Time Keeps Ticking Through Crisis

By: Kristi Tisor Ambriz

The hardest part of recovery is the time it takes to travel through.

My marriage of 18 years as we all knew it ended the day I discovered that my husband had been unfaithful.

The kids and I had been betrayed.  We felt rejected.  Abandoned.  Lost.

Getting through the pain, processing what everything would mean for us, for my marriage, and for our family, and then living with the fallout was the closest to impossible I've ever been.  My family spiraled into the darkest 4 years of our lives.  The result was divorce.  Broken children.  Broken relationships.  Tattered souls.

I had a list longer than my arm detailing each area within myself personally that needed to be worked on, and then another list of things I needed to tackle in my kids' lives before it would be too late.  They were still developing mentally, physically, spiritually.  Into what, or whom would they develop?  It was a critical race, the clock was ticking, and while running I had to capture each priority, tackle it, cross it off the list, and then go on to the next item on the list.

It was like trying to run a race in deep mud, with weights chained to my legs as I tried to advance--as I tried to set my family free.  Or, at least, this is how I saw things at the time.

I was so powerless.

It's hard to know which happened first.  Did it finally click that I needed to release the burden and let healing happen, or did healing begin to happen, enabling me to finally start to feel the burden lift?  It's hard to know.

But, I continued on my way toward recovery, through the mud, toward climbing out of our deep, dark pit and climbing upward, and upward still until we could see the other side, and then it seemed that at once we were able to soar freely.  The hard work paid off, and the darkness lifted.

It had so much to do with the things I had learned during that time.  I learned how to keep my eyes open and my head out of denial.  Likewise, I learned that every problem out there isn't mine to fix.  That I have to submit to something or Someone Higher who can take, carry, and correct the many wrongs in life.

But, I learned something else that rocked me to my core.  I learned that the journey itself is a huge part of life.  In the 4 years that were the darkest for my family and me, Lee went from a 1 year-old to a 5 year-old.  Abi went from a 2nd grader, to a 6th grader.  You can really see the hands of a clock move when you view it through the lens of a child's life.

So, to say that those years were our darkest is to say that a huge chunk of my kids' childhood is a blur.  And to be completely honest, I remember very little.  I don't remember Abi learning her multiplication tables, or what her favorite childhood television show was.  It seems she went from loving Clifford the Big Red Dog one day, to The Jonas Brothers the next.  What was in-between?  I have little to no memory.

One of the biggest reasons why I am so passionate about Crisis Recovery is because there are countless families who are so engulfed in the pain of their moment, that they can't see clearly through that moment to being able to see what's before them in the moment.

Pain numbs and if it doesn't numb, we oftentimes find ways to numb it.  It could be through chemical addiction.  Over eating.  Under eating.  Seeking romantic relationships.  Work.

In my case it was work...I had to work 6-7 days to stay afloat financially.  I used that need to work as an escape--to numb me from the overstimulating pain of my family crisis.  But, the downside of that plan is that now that I am on the Other Side, I look back on 4 years of my kids' lives with limited memories.  I missed a lot.  They missed a lot.

Our Wings Like Eagles team offers content for our readers to read in hopes that we might uplift, encourage, and show that there is life on the Other Side of Crisis.  Because if you know that there is life on the other side, you might find the strength to endure your current place of pain to the point of not missing out on any of the important stuff.

Because left on our own, it's too easy to stay numb, live in denial, and succumb to habits we are powerless to control on our own.