How Did I Get Here?

There is a fine balance between introspection, self deprecation, and massive pity parties.  Obviously my desire is to stay closer to the first than the other two.  It is good to look within yourself.  Pause for moments (weeks is probably too long, but it is usually feast or famine in my life).  Use the time that is given to you to pull specks or logs out of your own eye and take a bit of personal inventory.  The moments that have been the most painful come like this:  

It is 10:34 AM in our home and life is going at a pretty quick pace.  The kids are up and they have been fed, bathed, and gotten ready for their day.  That consists of two children's television shows, 15 mini-pancakes (Jackson) and four hand-fulls of blueberries (Isabella), and one bath where at least one of the children use the bath water as their own personal toilet.  I don't know if it is the warm water that relaxes everything, but you can set your watch.  They will poop in the bath.  This getting ready process only happens if someone does it for them.  We don't have the good fortune of having children that are old enough to do much for themselves and so it is constant monitoring that will get you out the door before 1 PM which is their nap time, and when you have to be back home.  It is a complex little dance I tell you.  So as I sit upstairs in my CPM machine I hear my wife desperately attempting to wrangle two children that must have some sort of team meeting.  I swear I have snuck into rooms where I have heard our two year old ask our one year old if she is with him.  They then take a milk oath and both crap their pants at the same time.  As soon as one does something, the other takes that as their turn to do the same thing or the complete opposite.  Which one it is usually depends on which will cause more chaos.  Would it be the critical mass of two children working on one project of ripping books of value together or each child going to the opposite end so the house so they are as far apart from each other as possible doing something that expresses their own flavor of destructive creativity.  I will hear something like, "Jackson, don't play with that you will burn yourself and the whole house down" and then a question comes to me that sounds something like, "Jeff, do we own a fire extinguisher?"  The problem is not the question.  Shara and I have asked each other weirder questions, (like which stains worse, poop or vomit?  Or if you had to be a Wiggle which one would you be.  We both answered Anthony by the way.)  It is the fact that I have to calmly answer the question and do nothing about it.  I have secured for myself the best wife and mother in human history.  She continues to be a balance of fun, calm wisdom, mothering knowledge, and down right sexy wife.  She carries her weight just fine.  It is just that in times like this, her load is much bigger and I worry it is too big.  No one person should have to deal with the troubles of an entire household...including a 34 year old man-child who can't stay on his feet during broomball.  I pray for her daily.  I thank God for who she is and what she is doing for our family.  I pray that she will be rewarded often.  And I know Mother's Day this year is going to cost a lot.  I am watching a world go on around me and there is nothing I can do about it.

The other comes at about 2:37 in the morning.  A time I have seen for the past week.  I don't know why I am awake at that moment every night, but for some reason there I am.  My meds have warn off, my butt and back are stiff  from sitting in a 45 degree angle, and I am hungry because I am not able to graze like a bovine cow since I am stuck in my CPM machine.  My brain turns on and I begin to think.  For most people, if they give their mind too much time to wander it will do dangerous things, and I am no different.  I begin to ask questions.  Some are fun.  "How big of a fort could I build within the square footage of my bed?"  Some are practical.  "When is the last time you showered?"  Or "What is that smell?"  I come to the conclusion that that question was actually a two parter.  I showered last week and the smell is me.  Others are questions that may not even be coming from me.  "Why did you do this?  You have screwed up another situation and brought about pain and misery to you and your family.  Why are you such a failure?"  I don't want to pretend that the burden I carry with my time laid up in bed is anything close to that of my wife, but I do know that the guilt of what I am doing to the family consumes me.  I should be the one catching children when they fall off the bed, shoveling up half eaten diapers by our dog, or moving cars that have been parked in the middle of the street.  These all happened today and my wife fixed them all with style and grace.  I know she is happy to do it, as I would be if the shoe were on the other foot.  I would never ask this of anyone else.  You couldn't pay someone to wade through these weeks.  

My hope is that I have a deeper understanding of the covenant that I took with my wife from this.  When the roles are reversed you better believe I feel pretty sorry for myself.  I guess that time is done.  I am witnessing a woman serve me during the "worse" of better or worse.  When a flu strikes our family and they all look to me to sack up, then I best start sacking.  Payback comes quickly and with a vengeance on times like this.  If God blesses us with other children then it will be my good pleasure to hold the hair of my wife when she has nausea for three months of the pregnancy and down for the count for 8 weeks of C-section recovery.  It is the ying and yang balance of serving and giving with no expectations that your will come soon.  The fact is it usually does, and it comes in the form of a dead man's ACL being placed in your knee.  I hope he was a basketball player....

I love you my dear sweet servant wife.