Please Pray For My Wife

Regular readers know that it's not often I write about my personal life here. Still, every now and then I've come here looking for comfort -- and help -- on important matters and found it.

I know that this body of believers genuinely cares about one another. Furthermore, I know that when we've gotten together to pray, God has heard us, and He's moved mountains in response.

It is with that same desperate hope that I am writing to you all tonight asking you to please take a moment and say a prayer for my wife Lindsay.

A little background info.

We've been married for 5 years now (known each other for 9). When we were first engaged we decided to live together. For us, our conscience got the better of us and after only a month of living together we decided to honor God and do the right thing by getting married ASAP.

Our family and friends were bewildered because up until that point I don't think they ever really knew how spiritual we were, or how important our faith was to the both of us. To be fair, we were still in the very beginning stages of our walk with Jesus so that's probably not their fault.

Anyway, we married in March and kept the date for the "real" wedding in October complete with the white dress and formal reception. A funny thing happened though. Within days after we honored God in such a public way in March, and explained to everyone why we were deciding to get married then (instead of waiting only a few more short months) Satan came at us with everything he had!



Up until now, that was the most ferocious attack that the two of us had faced in our entire lives. For me, past sins from a self-destructive lifestyle reemerged, enticing me again and again to come back and give in to the tempting seduction. For her, she began to suffer from depression -- out of nowhere and after 4 years of dating her without a trace of it.

We both knew that what we were dealing with collectively and on an individual basis was most certainly spiritual in origin. We fought with the weapons we had just learned about, but that still doesn't mean our experiences during those times were easy. Not for these babes in Christ.

My wife got so bad that she had to voluntarily check herself into a mental health facility because we felt it was the last resort and our last hope. We had been married for less than 30 days, and now she was going to have to stay in that place for 10 straight days, and I was only allowed to visit in the evening between a set time period of only 2-3 hours at a time. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life visiting her there day-after-day. Plus, the thought of her sitting there all alone all day until I was allowed to visit nearly broke me.

Long story short, we made it through (praise God!) and for the next 3-4 years she managed each day with prayer, prescription medicine, and meeting with a mental health professional on a monthly basis. This helped tremendously.

Soon, she felt herself getting stronger and we were praising God when the day came when she went a full day without any medicine at all! That day turned into a week, and before long several weeks turned into several months without a single episode or those feelings turning up! Her doctor monitored her the entire time and was surprised by the outcome. We weren't complaining though.

This is how life has been for us over the past 1-1.5 years -- doctor, medicine, and incident free.

We must be close to the appointed times because I can say without a doubt that the past couple of weeks have been some of the most difficult for me, my wife, my family, my immediate family, my extended family, and even for some of you who have reached out to me as well in the midst of your trials and tribulations. Satan must know his time is short.

I don't want to get into all the issues because I want the focus to be squarely on my wife tonight, but I'm sorry to say that she is having an extremely difficult time and has relapsed. This was completely unexpected and completely out of nowhere and we couldn't even identify potential "triggers" like we've been able to in the past a few days prior. No, this came upon her with the force of a hurricane and it hasn't subsided yet. She fears it will never subside.

It's so painful to watch her suffer and not be able to do anything about it, or to not be able to take it away because if I could I would. To hold your wife in your arms while she's sobbing and hear her say things like "Why me?" and to not have an answer for her is painful. To listen to her tell you how she dreads the nights because she knows she's only hours away from another morning when she'll probably wake up feeling the same way is painful. To listen to her wake up the next morning and immediately sigh and then cry because those same oppressive feelings of despair and hopelessness are there is painful. To hear her say she wishes she could be her normal self again because she feels like a shell that's completely empty of any feeling inside is painful.

The way things are going we may end up back in the hospital soon if that's what it takes to get her the help she needs. In the meantime, all I can do is pray for her, hug her, hold her while telling our two little ones that the reason mommy's crying is because she's sick and doesn't feel good.

"In sickness and in health, for better or for worse..."

Obviously, it goes without saying that she is my entire world. God is number one, but she's a close second. When she hurts, I hurt. All I want is to cling to hat little bit of hope she has left, for her to see some signs that the prayers and meds are beginning to work because I can see that her faith is definitely being tested severely right now. She even mentioned to me last night that she's never prayed so much in her entire life even during the first time this happened several years ago. I know that's a good thing, and in the long run God isn't giving her more than she can handle, but I can hardly get through to her with that in her current condition.

She's scheduled to meet with her doctor this Thursday afternoon. She's also on Day 5 of the medicine that her doctor prescribed for her and they say it can take anywhere from 10-14 days for some people before the medicine takes full effect. Gosh, that seems like such a long time from now! While both are very important, we know that prayer is better than any doctor and drug cocktail combined, which is why I'm turning to you my Brothers and Sisters in Christ for you support.

Don't worry so much about me. I'll manage. My faith and hope is firm no matter what. I refuse to let Satan distract me. Please focus your prayers on her and lift her up so that a true miracle can occur here.

I thank you all for your time and consideration. I'll be sure to provide you all with an update once things change on this end.

May God bless you, and may the same measure of grace that you ask the Lord to bestow upon my wife be bestowed upon you in your time of need.