On Valentine’s Day 2008, my husband and father of our six children chose to end his life by suicide. I was, the day before Valentine’s Day, a christian wife, homeschooling mother, and business partner to my husband. If you know anything about conservative christianity, then you know that being a wife means being a helper and supporting my husband and devoting my life to my family. Everything I was, everything I believed was wrapped up in my identify as “wife”. My husband’s choice that V day as I call it now, ended my life as well as his. It also ended our children’s lives. Not because he physically took any life other than his own, but his actions caused our lives to be forever changed and affected by his choice.
As you can imagine that was a pretty tragic event. It got even more complicated. It’s a very long story but it does have a happy ending and a lot of miracles that occurred along the way. But that’s another story. My purpose here is to share that I have endured tragedy, serious, life-altering tragedy and these are the lessons I learned along the way.
At the time of my husband’s death our children were 14 months, 3, 4, 8, 9 and 14 years old.
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