Perhaps it’s an odd title but it is my initial thoughts. At last I’m alone with my laptop and able to focus enough on the task I’ve been putting off until the home is quiet: writing. My husband is a very consistent man who has provided me nearly each day with an hour by myself. Admittedly, that time is usually spent catching up on emails, texts, phone calls, dishes, laundry, showering… but today was different. Today was a day where after 6 days of no longer having social media on my phone that I was able to focus on getting the major investments into my business done. I had spent weeks thinking about it and finally had the courage to ask my husband about it. With a large tax refund and an inheritance from an inspiring great uncle in my family, money has been an odd topic. Usually it’s because we don’t have enough and have to pick and choose what we do with limited funds. Now approaching eleven years married, my husband’s careful diligence has rewarded us with an affordable mortgage, decent utility bills (don’t we all wish it was far less?), and the car we share paid in full. That leaves one major series of debts: student loans. What crazy buzz words those have been in the news lately?
It’s interesting to me, now that I’m thinking of current events, how these seemingly apocalyptic events lend to a curiosity on how those who lived through The Great War and how it became World War I and II. Or even those who lived through Pompeii or any like natural disaster: we are most likely not the first generation(s) to think about the possible end of the world. Given as this is one of the first Lenten seasons I haven’t given something up (social media doesn’t count since I still check notifications once a day from a laptop instead of spending several hours browsing the feed, either news or friends), I have come to realize just what this season usually means to me in its religious rite. It means beauty and LIFE after loss. It means HOPE for a better future. Even if the world ends tomorrow, I know that my messy soul has to reconcile what truth lies within the muddled world of heartache and deterioration. That is how I see it, though. The world is broken. It wasn’t meant to be broken, but thankfully God has a rescue plan in place. That grand rescue lies in the hope of Jesus Christ.
I deeply sigh. No matter how much my idea of how to love others might change as I age, my deepest belief is that I was created on purpose. That morsel I hold as fact corrects the blows of not being wanted by my parents because one thing is for sure: they tried. They tried to raise me in the correct way. They tried to give me every chance at a better life than they had. They tried in every sense of the word, and yet they still left bruises on my heart. It often breaks me when I think of my daughter and how I’m attempting the same song and dance to my own music: no matter what I say or do, I’ll still leave bruises on her heart. I’ll never do or be enough to her, but the saving grace is God can be enough and He wants to be enough for her. I prayerfully hope I can radically accept that so I can move away from the fear of hurting her.
Fear. We watched Frozen 1 & 2 recently. Elsa’s fear drives a wedge between her and Anna. Fear wrecks relationships and the only cure (is more cowbell? no…) is LOVE. The deepest conversations I’ve had with my husband lately describe my fears as a mom and as a business owner with chronic depression. Only recently did I realize just how crippling my anxiety and depression could be and how I’d feel it in my body. Every day that realization takes on new form like a child rapidly growing up and suddenly losing a tooth (egads, mine is too little for that! but it happened!). The fact still remains no matter my reaction to it: my medical trials lie primarily in my anxiety and depression, not some hidden illness the doctors have yet to find in some blood test. I just did all the blood tests and talked with a specialist and a primary care giver: one said I was in remission from ITP and he listened and gave me reassurance on my certain health. The other said although some tests come out weird and Google will give us the worst case scenario that my overall picture was good health. Yet here I am with plenty of headaches and allergies and body aches. Accepting this discomfort is mental as much as it is physical is slowly aligning my body to my spirit. If I could reach for full alignment, I will try. Funny how I see the chiropractor for the first time since winter ended.
Deep breath again. Love will drive out fear. 1 John 4:18…the verse that encouraged me to leave an abusive boyfriend. Often I ask myself, “What is love?” because the world is preaching “be kind” everywhere (as it should because how did we all get so mean anyways?). That’s part of love. 1 Corinthians 13 gives the full list starting with “Love is patient.” My husband is patient with me. Am I patient with my daughter? Am I kind to her?
Sometimes the largest of stressors become so small when we tease them out, like some knot in our hair when we wake up in the morning. Moving a comb through it all at once is incredibly difficult, but moving slowly and with as little as we can manage at a time we can work through it. Marriage wasn’t the set of difficulties I thought it would be. We got along great and didn’t fight over the toilet seat or any of the things that we heard other couples fighting about. Transitioning to living with a man was seamless except for the fact that he snored and that meant I didn’t sleep. Now it means I have a fear of not getting enough sleep that makes falling asleep very difficult because once we added a new little life into the mix I was so spent!
Sleep. That was the issue for me. One worthy of throwing a pillow across the living room at 2am because of the freight train snore being impossible to get by. Besides what my body was doing at the time with its odd aches and pains that had me in the ER a lot (ovarian cysts…), we didn’t fight about anything and only losing sleep made me incredibly unhappy. Finances caused stress because we could each barely afford our debts. Thankfully, we got through it. Wow, what a ride! How we managed a few vacations just the two of us and all the fun we still had the first ten years still has me rather impressed by how well God provided when things often looked dire. Turns out, by the way, it really isn’t the end of the world if you miss a due date. It also turns out that the only problem with falling behind is apathy or excessive anxiety. One missed due date did not ruin me or us. Nor did refinancing the student loans or losing a job. Stressful: indeed. Possibly one of the biggest types of stress that fall outside of the broken heart or failing body categories. And moving, that’s a big one, too, right? Eleven years together and we’ve moved seven times. Three of those times were after our daughter was born. It’s indeed interesting tallying all that up. We used to count blown out tires on my husband’s Old Town boat of a car when we were engaged. Now it’s how many addresses we’ve held. And as irony would have it: our local post office is closing meaning our mailing address might have to change although we won’t be moving any time soon! I need to make sure that’s on a list somewhere to figure out soon.
Money. Tasks. Getting an oddly niche business going… the wind is incredibly strong tonight. Gusts of up to 65 mph they say. I can tell because it’ll rage like a train outside. I’m thankful we are far from “Tornado Valley” since where our house is so close to a creek with a large cliff just across the street (we are at the bottom of said cliff), it often sounds like a possible tornado/train coming when the winds howl like this. Another critical conversation came up recently with my husband concerning money and tasks. It was actually the task I led in with: being in a brand new position where those money woes a decade ago are now completely different. My husband and I didn’t set out to live in Colorado and I remember the feeling to “go somewhere in the middle of the country to just pay off debt” conversation we had three (or has it been more?) years ago. I didn’t think I would find myself next to my husband here in the Rocky Mountains. I suppose that’s one way to join the mile high club? Nor did I think owning a house would be practically the only way to avoid the crazy rent situation many are now finding themselves in. Owning a house wasn’t ever part of “the plan” for us. In fact, our lives look drastically different than we imagined them when we first said, “I do.” I imagined visits to Botswana or Haiti and picking a place to be as long term missionaries. Although proselytizing isn’t something I ever could completely get behind, our desire to help others was indeed the primary goal. I was thinking relief work like the Peace Corps but with a religious purpose. And I knew being away from the United States meant that I would be having kids away from their grandparents. Kids. Even that changed when I was engaged. I didn’t think I wanted kids until a few weeks into our engagement. I remember being terrified he’d want to run then, but he didn’t. He’s been steady and strong by my side…always.
Just Saturday night we had, what was for me anyways, another break through conversation. Working after babies was also always part of “the plan.” That didn’t work out either given my mental melt down with postpartum…and we talked about that. We talked about how crazy that season was, how I was at danger to myself and the baby, and just how we HAD to take drastic measures to make sure everyone was happy and healthy. We talked about my guilt over needing those changes, including moving to California then to Colorado. And you know what? He reassured me that he’s still in it with me no matter how many times we’ve had to rewrite “the plan.” Nearly everything from our wedding plans to now feels completely off script. And then came in the topic of my student loans and how I’ve always valued consistency yet my own resume has changed so many times that the phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none” resonates with me. (I was always interested in the concept of a Renaissance man and how a potential wife would pour into several arts to widen her prospects in the earlier modern centuries)
My student loans: that $100k set aside to study. What did I even study? English with a minor in Education, but even then it was Business Administration with a minor in Art and also in Finance beforehand. The second degree that didn’t happen…the on again, off again, then completion of the TEFL certification and four years teaching for VIPKID online… all to do what? Be a stay at home mom with $64k left, before my “dead rich uncle’s inheritance” (don’t worry, he’d laugh about that, too). So, we had to talk about it. Every change that has taken place had to be talked about. I feared he wasn’t happy because things looked so drastically different than what we thought we’d have. Not only that, but was I still the wife he wanted to still be married to…including the extra 100 lbs I’m carrying since the big day?
This is where I wish I could remember what he said, so because I cannot I will focus on the outcome: the feeling of being reaffirmed and desired. Perhaps someday he can write about it for me so I can save it with all his letters he’s ever written me. But for now, I know that despite all my fears about investing in *yet another* career change/business pursuit and being worried that it could just be a fully funded hobby and not a true business: he set all my worries at ease. And it is true: my uncle, if he had the capacity to understand my intentions, would also be behind building the next 20-25 years through investing in this unique niche. Niche markets are incredibly risky to begin with and to start one after/during (?) a pandemic and while everyone is waiting for the sky to fall and in the middle of the country… Yet, here we are. My hands were shaking after closing the weeks of reading, online price comparing, and brainstorming with an all-day online shopping spree that felt more like a hunt. I could possibly outfit a whole wedding sans the space and furniture now. I’ll be wondering if I made the right decision, but it was simply put: invest, pay off some debt, save. The investing part, instead of figuring out cryptocurrency or stocks, was my teeny tiny business. When I look back on this day, I want to remember going for it despite the risks and knowing that I at least gave it a try. I have already eliminated the paths I’ve taken ahead of this moment and I couldn’t have done any of this without the knowledge of those failures to help me. And even then: were they failures? No, not really. The bills were still being paid and I still learned a great deal about myself and others in the process.
So, our lives now look like two middle-aged parents who own a beat up SUV that runs faithfully and my idea of fun is sipping chamomile and lavender tea out of a flowered tea cup while listening to piano music on a YouTube feed of a fireplace. The house is clean and the conversations deep. Late is now 10:30pm and not 2am. Sex isn’t a priority, connection is. Aches and pains and skin changes are the norm. Having a bowl movement is sometimes worth reporting to the spouse. This is middle age. Welcome to the program.
summersolstice1115 