34
My husband is the best. He's a real big nerd but he embraces that role and is the hardest worker I know. He is the principal of the school that now two of my kids attend. This setup has some pros as well as cons but without a doubt the greatest benefit I see is that my children get to see their Daddy work. He is driven and fiercely motivated unlike anyone I've known. He graduated college on a Saturday, started his first graduate class the Monday after, and had one summer session off in 8 years of post-graduate schooling that ended with a PhD. He is definitely a worker bee, and yet is a very hands-on dad.
I guess as is typical in most relationships, I'm the emotional one and he's the more level-headed one. I need him to keep me grounded when I'm overcome by emotions and he needs me to remind him to have compassion and look beyond the black-and-white of things and understand that someone's feelings impact how they respond to situations.
We are a team. A team that has endured our share of stresses as a couple. In ten years of marriage we've experienced stuff like our house being robbed while we were out of town (with the robber taking our stuff and the car out of our garage). We've had unplanned pregnancies, struggles to conceive, and a miscarriage. We watched our two year-old undergo brain surgery when our 4 month-old was with a babysitter. We had a tumor diagnosis, a move, a dissertation written, a doctoral graduation, and news we were expecting again when the middle child was 9 months old -- all within 6 months. I was pregnant or nursing for 2.5 straight years and we didn't sleep for about 3. We've dealt with an array of kid sicknesses and an epilepsy diagnosis to go along with the residual brain tumor. We've been to hospitals and specialist offices lots and lots of times and have spent many painful days in "waiting" for results of some sort. We've had job changes and have been told "no." We've had losses of friends and family members. Our marriage has not been all roses.
Even still, it's a bit nerve-wracking to answer questions in our foster paperwork along the lines of "the question is not if this will cause tension in your marriage, but when, so how will you deal with it when it arises?" And you kind of wonder why the caseworker wants to know sooooo much about our relationship and how we got started and when we dated and why we were friends and when that changed. These things have definitely led to some conversations like, "we are on the same page, right? Are we for sure in this together?" A sense of paranoia isn't all bad because it reminds us that we can enter into this lightly.
But we are a team and I love this man to pieces and I am excited to enter into new stresses with him because there is no one else I'd want to be stressed with.
This picture is my new favorite. At the end of a couple of very long work days (yesterday he left for school at 5:15am!), our oldest two were arguing over who he would carry to bed, so he carried them both. He is a busy man, but he always "makes it work." I know that foster care won't always be easy, but we are in it together, and without that confidence I could never proceed.
