Chapter 26 The Warrior Helps - from my book Changes

Chapter 26

The Warrior Helps

Before I go on and talk about Phil 2, I want share how meeting the Celtic Warrior in Phil 1 affected my life a few years later.

I had been going to Trackerschool for a couple years at least, and had made some friends there.  One woman I had come to depend on as someone I could talk to about the struggles I was having in life, in my relationship with my husband.

She recommended two books, one called “Controlling People” and the other called “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” both by Patricia Evans, a communications expert.  With the help of these two books, I was really beginning to understand why I was so depressed.

It turns out that abuse can come in many forms, and because I didn’t recognize those forms, I was not aware of what was hurting me, so I had no way of dealing with it.

Through those two books, my children and I were learning how to talk to each other in ways that are not abusive, and calling each other out when we slipped up.  That first month, I posted a list of things on the wall that would be considered abusive, so we could all remember. During that month, it became almost funny because there were so many times when someone would point a finger and shout out, “Verbal abuse!”  But because we were all in it together, there were no hard feelings.  The kids especially liked it when they caught me slipping up, which surprised me because I didn’t think I was doing it.

I was grateful my children and I were learning better ways of communicating, but my husband was not interested in participating at that time.

I was not only learning what abusive language was, but what words to use instead, for better communication.  I was also learning how to respond to abusive language.  The only danger with learning how to respond is that the verbal abuse can escalate and sometimes even become physical when the abuser is not getting the reaction they want.

I was so easily triggered into shutting down, it was a very difficult step to change my responses to abuse.

I had done a lot of research to try to understand why my husband would get so angry, and I found different schools of thought about anger, and what triggers it, etc.  His anger was cyclical, which I read it typical.  The difficult part was addressing the behavior in a better way than simply being a doormat, which was my usual response.

So, the change began one day when I was feeling called to meditate and go to my medicine place.

I went into my room and shut the door.  Laying on the bed I shut my eyes and took that deep but gentle breath, and surrendered to my path.

I was surprised to find, standing in the way on my path was the Celtic Warrior I had done light work with in Phil 1.  My first reaction, thinking it was a fluke, was to brush him aside and start walking my path.  But then he was standing in front of me again, blocking my way (I can be dense at times and it takes more than once to get my attention).

Then I remembered Tom teaching us that when we encounter a spirit we ought to ask them what we can do for them.

So I asked.

Instead of saying anything, he held out a suit of armor for me.

I could tell it was a gift so I accepted it with a thank you, and he disappeared.

I put the armor on, figuring there must be a reason he was giving it to me.

Later that day, I went to pick my husband up from work.  I had my two young daughters with me.  When we got to the office, my husband acted annoyed that I brought the girls with me.  This was confusing because the last time I picked him up he was annoyed because I had not brought them with me.

I started feeling shaky.  By this point in our relationship I would easily be triggered by my husband acting a little bit annoyed with me.

He told me to go to the car with the girls and wait for him there, which I did.

As I sat in the car, trembling, I remembered I was wearing armor!  I thought how the armor would protect me from everything.  And I relaxed and became calm.

My husband got in the car and was becoming more and more agitated as I remained calm.  By the time we got home he was enraged.  He went through the house yelling at all the kids, telling them to do this chore or that chore.  He even started yelling at the one child, a teenager, who he had never yelled at before.

This teenager, stood up to him face to face, tears running down his face, as his dad yelled at him, spit flying.

I kept saying, “Stop yelling.  Stop yelling.”  But the more I told my husband to stop yelling, the angrier he got.

Finally, in order to deescalate the situation, I went into my room to remove myself and I could hear things calm down once I was away.

I lay on the bed, glowing with peace, knowing that for the first time in our relationship, I had not let him knock me down.

That was a baby step in one way, but a huge step for me as I began to find my strength.