Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

Well, ain’t it nice to see you all again!  I have missed you!  But I had a much needed little time-out with the fam and we are all in a much better place today.  I guess I should bring you all up to speed because there has been a LOT going on ’round these here parts.

After the break in last weekend, we packed up basically our entire house except for the furniture and went to stay with my parents.  It has been so nice to be here and to feel safe and secure while we make some decisions, instead of making them out of fear or in haste.  The only part that is a little tricky is that it is about an hour and a half drive into Orlando every day for Chris to work and last week, Bean Man and I had lots to take care of, so we were making the trip almost every day, too.  That part is no fun at all, but it’s just part of the arrangement right now and it could be much worse.

The first thing we had to do was figure out the living situation.  We had been holding off on moving because we really couldn’t afford anywhere that was much better than where we were without me having a job.  Which is why we hadn’t moved before.  But, we decided that job or no job, we had to move so we started looking around right away for somewhere else.  Turns out there were some options, but not great ones and though it was frustrating, we were just happy that we had other places to go.

And then, lo and behold, my oldest friend in the whole wide world, Sarah, called me last Tuesday.  She and her husband are both teachers and she told me that her school was looking for someone to teach a class.  Like the Saint that she is, she got me an interview on Wednesday.  After the interview, of course, I headed up to Sarah’s classroom to tell her all about it and as I’m sitting there gushing about some of my answers, in walks the person who interviewed me and she offered me the job.  Right there.  On the spot.

Prayer.  Answered.

I can’t be positive, but I may have started crying when she told me.  But I’m not sure because I was screaming so loudly I wasn’t able to concentrate on my tear ducts.  I can’t tell you where or what I’m teaching because of all that internet-psycho-mumbo-jumbo-safety-stuff, but I can tell you that I am so excited about it.  I’ve never taught before, but I really think I might be good at it.  School starts today, but there is a sub in my class until my temporary teaching certificate comes through.  And actually, that in itself is another blessing because I’ll probably start teaching in a couple weeks which would give us time to move in to our new place.  Commuting every day from two hours away would be really difficult since I have to be there so early in the morning and this way I have time to move before I actually start.

The next task we had to tackle last week was a daycare for Bean Man because he would be really irritated if I hid him under my desk all day.  And – wowza! – did we luck out!  We found a daycare very close to my school that is WONDERFUL!  I want to go there.  It is so clean and bright and all the kids looked happy and healthy and like they were having a really good time.  In Bean’s class, there were 6 other children and they were all his size!  It was a class of kids just like him!  And they were all sitting in little bitty chairs having a snack when we toured the facility, just like little people!  As we stood there, the two teachers helped them CLEAN UP THEIR OWN SNACK (can you imagine Bean cleaning up after himself?  I cannot.) and then move over to circle time where they all sat like little gems in a circle on the floor and watched as the teacher read a book to them.  All I could think was, “Bean is going to have MANNERS!!!!”  Seriously, I thought I had died and gone to daycare heaven.

Prayer.  Answered.

The cost of this daycare is about what we paid in Connecticut, which is a little pricey for this area.  But with my new job, we are able to pay it and we think it is totally worth the extra cost.  I really think Bean is going to love it there and it will be easier for me to go back to work knowing he’s in such a friendly place.

The last piece of the whole puzzle is a house.  With our income more than doubling since I now have a job, we were finally able to look in neighborhoods and at homes that we had imagined us living in all along.  Nothing huge, but nice, clean houses in safe, family-friendly neighborhoods.  And boy did we luck out!  We found a really great house in an older suburb of Orlando that is absolutely perfect.  It isn’t too big, but is comparable to the size of our house in Connecticut which means that – holy moly – we’ll be able to unpack completely for the first time in six months!  And the best part is that the neighborhood is full of families with kids playing outside, people walking dogs, and mothers strolling down sidewalks with their babies.

That’s right.

I said sidewalks.

Prayer.  Answered.

Now, I realize that these things might not be that big of a deal to anyone, but to our family who has lived in the ghetto for the past six months, sidewalks and kids playing outside are HUGE.  We put in our application to rent the house last week and we are hoping to hear this week if we got the house.  If so, we would move in Labor Day weekend and, hopefully, I’d start teaching the week after.

All in all, it’s been a pretty exciting time for our family this past week.  We went from the worst possible situation to the best possible situation in about three days.  I can’t even begin to tell you the roller coaster of emotions we’ve been through.  But through it all, Chris and I have continued to stay positive and have kept talking to each other.  Usually during the day, so much was going on that we wouldn’t really have time to talk too much.  Mostly just checking in with each other and updating the other on things that were happening.  But at night before we went to bed, we’d talk through things.  We’d plan, we’d worry, we’d squeal, but mostly, we’d laugh.  And it was just a reaffirmation to me that I had married the right person.  There’s no one else that could go through something like this with me more perfectly that Chris and I’ve never been more happy to have married my best friend.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go drag my best friend out of bed so he can go to work and bring me home a paycheck.

Best friends are really awesome when they bring home paychecks.

Since moving our family from Connecticut to Florida five months ago, Chris and I have been working on Operation: Bloom Where You Are Planted in our marriage.  It’s what we are calling our attempt to not keep looking ahead and waiting for things that are coming (i.e. a job for me, a house, etc.) but to find happiness in the situation we are living in today.  We’ve been spending more time together as a couple and as a family and it has really helped.  Chris and I are talking more and a lot of the tension that was hanging over us when we first got to Florida seems to have lessened – not completely gone away, but lessened significantly.

In the past couple of weeks though, we have had some major things happening – all good – but big things that have the potential to bring lots of changes with them.  But none of them are happening right now. So, once again, we are back in the place of waiting.  And worrying.  And wondering.  And while we’re still making the effort to be present in our day to day lives and to bloom here and now, knowing that some major things are just sitting out there on the horizon has brought some of that tension back.

The other night we had big fight.  Chris needs to be able to work through worst case scenarios as part of his crisis management process.  He needs to think through the most dire of circumstances and put all the negative out there on the table for him to look at.  I think to him, naming those fears and talking about them helps to move past them.  But I’m really different.  I am aware that the obstacles and worst case scenarios are there.  I feel them in the back of my mind all the time.  But I don’t want to explore them out loud until we have to.  I don’t want to plan for the worst in an already stressful situation.  That makes me even more anxious.  So, Chris and I fought because he wanted to talk through the “what if’s” and I didn’t.

The next day after the fight, I thought all day about what had happened.  And I realized that I had been selfish.  If Chris needed to talk through things, then as his wife and his partner and his best friend, I should be there for him while he goes through that process.  When he got home that night, I apologized and together we worked through every negative, worst case situation that we might come across in the next few months.  We had to talk about money and jobs and our house and Bean and all those things that we both worried about.  I did most of the listening as I let Chris go through the process that he needed and when we were done, I had a good long cry of panic at the obstacles that are in front of us right now.  But as hard as it was for me to go through that and to hear some of my worst fears laid out right there in front of me, it was an important step for Chris and I could tell that he felt much better when the conversation was over.

I think I was doing the Bloom Where You Are Planted wrong.  That’s what I’ve decided after this week.  To me, blooming where you are planted meant being happy in the moment by ignoring the stresses that were still there. I wasn’t solving any problems, I was just ignoring that they were there.  And that is a false happiness.  I think that’s what had built up in the past couple weeks for us.  We were working so hard to be happy and to live in the moment that ignoring several large elephants in the room seemed to just add to the unspoken stress level.  We were happy, yes.  But we weren’t being proactive.

I’ve learned this week that happiness isn’t about ignoring the negative or the fearful.  Things don’t have to be happy in order for ME to happy. Happiness, much like the peace that my BFF Emily has, is inside of you.  It’s a state of being.  And you can face scary things and you can work through problems all while maintaining that happiness that comes with growth in your marriage.  Happiness to me this week – blooming for me this week – happened because we faced the things we were scared of and planned for worst case scenarios.  It was hard and it was scary, but because we faced those fears together, hand in hand, instead of ignoring them, we moved forward and we grew.  Today I am happier than I was yesterday because I dealt with those things in my marriage.

For the past couple of months, I have felt like a victim.  As if all of these challenges and trials were being done to me.  I kept praying and asking why all of this was happening.  Had I done something wrong?  Was I being punished?  I kept praying for God to take some of this stress off of me and even though I knew he wouldn’t give me more than I could handle, I continued to insist that I just couldn’t handle anything else right now.  But after stopping this week and talking things through with Chris, I have realized that, you know what?  I’m not a victim.  Nothing that is happening to me isn’t anything that the good Lord hasn’t equipped me to handle.  And just because there is stress and anxiety in my life right now doesn’t mean that there isn’t also a whole lot of blessings and a whole lot of happiness, too.  I’m not a victim here.  People go through these things every day.  And even though it might feel like everything good is just beyond our reach right now, when I really stop and talk to Chris about things, it is easy to find the blessings in our day to day lives and those are the things that will carry us through this.

Blooming where I am planted is not about ignoring what is happening around me.  It’s not about choosing to only focus on the good in my life.  Anybody can bloom when the sun is always shining.  Blooming and growing is about finding the good and the blessings on a cloudy day.  Or a cloudy week.  Or a cloudy month.  Or a cloudy five months.  That is the true key to finding happiness.  The conditions around me will come and go, but if my happiness comes from inside me, I’ll always have it.  Even when I have to deal with things that I would rather not deal with.

The other morning at 7:30, Bean came toddling into my bedroom.  He had his two golf clubs with him, as always, and he used them to poke me awake.  Then he broke into his big ol’ giggle and started holding his arms (and golf clubs) out to be picked up.  I pulled him into bed with me and we snuggled and laughed and I hid from him while Bean swatted around with his clubs.

Super sweet, right?

WRONG.

Absolutely not sweet.

In fact, this is grounds for divorce in my marriage and Bean is merely a pawn.

See, Chris and I take turns getting up with Bean every day.  Bean gets up at 7:00 on the dot every morning and we alternate who is going to get up with him, change his diaper, get his breakfast, and feed the dogs.  It’s a whole routine.  And while one person does it, the other person gets an extra half hour or so of sleep.

So, what’s all the fuss?

Well, lately, Chris has been sending Bean into my bedroom to wake me up.  He says it’s cute.  It’s sweet.  Bean loves me.  Blah, blah, blah.  I don’t care. I don’t care how cute he is, he’ll still be cute when I wake up in half an hour.

And yet this is the perfect crime because what exactly can I accuse Chris of in this situation?  Think about it.  Any argument I try sounds ridiculous:

“Why did you bring the baby in to see me?”

“I don’t want to see the baby right now!”

“Take the baby away!”

See?  All of those make me sound like a jerk.  So, Chris gets to sit back and watch while I simultaneously love and hate this new morning ritual.

Now, it’s true that I am not completely innocent in this.  In fact, I was the one that created this game.  I used to send Bean in to wake up Chris on the weekends when he slept past 9:00.  I mean, we had things to do.  Places to be.  And Chris needed to get his arse up.  But I would like to argue before the court that that situation is very different than using that tactic at 7:30am on a weekday when I had only an extra 15 minutes or so of sleep.

Chris and I have never argued about this before because of the aforementioned complaints making us sound ridiculous, but we do smile sweetly to each other and say, “Isn’t it sweet?  I loved when you made him wake me up yesterday like this.”

Did you get that?  That subtle hint of a complaint in there?

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP.

So, today before God and Internet Land, I am declaring a truce, Chris.  I will keep Bean out of the bedroom while you are sleeping and you need to keep him out of the bedroom when I am sleeping.  No matter what.  It’s the right thing to do, my love.

Because I would hate to file for divorce on the grounds that my husband forced me to snuggle with my child.