The hardest lesson of 2012...

Last year was a pretty rough year.

Landon's pregnancy was BY FAR my most difficult pregnancy.  There was much nausea, much puking, much insomnia, much relentless aching, much fatigue.  I wasn't just sick for the first trimester, I was sick for the entire pregnancy, save a few weeks in the middle when I felt functional, but then the nausea and puking was back, making each day feel like it was a week.   

I was in survival mode.  My only focus was on me and making it until mid September when our little baby would make his entrance.  I was so sick a lot of mornings that Dean would take whichever one of the girls that woke up super early with him to go teach seminary because I literally couldn't take care of them in the morning that early because I would have finally fallen asleep at 4:30 a.m.. I desperately needed to sleep.  Even though my friends offered to take my girls to give me some reprieve, I always objected because as difficult as it was to take care of them throughout being so sick for so long, they were at least a distraction throughout the day, something that I had to attend to that took my focus off of the nausea for a moment.

However, my daughters watched more television during those 8 months of feeling like death than I'm proud to admit though.  You know it's bad when your 3 year old can tell you exactly which episode of Dora we're watching from the first 5 seconds of it being on, and there's about 80 episodes to choose from on Netflix.

I spent a lot of time in self pity mode.  Why did this pregnancy have to be so hard?  Why were none of the anti-nausea remedies working?  Why couldn't I sleep?  Why did my daughters seem to become exponentially more difficult overnight?  What in the world was I thinking, thinking that I could handle another child, giving us 3 kids ages 3 and under??!?!????  

I desperately missed and wanted my mom.  I ached to talk to her, to lament to her, to tell her how nervous and excited I was to have another child, to have her come over and just let me put my head on her lap and have her soft my arm until I had to go wipe a child's nose or get them a snack. I never had an experience of "I feel like my mom is close right now during my time of trial", which I had built up in my mind was going to happen, so that made it harder some days.  I just missed and needed her.    

Dean picked up all of my slack. The man did everything during my pregnancy.  Everything.

This was his schedule:
-Wake up at 5:30 a.m.
-Teach Seminary to a bunch of teenagers from 6-7 a.m.
-Come home and shower the girls and get them ready and fed
-Get himself ready, often times not having enough time to eat in the mornings
-Load up the girls so I can take Kara to preschool
-He goes to work
-Work,work, work
-Come home for lunch from 1:30 to 2:40p.m.
-He made food for the girls for lunch.  I was so nauseous that it was hard for me to prepare food for them.
-He goes back to work and work, work, work until 6:30 p.m.
-Gets home around 6:40-7 p.m.
-He made dinner and fed the girls
-Plays with the girls
-Gets them in their pajamas, reads to them, and puts them to bed
-Does dishes, laundry, cleans up the tornado of toys all over the house
-Gets his seminary lesson ready for the next morning
-Goes to bed around 11p.m. or midnight
-Gets up at 5:30 a.m. and does the same routine over again

Dean was mommy and daddy.  He would let me squeeze out every last minute of sleep in the mornings because I slept so little.  I would spend a lot of my day leaning over the kitchen sink, ready to vomit, or I would be on the couch with a bowl next to me.  I was just existing, not parenting.  Dean picked up all my slack.  Of course not all day of every day was like that, but it was more so than not.    

I'm not very good at taking self-pity and despair and translating them into tears, except when I get pushed to my absolute limit every few months.  Instead I sublimated my angst into anger.  And sadly I used my anger on the one closest to me.  Dean.

Through everything he was doing to serve me and our children, I still found myself angry at him for lots of little things.  Why was he cleaning the microwave when there was laundry to be folded?  Why was he making noodles for the girls when the smell was enough to send me running for the bathroom?  Why was he doing his seminary lesson preparation instead of sitting on the couch spending time with me?

Irrational annoyances. 

But they were there, nonetheless.  There was a wedge silently driven between us.  I started to get annoyed.  He started to get annoyed.  I REALLY started to get annoyed.  I felt completely not in control of my ever growing belly and body, I couldn't assuage my all day sickness, I just wanted this pregnancy to be done, yet I didn't because I knew Landon was going to be our last baby.  It was a bittersweet pregnancy.

And then we got to the point that Dean and I just orbited around each other.  Co-existed.  Roommates. He was so busy taking care of everything, and I was so busy taking care of me. We didn't hate living with one another, but we just lived with one another, that's all.  Significant communication was happening less and less frequently, and small talk was more common place.  We did what we needed to for our kids and then let life get in the way between us.

That's not okay in a marriage, at least not in our marriage.

Through a couple of happenings, a couple of months before I was due, I ended up calling my sister, who is one of my best friends and happens to also be an amazing therapist (good thing she's my sister and I get the free family discount because I'd owe her a brand new Mercedes Benz as back payment if she ever decided to charge me), and I unloaded all of my annoyances, fears, frustrations, and crazies all over her.  I knew she was safe, that she would help me through this tumultuous time.  I let the waterworks flow and cried myself to the point of exhaustion to her more than once.

Now, if you know me then you know that I don't publicly complain about my husband to family and friends.  I just don't do it.  Nothing more than "Dean didn't pick up his shoes and I tripped on them in the middle of the night" ever comes from my mouth.  People are ALWAYS going to remember the bad things you say about your husband at a 10:1 over the good you say about then.  That's just an agreement we've always had, we don't go verbally slaughtering the other one to other people.

But I felt like I needed someone, SOMEONE, to talk to and I know my sister well enough to know that she wouldn't be a gossip, she would have sound advice for me on how to properly handle what I was feeling, and that she would know when I just needed to talk and she just needed to listen.  And she filled her role perfectly.

I vented about my frustrations.  I vented about Dean's shortcomings.  Since I'm his wife, I know his chinks in his armor, and just had tunnel vision for his shortcomings.  I thought he wasn't living up to his potential in some very simple areas so I focused on that.  So I bark bark barked to my sister, and she listened and gave advice and listened and gave advice.  She and I did the same dance on the phone for a few consecutive days.

Finally on the 3rd or 4th day of me venting frustrations to my sister on the other end of the phone, she threw me a curve ball.  I still remember this conversation perfectly:

Me, crying: bark, bark, bark and give excuses about everything I'm annoyed and frustrated and despairing with.....
Sister: "Ok, Michelle, stop."
Me: "What?"
Sister: "Stop."
Sister: "Do you want me to be nice or mean right now?"
Me: "What???"
Sister: "I said, do you want me to be nice or mean?"
Me: Ummm, mean?"
Sister: "You sure?"
Me: "Yes."
Sister: "Ok."
Me, nervous: "Ok."
Sister: "Michelle, YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN HE IS."

One-two sucker punch to the stomach.

I was at a loss for words.

I just sat there stunned, silently crying into the phone as I let those words sink in.

It took me about .3 seconds to realize that she was completely right in every sense of the word.  I had put myself on a pedestal, I was better than Dean because I didn't have his struggles.

Those words were EXACTLY what I needed to hear, and my sister was brave enough to purposely and lovingly hurt me, she, knowing that I needed to be brought down and have a mirror held up in front of my face.

I didn't like what I saw in that mirror that was now held up in front of me.  I saw a girl with a lot of unfounded anger.  I saw a girl who was trying to do everything and nothing by herself all at the same time.  I saw a girl who had slowly pulled herself away from her Heavenly Father because she was afraid of the hurt and sorrow she would have to face to completely turn back towards him and do everything that she knew she was supposed to be doing.               

I had unconsciously and semi-consciously focused on everyone else's shortcomings in my life as to avoid acknowledging and dealing with my own.

Through talking with my sister more, she helped me to see what I needed to work on, what Dean and I needed to work on together, and we started to do the work.  It was uncomfortable to start to remove that wedge, it was uncomfortable to really start to talk again, it was uncomfortable to remove the distractions and de-clutter our lives, and it was uncomfortable to make the spiritual shift.

I often heard my sister's words, "YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN HE IS" swirling around in my head, reminding myself that Dean is my equal, that I need to work on my own problems and that I cannot work on his problems for him. We are both in charge of ourselves and the more we try to get another person to change, the more they will resist the change, they are the only ones who can make a true change if they so choose.  As I slowly practiced relinquishing control and nitpicking, the more of a positive shift I saw in our lives.

Effective communication will always be a lifelong effort, and it's something that will probably come in waves, but I don't even want it to put us to co-existing status again.

I like the slow shift that I've started to see occurring in me.  I'm by no means a perfect wife and mother and sister, but I'm trying harder.  And I've applied my sister's words of wisdom to all aspects of my life.  I've become MUCH less judgmental of others because I realize that getting involved and passionate about other people's drama just distracts me from working on me.  I cannot fix other people's lives.  I can compassionately listen, but I cannot fix their problems for them, it's not my job to fix their problems, and it is only emotionally draining for me to get so vested in their drama.

In a way, I'm grateful for that stressful time in our marriage because though I couldn't see the forest through the trees at the time, now I can and it's one of the most beautiful sights in the world.