Failing to win

Counting the days without smoking and wondering what took me so long to do it. I quit on September 12th. It has been one long battle but as people tell me they are proud of me for doing it, I look back wondering what took me so long instead. I smoked for 32 years. When my husband quit smoking, I didn't. I found reasons to just keep lighting up.
I used to pray that I would quit but my heart really wasn't in it. I didn't want to quit. People would tell me that Christ came into their lives and they stopped drinking, smoking, swearing, lying, whatever they viewed as a sin in others. I had Him in my life all my life, but did all the above, except lying was something I was never really good at so I found it easier to give up than to struggle with being very bad at it. It's also one of the reasons why I am not very diplomatic.
The thing that finally got me to quit was my husband. When I lost my job last year, I couldn't get unemployment. The church didn't pay into the system. I was terrified of being broke but my husband encouraged me to become a chaplain when the possibility came. He stood by me all these years while I worked for a paycheck and did this the rest of the time for free, but he knew this time I would be going in a whole new direction.
He didn't complain when I had to travel or when I had to come up with money to pay for the expenses that go along with this work. He kept encouraging me to keep going. Whenever people let me down and I got depressed, he did all he could to build me back up again. We have been living off his disability and pension, while I kept waiting, hoping, praying for help to come. Honestly, I felt that after all these years, all this work, dedication and long hours, I deserved to be paid. I was ahead of so many other people out there, wondering what I was doing wrong when they were getting paid, but I was just being passed by. No matter what I did, I just didn't really matter. People came in and out of my life so fast, memory of them became a blur when I'd get an email after a long time, then have to look up a saved record of them to figure out who they were.
This month, as a matter of fact the 30th, we will be celebrating out 25th anniversary. I kept looking at the date and crying because all the hopes I had for this anniversary were not possible. No money to go away and having a hard time paying the bills we have, left no money to go away. I kept looking at my husband, knowing how far he's come, how much he's given up for me, how hard he fought to heal and how much I love him. If anyone deserved a good anniversary it was him. He's given up so much that the least I could do was quit smoking so that he could buy a better motorcycle. Yes, I was smoking a bike payment. Pretty terrible when you think about it.
I kept praying for what I thought I deserved, but not for what he deserved. I kept feeling bad about what I gave up but not for what he gave up. He married a woman with a good job and good income. He ended up with someone who can't make a living at something I've been doing for over half my life. I keep telling him that he married a failure but he says I'm not. I just fail to win. The thing is, I won 25 years ago when I married my best friend.