What May Have Made Me Bitter

In my travels through the blog world I have noted that there are women who blog about difficult situations in their lives. They do it to log their journey of coping and healing.

Two that I can think of are:

http://rantingbetty.wordpress.com/


http://hupotasso.wordpress.com/

The first one, Betty's Rambling Blog, is Betty dealing with her husband's Multiple Personality Disorder.
The second, A Wife's Submission, is Charis/Gem chronicling her struggle of coming to terms with her husband's bad behavior, possibly caused by Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Why do I bring this up?
It's because I relate. I have had to learn how to deal with my husband's Adult ADHD.

Betty asks herself on her blog how she could be married to a man for 25 years and not know he had Multiple Personality Disorder.

My husband and I struggled for close to 17 years before he was diagnosed.
We both knew something was wrong but we didn't know what. My husband used to blame me for things I couldn't help. Unwittingly, he subject me to verbal and emotional abuse because his ADHD messed with his mind, made him frustrated and he turned on the one closest to him. Me.

Now we both know what was going on. But we are still recovering from our former ignorance. He presently is not going to church and doesn't have a lot of good things to say about church or Christians in general. He plays music with a band in bars instead of leading praise and worship in church like he used to. He drinks and smokes too much and my children and I are concerned for his health.

But the good news is that we both understand his disorder better. He's not so quick to blame me. He's better at saying that, yes he is very frustrated but it's not my fault.

One might ask, how can you live with a man for 17 years and not know he has Adult ADHD? And that is a very good question that I don't have an easy answer for.

However, since the name of this blog is From Bitter Waters to Sweet, a better question might be: "Why didn't I know that I was bitter about it?"

It seems that as a brain or personality disorder can fly just below the radar, so can bitterness. And I imagine that I'm not the only woman who has been in denial about bitterness in this world.
I am very glad that God was not content to let me stay in my denied bitterness. I'm glad He saw fit to show me that it existed even though I fought so hard not to see it. And this is what I want to blog about. Not my husband's ADHD, but my journey out of bitterness.