You Asked For What?

When I was a brand new Christian I wanted to be perfect. I knew that I had been saved from so many dangerous situations, so many times and I thought that I needed to be absolutely perfect to pay God back for saving me so often. I knew He had been the one that took care of me. I have never doubted that. I decided to do my very best to be the virtuous woman that Proverbs 31:10-31 describes. Epic Fail! That woman had help and she didn't have fibro and if my husband wants to sit on his butt at the city gates and listen to everyone tell him how blessed he is while I'm working my behind off, we have a problem. I'm Irish, not perfect.

I still believe it is important to be as virtuous as possible. Strong morals and values are important. If you don't know who you are and what you really believe, you just drift. I have always been stubborn once my mind is made up, but along the way I have earned some of the virtues that I possess. As a new Christian, I thought that if I asked for a certain virtue, it would just be magically granted to me. Kind of like fairy dust sprinkled down on my silly little head. Patience is one virtue that I earned the hard way. I think some of us have to be knocked down to get the message.

I was out of my mind frustrated that year and there was not a patient bone in my body. I worked 16 hour days at a nursing home while my husband traveled all over, removing asbestos from military bases. Our children spent the majority of their lives being cared for by my best friend, who was also our next door neighbor. I only saw them long enough to feed them breakfast and then carry their sleeping bodies home to bed at night.

To make matters worse, the nursing home refused to keep the equipment we needed in working order and some of the charge nurses were so incredibly lazy that they wouldn't get around to pulling patient files to see if a patient had a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate order) until after a patient had died. It was my experience that patients tend to die in three's. I don't know why that is. It just was. Some of those people did not have to die but when the law says that you can not start CPR until it has been confirmed that a DNR does not exist and the charge nurse is too lazy to pull the file, people die anyway. Some of them were my favorite people.

I had all ready been in trouble twice in two years. Once for starting CPR without a DNR confirmation (Once CPR is started, you may not stop until the EMT's arrive and take over) and once for beating the hell out of another CNA that my hall partner and I caught slapping one of my patients across the face. I'm still not sorry for doing that.

I sat on my front porch and cried just about every night after work. My husband kept telling me to quit and I knew that our children needed their Mother but I also knew that my people at the nursing home depended on me too. We were both working long hours, doing our best to save a down payment to buy our first home. We hated renting. Quitting meant it would be my fault that it would take a lot longer to save that down payment. I'm not a quitter but I wasn't patient either.

Before you ask God for patience, you had better be prepared to earn it. I had no idea I was biting off more than I could chew. I sat on our front porch in tears once again, after work and I begged God to just give me patience. If I could have that calm patience that I saw so often in my elderly friends at the nursing home, everything would be fine. I could get through without tearing myself apart. He said, "Sure kid! Let's get ready to rummmmbbblllleee!"

One month later, It was Jimmy's bath day. Jimmy was bathed every other day. We needed a lift for Jimmy because he weighed 417 pounds but once again, the two lifts that we had were both broken because Jimmy thought they were swing sets. He had Down Syndrome and he didn't mean to break anything. He was just having fun, but with the lifts broken, it meant that we had to pick him up to put him on a shower chair and roll him down the hall. Then he had to be lifted on to the potty to do his business before we put him back on the shower chair for his shower. We were supposed to have four people to lift Jimmy in order to keep him, and us, safe. As usual, we were short handed so there were only two of us.

We were all most there! We lifted Jimmy off the potty and he decided that we were his new swing set. He wrapped a leg around each one of us and bounced hard. He was giggling the whole time, which was cute, but we were heading for the floor and I knew if he hit the floor, he would cry and I would feel like a big, fat jerk for dropping him. Tracy had all ready been hurt by Jimmy once before when the lifts were broken, she let go and Jimmy wrapped both legs around me and bounced a second time. I weighed 107 pounds at the time. That's a 310 pound difference. But I'm stubborn, so I planted my feet and lifted him all most on to the shower chair when he bounced a third time and down we went. I didn't get back up.

I knew I was hurt, but Jimmy was crying and apologizing so I just laid in the floor with my arms around him and told him we were okay. Everything was going to be all right. It took a year to heal. My stubbornness ended with having every muscle in my neck, shoulders, back and hips torn. Three weeks later, while my husband was riding as the passenger in his work van, a semi rear ended them while coming down an off ramp. Danny saw it coming and put his feet on the dash to brace himself. The impact shoved his spine so deep into his pelvis that, to this day, he still walks like he just dismounted a bull. Guess who else was out of work for over a year?

This was early in our marriage. Neither of us were what you could call a grown up. Not emotionally. I had come from an environment where I had to fight for everything. I knew how to fight and I knew how to win. I did not know how to talk. I did not know how to lay down my pride and say, "That really hurt my feelings." Because in my world, that was a sign of weakness and weakness would get you hurt in a hurry.

My husband had come from an environment where he was not only the youngest child but also the only son. He had been told his entire life that he was perfect. He knew how to fight. When he was a little boy, he realized one day that he was a really good fighter. Other people realized it too.  He was not accustomed to being challenged. Certainly not by a little 107 pound woman. I think it amused him at first, but a year off with both of us hurt and neither of us willing to lay down our pride.....gooooood lord! Things got ugly quick. It wasn't long before we decided to go our separate ways.

He moved back home with his parents and I finally got to spend some time with our children. My husband and I were not hateful to each other during our time apart. He still came to visit our children and fix things around the house but what I did not know was that he and I were still on the same path. He was spending his time reading his Bible and going to school for C.A.D. and I was home reading my Bible and enjoying being a Mom. Each time he came to visit we talked. No pride, no stubbornness, just honest, this is how I feel, talk.

Here is my big secret; I finally learned to talk without pride and fear of being hurt getting in my way when I accepted that we were not going to be together anymore. Now he was just my friend. He was no longer someone that I worried would see that I really wasn't as strong as my stubbornness and pride suggested. With the husband title out of the way, I could talk to him. Except, he did not know that he was now just my friend. I thought that he did. After a year, I thought that was clear. Apparently not.

One day he suddenly realized that he was in the friend zone and had been for quite some time so he decided to break out of it and take his title back. He walked in my front door one day and announced that he was taking his family back and that was that. After I got over the initial shock, I kind of liked that. The rest, as they say, is history. My lesson in patience was not finished though. After our third child was born, I still had seven miscarriages to go through. Then I found out that I would never have a fourth child and that I have fibro and four other chronic pain conditions.

It has been a major growth experience, to say the least. I am so patient now, it surprises people. Sometimes, I surprise myself! Yes, I still get irritated. Like I said, I'm Irish, not perfect. I doubt I ever will be but I can certainly say that I am a patient person. I think that learning to be patient in all things is a part of becoming a grown up. Fighting in my house doesn't happen often and never the way it did twenty years ago. I think that if we had done more listening than arguing back then, we never would have separated, but it all worked out for the good of our marriage. You have to walk through it before you can learn the lessons.

I do not advise people to ask for patience unless they know what they are getting in to. It isn't going to be handed to you. You will absolutely earn it but if you're up to the challenge, when all is said and done, it will have been worth every second. I believe there is a plan for everyone and maybe I will never be the virtuous woman, but I am a better woman today than I was yesterday and a better woman still, tomorrow. I hope you earn the virtues that you want in this life and I hope you chase down your dreams. We get to do this just the one time. Even if the lesson is painful, make it count.