Double wound of a PD spouse

[HH]

As a spouse of my dear dxBPDw,
I carry a double wound. Let me explain with an analogy. I just watched an episode of a show about surprise weddings - where three wedding planners pick a couple to throw them their dream wedding. In the most recent story, there was a young couple who was in love who lived in a farming community. The woman had come from an adopted family and had been diagnosed with a learning disability early in life that wounded her self-esteem and she didn't feel Smart, pretty, or valuable and couldn't read or write very well.  The boyfriend, then got in a near fatal farm accident and was bedridden, angry, depressed, and physically Infirm for over a year. During that time she nursed him slowly back to health, and stood by his side even when they were over $100k in debt due to medical bills, and they lost everything financially. After the boyfriend recovered to be able to walk he planned a gorgeous and extravagant wedding for his girl - because his love was so stirred by his lovers sacrificial love for him when she had nothing to gain but everything to loose. The story of this couple revealed the boyfriend and his friends got her the help
She needed to heal by making it possible for her to see a therapist  who told how this woman she had been Mis-diagnosed as a child, had a very high IQ, and really just needed some help with dyslexia. 
As I watched this I was moved at the beauty and simplicity of this love that was deepened and cemented in tragedy, and self-sacrifice on either side lead to healing and beauty. I cried.
I carry the wound that when my BPD spouse was at her lowest and physically, mentally, and spiritually infirm - I did the best I could to care for her and nurse her back to health out of love and devotion. But she can't recognize that, and only could see how she felt abandoned by God and me because of how loud then pain was. I tried to be the cowboy boyfriend.
I carry the wound as the spouse of a BPD that when I was in need of help, when I was broken, hurt, and physically, mentally, and spiritually infirm and had a mini nervous breakdown at after 7 years of caretaking for her physically debilitating illness, she couldn't care for me because she felt I had abandoned her and the pain was too loud. She attacked and accused and grew bitter at me as I laid hurt and broken. I was the cowboy boyfriend in need of love.
As I prayed and cried over this realization, I heard the Lord say "a double portion will be yours". Of what? Of grace, of protection, of favor, or blessings. I don't know how or when that will come, but it is just like God to reward ashes with beauty and to "bind up the broken hearted". The double wound is NOT getting what I needed (care), and getting what I DIDNT need (attack and blame). I found myself wishing my story was the country couple's story. two broken people, taking turns caring for one another - healing and becoming while together. But God is making himself real and tangible to me in a different way than that story, and the danger to "covet" is ever present for a BPD spouse. Those who carry a double wound also carry the promise of a double portion.

[tragedy or hope]

How encouraging you are. How often I wonder if God sees, yet I know he does. Kind of like Hagar and Ishmael. How broken-hearted she must have felt. Through no fault of her own... sent away, unloved, no one to care for her and her son, but God saw. 
Ishmael means: God hears. Gen. 16:13.

I like to think He is leaning into my words like a parent to a child, my whispered cries and my sadness. He hears.

Thank you so much for the spiritual reminder.

He did not promise a great love life, or that I would be with someone who was perfect, but He does promise He hears, He sees and he will always be there for those who love Him.

[Mary]

Thank you for sharing that whisper from God. What an encouragement to those of us in the trenches. We give, hoping to receive, but keeping in mind the realities and limitations of our PD spouses. So our giving to our spouses then is directed to God, and He has a reward for us. So beautiful and comforting.