I've recently had a few weird things happen, like in the last 4 or 5 days. To anyone outside my brain, these wouldn't seem like anything strange or out of the ordinary. But inside the machine encased by my thick skull, alarm bells were going off, warning of impending danger.
One of them was a girlfriend inviting me to her house for their Friday night fellowship. (See? Totally normal.) There was going to be food (Yay!) and great people. Normally, I'm all in. But my honey was still at work, so I didn't want to go without seeing him first. See, he'd been working for almost 2 weeks straight, most of which was between 12 and 15 hours a aday. I knew he'd be tired when he got home (if not fall into an exhaustion-fueled coma as soon as he crossed the threshold), so I didn't want him to have to deal with 4 dogs, or phone calls, or anything of the sort. Now, if he was to say, fall asleep 5 minutes after he got home, so be it. I'd make sure he could sleep undisturbed, and roll on over to my friend's house.
As the clock ticked on, the window for this event at my friend's house was closing, and my honey still hadn't called. I knew calling him was pointless, since he was working in an industrial environment; not to mention the 900-ton press he was working INSIDE. I really didn't want to distract him...
So when my girlfriend texted me with a simple question, something set me off. The red lights started flashing behind my eyeballs.
I knew that whatever I replied would have been snarky, sarcastic, and more than likely, incredible mean. So I removed any chance of that happening, and shut off my phone.
For 2 days, I stewed. I stewed about what she could've been saying with her question, I stewed about my possible responses, and I stewed unneccesarily about the repercussion of any one of my possible (but imagined) responses.
I knew something was irking me, and I'd gotten to the point that I knew that whatever it was, it wasn't my friend, or her question.
So what the hell was it????
Oh.... hell.
Here comes the backstory.
In the last couple of weeks, I've had my eyes opened to just how selfish I'd been in my marriage. For a really long time. If you care to read that story, and haven't yet, you can read it here.
To make a long story short. my honey had been sacrificing all the things that were important to him (time with his family, hobbies, fun stuff, etc.) in order to go to work, to provide for our family.
I, on the other hand, had not. In fact, I'd added things to my list of stuff to do, places to go, people to see; without taking care of my priorities - my family. (Sadly enough, I called all this "serving God"...)
So I was completely oblivious to what my honey said when he told me he felt like I wasn't making him a priority. And I had the cajones to think he was being the selfish one! (Holy cow, I'm just now realizing what a complete tool I've been...)
Wow.
Anyways.
After a miraculous couple of weeks, where I had an enlightening and humbling prayer experience, a new outlook on what my husband means by "priority", and a fantastic job that fell out of the sky and into my lap, a lightbulb went on.
What was irking me so adamantly was the challenge to my recent declaration to stand by my husband, to fight for what we wanted, together.
If I had decided to ditch my husband, who'd been sacrificing everything for me, for us, to go fellowship with my friends, I would've been missing the point. (Not to mention moving the target.) Completely.
I would have been throwing away the last few weeks, going back to the mode of thinking where I was first all the time, I was the priority, what I wanted trumped everything else.
It took SEVEN MONTHS to get out of that mode of thinking. I wasn't going back.
Looking back on those seven months? I saw Clark Kent, just like everyone else.
I should've seen Superman.
Because my husband IS my hero.
No one else knows what we've been through together, and no one knows everything he does for this family. No one else knows what he sacrifices, what he deals with, what he tolerates, what he pushes through.
So in my book, no one else can judge our relationship, nor do I have the right to compare our relationship to any others.
A HUGE weight has been lifted off my shoulders,and I have a new spring in my step.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go do Superman's laundry.
