Who are you? From frozen bacon.

I had been to two sessions with my counselor alone before I invited Chris to come along. We went out for a sushi lunch beforehand and chatted easily. It’s easy, being with him. Even in the hard, ugly places. We walked into our counselor’s office smiling, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries. We sat down on his couch and cozied up. It was their first time ever meeting each other, but we’re married. We’ve done hard before. We know each other well. This is simply a season where need a few extra tips.

The questions came, and the stories came, and the questions came again. Our guy is good, the kind of man who presses you to think and pray and sort and then allow the Holy Spirit to draw things out of you. New self-awareness, problems, fresh ideas, old ideas, you get the picture. So the counselor asked, and we answered. Then he asked me to explain a story a little further, asking more questions and pausing in all the right places. It’s the closest to an out-of-body experience I might have ever had. We started talking about a certain frozen bacon incident from the previous morning, and I just went for it. I shared and exposed my heart, almost without any thought. Just reactions. Yes. No. Because this is important to me. I’m good at this. It fulfills me. I failed at that, though. So I’m a failure.

And then it was over, and I felt so free. Like I’d been honest with myself for the first time in a long time. I looked over to my husband, to the man holding my hand and loving me unconditionally, to find him staring at me. Mouth slightly agape, he looked sort of horrified and fascinated at the same time. Who are you? he asked with his eyes. And our counselor laughed. He said something to the effect of, “She’s not alone, Chris. This is how a lot of women are. We have to learn to think like this because…”

“It’s totally foreign to me,” Chris said. “I don’t even know what that feels like. I can’t even fathom how she got there from frozen bacon.”

And just like that, after nearly a decade together, we met again. We started over, from frozen bacon. We let the Holy Spirit draw things out of us. New self-awareness, problems, fresh ideas, and old ideas, you get the picture.