate how much pain you must be in. Grief is a powerful thing. There are many different kinds of grief and even more ways that it plays out, but the constant is that it is a loss and it must be suffered fully to be healed. Not very comforting, but unfortunately completely true.

From my personal experiences, I can only have an idea of what your kids are going through. I have never been married; therefore I only have second hand experience with your situation. That is why I did not comment directly on your position, though in terms of my opinion I would doubt that you are anywhere near a good place to consider a romantic relationship.

So as to what I can speak to. I'll be more specific.

My parents met in college, married the day after they graduated and the same day my father received his commission in the United States Navy. They were married for twenty years. During the second half of their marriage problems developed. Initially problems they were both responsible for. My father was emotionally (and physically) absent and he didn't give his family the attention it warranted. He was raised with the idea that if he was successful at work the other stuff took care of itself. Mom was a homemaker until I turned 9. Then she started going to nursing school, rather than deal with the issues between her and my dad. Initially my brother and I were still her priority, but that changed. Eventually, Mom decided she wanted out. She left (or more accurately we moved and she didn't go with us). For one year she lived with us having announced she was leaving us (and that there was someone else in the picture) for that year and the year after while they were legally separated Dad tried to get her to change her mind. The divorce became final when I was 16 and my brother was 13. This all happened while my father's career was crashing down around him as well. Growing up my brother and I had been closer to our mom, but we revered, feared and adored our father. Watching him crumble to a defeated wretch was beyond horrific.

However, from the beginning Dad saw that he had fallen away from God and that his only hope and our only hope was in God/Christ and that my brother and I needed to have a real relationship with God to make it through. So he got his life right with God (not an overnight process) so that he could lead my brother and I on the same path. Through his persevering faith my brother and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and as a family we came through that darkness together. Dad had to work full time and there were struggles and hurdles to work out there (and no family near by to help) but Dad was honest with my brother and I, we talked it out, worked it out and got it done. Dad was especially worried about me having an adult female role model and my brother having a real understanding that he was loved. Interesting thing. Dad began to pray and things began to happen.

God placed in my life several amazing women over the next several years (and even later) that have become mentors to me in a way I could have never dreamed. My brother also developed some terrific mentors who really showed him that he was of value, even if his mother abandoned him. Through all of this my brother and I have retained a relationship with our mother, but it is a shadow or remnant of what was. Yet, through God, we have more now than we would have otherwise, in terms of role models and "second mothers". None of those relationships has anything to do with my father's remarriage, though my stepmother is a very godly woman and has been a good influence on both of us.

Dad did meet someone. At church. When he wasn't looking. She was a servicewoman in the Navy as well. Dad wanted to introduce her to me as I was planning (And originally did in college) a career in the Navy. However I was visiting my mother that summer and so when they began talking, seeing each other in church, it grew to more. They were both divorced, both coming off bad marriages (her husband was abusive) and both consulted their pastors, each other's pastors and prayer partners. When I got off the plane in San Francisco, home from my visit with mother, I knew Dad had found the right person, before he even said a word. I even knew who it was. We laugh now about my intuition on that. It was as if God had prepared my heart as much as he had prepared Dad's. Now, there were many struggles during the yearlong engagement and even early in the marriage when my brother was at home (I was almost graduated from high school when they married), but my brother and I were okay with it, ready for it, because my Dad was. I am reticent to give you a specific time, because there is no clock for this. I will say it was much, much more than nine months before they even began dating.

Even believing it was God's will they marry and be together (they had actually met on the phone almost a year prior and didn't even make that connection until well after they started dating... she called to try and get his job, that he had just started!) even now, I believe they should have taken it a bit slower.

Dad went to counseling with a real psychiatrist, a pastor and was a part of Divorce Recovery Workshop, an eight-week program for people dealing in marital loss (including widow/ers) three times before becoming a counselor himself. All this was before he started dating my stepmother. My brother and I went to counseling, including family counseling with Dad (and much later, when she entered the picture, stepmother) before and after our parent's divorce and Dad's remarriage. We spent a huge amount of time talking, praying, grieving and listening. This was not a fast thing and there are still things almost twenty years later from the beginning of the whole mess that are still healing. Non of us took drugs (anti-depressants) though Dad had some prescribed sleeping pills for about one month before he decided that was no good and none of us found any other quick answers for this. It simply took time, faith in God and our love of each other. There was shouting, crying, accusations, anger, mourning, and oddly enough laughter in copious amounts through this long process. It was a process.

I spent a lot of time in prayer about this (you and I talking) last night and then on the phone with my Dad and then in a meeting this morning with my Pastor (Pastor is a grief counselor who has lost a child, Dad as I said is a Divorce Recovery Facilitator and Deacon). I made a mistake when I said we could talk as friends. I see now that it would be a bad idea. It wouldn’t be fair to you and both of us could get hurt. You need to see a pastoral counselor or grief counselor and work through your grief (9 months isn't enough time). The same goes for your kids, though it may not be the same form. I owe you an apology for making the offer. My heart so goes out to you and your kids because of my own experiences. But even on the idea that we would only talk on e-mail I am the wrong person to help you and it could create real problems for both of us. You seem like a wonderful man who greatly loves his wife and his children and misses her terribly and the life that you had with her. Finding someone new won’t fix that. It will just bring more pain into your world and unneeded pain into hers and your children’s (right now, later it would be a good thing). My father would be the first to tell you being with the wrong person (even for the right reasons) is worse than being alone. From what I’ve seen I agree. I wish I had met you a year from now. I think we could have been great friends, or something more. Who knows? God works thing out that were meant to be. In the mean time I hope you will stay away from E-Harmony and other such sites and give yourself the time to heal and find the tools that can help in that. Though I also know this is essentially none of my business. You and your children wills stay in my prayers. I hope you will close this match after you read this letter, (or reply briefly and close it soon after if you feel you need to). Otherwise I will close it in the next few days myself.

Lastly I would say, that if you continue looking right now, I am confidant you will find someone. No question. Several of my father's friends at church have lost their partner to cancer and my mom is a oncology nurse practitioner. I've seen the quick remarriage scenarios. They are not God's best for your life. As I said, this is really none of my business, but I do have an acute empathy for where your kids are. This will not help them, or frankly, you.I am so sorry for making this any harder.

God Bless,
~Sandy

So tonight I am crying because I don’t have the ability to communicate with my mother and I could really use her, or more specifically the person she was when I was a little girl, though I know that person no longer exists. Yet tonight two children I have never met and will never meet are probably crying because they have no mother at all. Their father is probably crying tonight too, and I may well have added to his tears.

I don’t even have a neat, clever, insightful ending to this blog. I just want to stop feeling awful. I imagine I’ll be okay in a day or two. That poor family might take years. I guess I am asking that people who read this (and I have no idea if there are all that many, but every bit helps) to pray for that family. Maybe that is some good that can come out of this. Maybe that is how God can turn my mistake in all this around?