Why You Need To Break Your Heart...Often

I find my heart getting hardened towards my wife more than I care to admit. It's usually about the little things, such as:

• She doesn't speak loud enough.
• She's too passive.
• She misunderstands me or other issues we're talking about.
• She's not reading my mind or meeting all of my desires.

I then feel annoyed, and the fatal error I make is to allow these minor annoyances to build up and callus my heart towards her.

Reminding myself about the full picture

But here's what you need to know and what I need to remind myself—no, reprimand myself about often. Most of these issues are not my wife's fault.

Living with stage IV breast cancer

My sweet wife, Rebekah, has been fighting stage IV breast cancer for 8 years now. It's been a total of 15 years, if we include her battle with stage I. And, good grief, she's only 35 years old!

Rebekah has undergone chemotherapy (with radiation and surgery) non-stop for all those 8 years. While it is working and saving her life (thank you, Enhertu®), it has taken its toll on her body and mind, impacting her vision, hearing, energy, etc.

My wife's brain surgery

Last February, she had brain surgery to remove 2 tumors, and she came out with complications. She's still the same person, but her judgments, interpretations, and awareness of things are now slower and sometimes slightly off.

It's been painfully rough on her to suffer through this and try to live normally now.

Managing my expectations as a husband

When I allow my heart to grow hard, I expect her to act as she did when we first met. I rarely verbalize any of this to her, but I surely verbalize it to myself in my mind. And that's when I need to take a step back and stop being an a**hole.

I NEED to "break my own heart" and get back in touch with reality.

Connecting with empathy

One of the best ways I know how to do this is through practicing empathy. I mentally and emotionally try to walk through what my wife has gone through and what she is now suffering through. It all kills her far more than it does me, and I need to understand AND feel that.

An exercise to "break your own heart"

Here's an exercise you can try when you feel your own heart getting hardened toward your spouse with cancer.

1. Imagine yourself in your bathroom where you discover a lump or sore.
2. Place yourself in a room all alone where you're getting scans to determine if you have cancer.
3. Put yourself in the doctor's office, where you first hear the results of the scans.
4. Imagine yourself home alone and weeping about your uncertain future and the potential end of your dreams.
5. Think of yourself attempting to take care of your family but failing to do tasks that once were simple.

Put yourself in their shoes and visualize what they feel. Try to sense the physical sickness and pain from constant treatments, medications, and fatigue. Try to understand the emotional pain of knowing there is no known cure for a disease you have and that is actively seeking to kill you.

Feel what it would be like, as best as you can, what it would be like to have a set of scan results come back with a notice that hope is nearly gone.

A crucial insight

I want to point out another key to breaking your heart and staying out of the land of bitterness. I said earlier, "...when I allow my heart to grow hard..."

My wife does not cause my heart to grow hard. Nothing she does can cause me to react in any way. This is a tough pill to swallow.

The truth is that we allow ourselves to react and develop in specific ways. Usually, we've allowed ourselves to develop habits of impatience, annoyance, frustration, anger, and, eventually, the cesspool called bitterness.

This insight calls for an entire article, but I think the first place to begin is to understand and recognize this insight in your own life—and heart. Be aware of this insight when you feel tempted to harden your heart over some real or perceived annoyance and temptation.

After writing this, I'm ending work early today. I need to go home to spend time with my sweet wife.