creepy jacky, trust issues and horse bbq: a few words from the babybyrds blog

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Monday, September 13th, 2010

creepy jacky, trust issues and horse bbq: a few words from the babybyrds blog

it sounds incredibly cliché to say “i have an amazing wife” or “i married up” or “i’m so blessed to have my wife”. yes, all that is played out and cliché.

but i’ll just risk the cliché because, in fact, my wife is amazing. straight up, she’s an incredible person who i’m consistently thankful to be married to. she makes my life immensely more worth living.

i get on to her every so often for selling herself short on things like her intelligence, talents and, most often, her ability to write. she thinks she sucks, but she’s actually able to be very articulate when she tries.

the other day, she tried and it worked. on her blog, babybyrds, she wrote a quick piece about learning to trust, offering a brief glimpse of the ups and downs of our 7 years of marriage. it was so good, i had to share it here. i hope you connect.

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if there’s one thing i’ve learned over the past 7 years of our marriage…it’s to trust.

trust myself,
trust ryan,
trust god,
trust my motherly instincts,
trust my kids (when one says the other one is puking in the middle of the night…don’t go back to sleep and let her lay in it for an hour),
and so on.

i know i blogged about some of this on the eikon blog a while back, but i have more to say 🙂

for most people, the first year of marriage is the hardest. our first year was our easiest (i didn’t say best). we both had jobs, both had cars, rent was $425(!!!), no kids, and so on. little did we realize how much would change in 7 years. as ryan put it…after 7 years, 6 cars, 5 moves in 4 different cities, and 3 kids…we are 2 different people.

i realized how simply trusting has taught me so much. for instance, when we moved to nicholasville, kentucky (btw, i hated it)…we had no jobs, knew NO ONE, had no money, etc. we couldn’t even turn our heat on throughout most of the winter, and it is cold up there. since i traveled with the crappy job i eventually found, and it was just ryan there most of the time, he decided he could go without heat. which meant staying in bed as long as possible in the morning and then running to the hot shower, then wearing LOTS of clothing around the house at all times, and hanging out in the library a lot. looking back…it’s hilarious to us. at the time…not so much. we also ate lots of hot dogs and ramen noodles. we were broke. i would have panic attacks about how we were going to make it.

we moved to paducah…not much changed. except i had a job i actually enjoyed, well, mainly just the people i worked with. ryan was still in seminary, driving 4.5 hours to school, sitting through classes all day, then driving 4.5 hours home…one day a week. that was ridiculous looking back. we were down to one car, i hitched a ride with my interesting friend barry (who brought horse bbq to work one day and didn’t tell anyone it was horse until after everyone ate it…i’m still laughing, b/c i knew and threw mine away!)

we had a great church family and friends in paducah. i loved it there. i miss it sometimes. we had the weirdest neighbors in the world…and we loved it! i miss creepy Jackie who used to stand at our glass front door and stare at us watching tv till we realized he was standing there…staring at us. and betty, who couldn’t remember our names after we lived there for over a year, and she covered the trunk of her car in contact paper. she loved us, and she loved lucy, and she cried when we left. i cried when we left. because it was lucy’s first home. i had a front porch swing that i loved. we experienced losing a baby there. i was pregnant there. ryan and i grew so much closer when we lived there. so many good and heartbreaking memories. looking back, i was just beginning to learn how to trust.


*that would be the day we brought lucy home (i know, i look hot).
*and betty holding lucy.
*and me and lucy the day we packed up and left…that’s why my eyes are all red and i look crazy (no explanation for lucy’s giant head other than her father).

however, i think ALL of those experiences, and more i can’t even remember, have prepared me for my life right now. this whole “starting a church” thing has done a number on us. while it is an exciting adventure, it is also scary. it has definitely brought out the best and worst in us. there’s been times when we wanted to quit, and times when we think it couldn’t get any better. it is way more work than we ever thought it would be. i miss my husband a lot. while he does a wonderful job of balancing a full-time job, a church, a wife and 3 kids…i’m still jealous of the time we used to have together.

and obviously, the biggest part of my life…my 3 kids. definitely something we wanted, just not all so close. it has definitely been the hardest thing i’ve ever done. i can honestly say that being at home, alone, with all 3 after max was born…i didn’t think i was going to make it. i really struggled for about 2 months, pretty sure it was a little post-partum depression. i cried at least once, maybe twice a day. (i think most moms do more than they would admit.) i realized why people are driven to hurt their children. thanks to ryan and our mothers, i made it through that time. and about a month ago, i finally felt like i was coming out of this cloud i’d been in. i realized how much i loved my kids. enough said. everyday is still a struggle, and i feel like a crappy mom a lot of the time…as most mothers do. but things are definitely better.

everyday brings new challenges for us. literally…church issues, financial problems, bad days with the kids, new business ventures. but everyday, with every issue, i choose to trust…i mean, what else can i do. but i usually choose to laugh. because i remember the old me who would freak out and have a panic attack because we couldn’t pay the bill on time. and thanks to my lovely husband who has always said “well, there’s nothing we can do about it right now, so go to sleep,” i’ve learned that i can only do what i can do. and it may get worse before it gets better…but that’s life.

enough sappiness now. i have an amazing husband, and beautiful kids. and i’ve learned how to cope with life…for now.

so, in the words of the fabulous Tim Gunn…”carry on.”